He’s Living in the Past : Kernen Renews Quest for Players With Dedication

At the risk of sounding like a dinosaur--or worse, a man with no sense of humor--Coach Bill Kernen believes he has discovered a direct correlation between last season’s Cal State Northridge baseball team and the decline of America’s youth.

A few weeks ago, about the time Northridge completed a 25-30 campaign--its worst in Kernen’s six seasons--the coach recalled watching a television news segment about a college student who, during a press conference, asked President Clinton what style of undergarments he wears.

“I grew up in the ‘60s, supposedly one of the most lenient, let-it-all-hang-out, out-of-society generations in the history of human history,” Kernen said.

“It would have never, even remotely, crossed anybody’s mind to stand up at a university press conference and ask (John F. Kennedy) what kind of underwear he wears. Not even the biggest pothead. That would have never happened.”

Worse, according to Kernen, “He answered her!”

So there you have it: Kids--even Presidents--ain’t what they used to be.

Kernen has been a baseball coach for 17 years, always working with young adults. He has seen changes, and not many have been for the better, he said.

“The kids today are weaker,” Kernen said. “They’re less dedicated with what they want to do. They’re less responsible. And you know what? Some of that is not their fault.

“Nobody takes responsibility for anything anymore, not even murder. This three-strikes-and-you’re-out thing--the new tough law. You have to be convicted of three major felonies before they finally take you out of society. . . . That’s what kind of message they’re getting, the kind of non-responsibility environment they’re growing up in.

“Then the little things you ask them to do for a baseball program and it’s like, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me! You want me to do what? ‘

“I know what this sounds like, but it’s the truth. The kind of guys I’m looking for are getting fewer and far between.”

And the search for them increasingly arduous.

Since the conclusion of Northridge’s season in mid-May, Kernen has spent most of his waking hours in an occasionally frantic quest to find his kind of player--a throwback to a day when athletes were willing to look, listen, learn and sacrifice.

By his own admission, Kernen in recent years has failed to recruit enough players willing to meet his often daunting standards.

Late in March, he went so far as to bench most of his starters, bar his players from their locker room and take away their uniforms because he said the Matadors’ poor attitude and lackadaisical work habits were denigrating the accomplishments of previous Northridge teams.

March Madness, indeed. In some circles, Kernen’s rampage already is legend. Out on the recruiting trail, however, the coach reports no backlash.

“Nobody’s said anything about that stuff,” Kernen said. “But I tell them. I say, ‘I want you to know what things are like here. One year I burned the trophies for the league championship and the all-league stuff. Another year we slept in the clubhouse for a week.’

“I tell them that stuff because I don’t want them to be surprised once they get here.

“I’m not living in a dream world. I know everyone can’t play for me. This place is not for the weak, meek or uncommitted.”

In 1991, Kernen’s third year and Northridge’s first season of NCAA Division I competition, the Matadors fell three outs short of earning a trip to the College World Series in Omaha. Kernen refers to that team, which included juniors Craig Clayton, Scott Sharts, Greg Shockey and Ken Kendrena, as the “only legitimate team” he has coached at Northridge.

“We were one of the best eight teams (in the nation) that year,” Kernen said.

That’s how the coach defines “legitimate.”

Northridge earned regional playoff invitations the following two years, too, but hasn’t again made it close enough to earning a trip to Omaha.

Key injuries to pitchers have hurt the Matadors the past three seasons. Then there was the 1994 debacle, which might have been avoided, Kernen said, had he exercised better judgment while recruiting the past few years. “I make some mistakes with a couple of guys and all hell breaks loose,” he said. “That’s why I have to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Kernen, who has a record of 212-125-3 at Northridge, accepts blame for detouring from his normally taxing recruiting routine.

“For a while there I might have gotten caught up in thinking that the (coaching) system was going to work no matter who the players were,” Kernen said. “There were a couple of guys in this program this year who I never saw play (before signing them). That’s not an intelligent approach.”

Loyola Marymount Coach Jody Robinson said Kernen appears to be taking a more cautious approach while making recruiting rounds this year.

“What he’s doing is making sure the work he’s doing is precise,” said Robinson, a former Northridge assistant. “He’s working a little more careful.”

Kernen admittedly is more motivated. “Human nature is such that when you’re going well, you have a tendency to get comfortable,” he said. “When things aren’t, you gear it up. Things always are being sucked toward the middle.”

The middle isn’t good enough for Kernen, who despised everything about his first losing season as coach. He is beating the bushes for high school seniors, gritty types who share his dream of winning the NCAA championship.

The same basic formula helped him quickly build Northridge into a major-college power. Kernen signed nothing but high school seniors--no junior college players or transfers--in 1989, his first year, and the core of that recruiting class was the nucleus of his best teams.

Can he do it again? If not, it won’t be for lack of effort. Two weeks ago, Kernen rose at 5 a.m., caught an early flight to Oakland, rented a car, drove to California’s Berkeley campus and attended a daylong tryout for a high school all-star team.

That night, he caught another plane home.

During a break in the tryout, scouts and dozens of college coaches huddled over lunch; the players rested or went to lunch with their parents. Kernen, meanwhile, hung around the field, and spotted a young man headed for the Cal batting cages. Kernen followed.

One of the cages had a self-feeding machine. The player opened his baseball bag, pulled out a sack lunch, turned on the machine, and hit for an extra half-hour.

“A hundred guys take off for lunch and this guy stays and hits,” Kernen said. “So I’m thinking to myself, I am definitely going to find out more about this guy.”

Recruiting rules prohibited Kernen from talking to the player at the tryout. So he just stood there and watched, nibbling on his own sandwich.

At a similar tryout last season, Kernen spotted Eric Gillespie, a freshman catcher who led Northridge in hitting last season with a .342 batting average. When he first took over the Matadors, Kernen routinely attended Connie Mack and American Legion games, as well as the usual circuit of all-star games and tryouts.

He saw Shockey and Mike Solar, another former Northridge standout, playing in a summer league game at Long Beach’s Blair Field.

Kernen prefers to see prospects play several times in as many different situations as possible.

Usually, he positions himself as closely and as inconspicuously as possible to the dugout, so he can hear what is being said and gather as much information about the player’s temperament as possible.

He recalled seeing a tall and talented high school pitcher dominate a high school game earlier this season, then get ripped at an all-star tryout a few weeks later.

Kernen gonged that guy, not because he got hit hard, but because he argued with the umpire and later with his teammates. Another pitching prospect blew a 2-0 lead when he committed a throwing error after fielding a bunt.

Kernen watched that player come back to the dugout, go off into a corner by himself, and quietly attempt to retain his composure.

That player, though physically less talented, has been offered a scholarship.

“If you want to see how fast they can run, how far they can throw a ball, how hard they can throw, how big they are--anybody can do that in a short period of time,” Kernen said.

“I’ve always recruited character and personality more than talent.”

A prospect’s work ethic has become increasingly important to Kernen the past few years since the NCAA passed legislation limiting the number of hours a team can practice.

“Everybody has better facilities, more coaches, more scholarships and a better stadium (than Northridge does),” Kernen said, “but the one thing we always had was time. If I used more of it, we could close that gap.

“Some of the effectiveness of how I train teams has been taken away, my biggest tool.”

What the coach needs now are more players willing to sacrifice their own time. In previous seasons he has preferred to work with a small group of players. Next fall, the Matadors could have a roster numbering as many as 35--about a dozen more than usual.

“It’s the old Branch Rickey theory,” Robinson said. “You bring in a bunch of guys, let them battle it out, and see who survives.”

Kernen is altering his system, but he still believes in it. With the right young men, he said, his training methods work.

The best example of that? Not the 1991 season, he said, but 1994.

“That’s what I told (the players) in the final team meeting,” Kernen said. “As bad as all this stuff was, we still played about .500 and were in the (Western Athletic Conference West Division) race all the way to the end. That’s how strong this stuff is.”

That understood, Kernen said, he won’t stand for a repeat.

“If I have another year like this year, I’ll be gone,” he said, “because that will mean either one of two things: Either I’m not doing an effective job anymore, or what I want to get accomplished can’t be done here.”

Rebuilding won’t be easy at a time when much of the Northridge campus still is in shambles from the January earthquake.

The other day, Robinson had a player on the Loyola Marymount campus making an official recruiting visit.

Aware that Kernen had been talking to the same player, Robinson took the young man into a large green, boxcar-like shed where the Loyola baseball team stores its equipment.

“Look around,” Robinson told the befuddled player. “This is pretty much the way the English Department looks over at Northridge.

“Really. Maybe there are some windows and a few lights, but basically it’s the same.”

Enough said. Robinson expects the player to sign a letter of intent with Loyola next week.

There is no such thing as friendly recruiting. “I wasn’t going to do it, but it was classic, and it was true,” Robinson said. “I just couldn’t pass it up.”