He Hit Rock Bottom Before Turnaround

All Marco Hanlon could think about Friday night as he watched Cal State Fullerton’s baseball team make terrible pitches and terrible errors on the way to a terrible 10-7 loss to Ohio State in the first game of the NCAA super regional was that his baseball career was over. And that it was ending in front of a TV set, instead of on the field.

Hanlon has played baseball all his life. In Little League, in the backyard, at the park, at Woodbridge High in Irvine, at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo and, for the last two years, at Fullerton. The senior has been a middle reliever and a starter. He’s also a realist. He knows there will be no pro baseball for him.

Some day Hanlon would like to own a major league team and maybe launch a professional Wiffleball league. But play some more?

“Nope,” Hanlon says. “That’s not gonna happen.”

So when the Titans had dropped the first of the best-of-three set to the Buckeyes, while Hanlon watched from his Fullerton apartment, it was, Hanlon says, “the absolute lowest moment of my life. I’m a pretty optimistic guy but for about 24 hours I kind of lost hope, and the circumstances . . . just got to me.”

Hanlon, you see, was one of the four Fullerton players who had been suspended from last weekend’s games after having been arrested at the regional the previous weekend in South Bend, Ind.

Hanlon and sophomores Adam Johnson, David Bacani and Chad Olszanski were arrested after climbing onto the roof of a restaurant and throwing rocks. There had been a complaint from the restaurant owner about the rocks scaring customers. The players say they were throwing at trees and looking at the skyline.

They were suspended indefinitely from the team and as the Titans, already disappointed about losing a bid to host the super regional, went to Columbus, Hanlon faced a horrible prospect.

“It hit me that my career might be over and that I wouldn’t get a chance for it to end on the field,” he said. “You know, when it all started, we hadn’t intended anything bad. We never thought what we did would be any big deal. When the police came, I knew we had made a huge mistake. I felt awful. We all did.”

Everybody makes mistakes. There is a feeling sometimes that athletes who make mistakes too often get excused, that they are protected and pampered and made to feel they don’t have to feel responsible. Not this time. The punishment was immediate. It was severe.

“What we did, it could have cost us the [College] World Series,” Hanlon says. “That could have been the end of my baseball career, on that note. I felt a little sick Friday night.”

Saturday night the suspended players, wearing their uniforms, chose another apartment in which to watch the game.

“We decided mine was bad luck,” Hanlon says.

The Titans won Saturday, forcing a third, deciding game Sunday. Hanlon had started the deciding game, the victory over Michigan, in the regional. Johnson was the Titans’ No. 1 starter. The word from Columbus was that the Buckeyes were feeling pretty good. Few college teams have three strong starters. Hardly ever do they have four. Fullerton was missing two of its top three.

On Saturday night, Hanlon learned that starting the game that would determine whether the Titans would go to the College World Series, the game he might well have started, would be George Carralejo. The slightly built, 150-pound sophomore left-hander used to sit way out in center field and watch his favorite Titan, Mark Kotsay, through a chain-link fence.

“I grew up right down the road in Buena Park,” Carralejo says. “All my life I wanted to pitch in a game like this for Fullerton.”

Carralejo had an earned-run average of 12.00 in only 15 innings.

“A disappointment,” he said of himself and his pitching until Sunday afternoon. “I had not accomplished what I’d hoped this year.”

He also had another source of inspiration.

“Marco is my best friend on the team,” Carralejo says. “If you know Marco at all, he is the least likely guy to get in trouble. I know how much Marco felt like he had disappointed people. In my heart, I wanted so much to bring this team a win and give Marco another chance.”

Hanlon called Carralejo late Saturday night.

“I knew he wouldn’t be sleeping,” Hanlon says. “He wasn’t.”

What they talked about wasn’t terribly important.

“George is a huge tennis fan,” Hanlon says. “He asked me if the French Open finals were good because he taped them and didn’t want to know the results. I told him he was in for a treat. And I just told him that I believed in him. I did.”

Carralejo says, “Marco just told me he knew I could do it and to believe in myself. His words helped a lot.”

Carralejo pitched five innings, his longest stint of the season. Then he starting cramping, so badly that his control was gone and he hit the first batter in the sixth. That was the end of Carralejo’s day but he had done enough. The Titans went on to an easy victory and then an emotional reunion at LAX Sunday night when Hanlon hugged Carralejo and both cried.

So intensely sorry has Hanlon felt, so desperately eager to get another chance to play, that he was emotionally drained Monday when he got the word that he and the others would be reinstated and allowed to travel to Omaha for the College World Series. Fullerton will play Stanford on Saturday night.

“I was too tired to appreciate the news right away,” Hanlon says now. “I’m just so glad to get the chance to have my career end the right way. I’m so happy the guys got me that chance.”

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.

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College World Series

First games in double-elimination format:

FRIDAY

* Game 1--Oklahoma State (46-19) vs. Alabama (51-14), 12:30 p.m.

* Game 2--Miami (46-13) vs. Rice (58-13), 4:30 p.m.

SATURDAY

* Game 3--Florida State (53-12) vs. Texas A&M; (52-16), 10:30 a.m.

* Game 4--Cal State Fullerton (49-12) vs. Stanford (48-13), 5 p.m.