Jogging Memories of Triple Crown

Not that he’s greedy, but there is one thing Dave Weatherman still wants from his college baseball career.

In 1979, he pitched a complete game as Cal State Fullerton clinched its first College World Series title. And he still is the winningest pitcher in school history.

But something is missing.

Weatherman doesn’t have a videotape of his 2-1 victory over Arkansas in the championship game. And not because he hasn’t tried to get one.

” I’ve called Arkansas stations, I’ve called ESPN, I’ve called Channel 4 . . . nobody knows,” he said.

Weatherman even tried the University of Arkansas, which has one tape from that College World Series--the Razorbacks’ loss to the Titans in an elimination game.

“I know they lost in that one, but, geez, it’s the championship!” he said. “You don’t keep that one?”

Fullerton thought it had a copy but the Titans couldn’t find it when they wanted to run it at the ’79 team’s 20-year reunion earlier this year.

So Weatherman gets more frustrated every year when he watches the highlight montage shown before the nationally televised championship game. He is taunted by a clip of the final out of the ’79 title game, and the ensuing mob on the pitching mound. But nobody seems to know where the film of the entire game is.

“I know there’s a film out there somewhere, but I can’t find it,” he said.

This year, in its 25th season of Division I baseball, Fullerton has again qualified for the College World Series, the 10th time in school history.

The Titans have finished on top three times. Five years after Weatherman’s heroics in 1979, John Fishel led the Titans to the title. And in 1995 Fullerton won again, thanks in large part to an amazing performance by outfielder Mark Kotsay.

All three former Titans remember what it’s like to have their career-defining performances on college baseball’s biggest stage, Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha.

Fullerton, champion of the Big West Conference, has been ranked among the nation’s top five teams most of the season. But the Titans are considered a longshot in this year’s field. Then again, they know that role well.

1979

The Titans were heavy underdogs in their second College World Series appearance.

In 1975, playing in Omaha for the first time, Fullerton left quietly after two quick losses. When the Titans returned four years later, respect was hard to come by.

“Everybody was like, ‘Cal State who?’ ” said Weatherman, now supervisor at a computer data center.

Although they had won the Southern California Baseball Assn. title with a 23-4-1 conference record, regional play began with a 5-4 loss to UCLA. Fullerton recovered, though, and won the last four games by a combined score of 47-13, advancing to Omaha.

There, the Titans started slowly, losing to Mississippi State, 6-1. But then they defeated Connecticut, Arizona, Arkansas and Pepperdine on the way to the championship game.

The reason Weatherman wants the tape of that final game is that he doesn’t have much recollection of the biggest game of his baseball life.

“There were portions of the game that I kind of glazed over,” he said. “In about the middle of the game, people were telling me that they were walking by and talking to me and I wasn’t talking back. I guess that’s what you call being in the zone.”

Weatherman had not expected to start the championship game. The previous day, he had been pounded by Pepperdine and was replaced in the first inning. The Titans managed to win the game, though, 8-5, and afterward, Titan Coach Augie Garrido told Weatherman to get some rest, because he was going again in the final.

Weatherman said, “I was thinking to myself, ‘Hey, weren’t you paying attention? Were we watching the same game?’ ”

But he came through with the victory, although the last three outs weren’t easy.

The first Arkansas batter hit a hard grounder down the first base line that Tim Wallach had to dive for and knock down before crawling to first to tag the base.

The second drove a ball to the power alley in right field, but Mickey Palmer raced over and made an over-the-shoulder catch just before the warning track.

The last batter drilled a line drive on an 0-and-2 count, but right at second baseman Mike Garcia. Then the celebration began. Fullerton had won its first national championship, finishing the season at 60-14-1.

“Probably the three hardest hit balls of the game were the last three outs,” Weatherman said. “They weren’t cheapies.

“That just tells you how the gods were on our side. We were lucky at that time.”

Weatherman lives in Thousand Oaks with his wife Jackie. He is working the same job that he started at when he retired from baseball 16 years ago, after a couple of years in the minor leagues, and helps run a baseball school.

1984

When Fullerton bemoaned the NCAA’s sending it to Ohio State for the super-regional this year, John Fishel allowed himself a selfish smile.

Fishel, who won the most-outstanding-player award in 1984, when the Titans won their second College World Series title, lives in Gahanna, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, where he has his own cabinetry business.

Watching Fullerton play last weekend reminded Fishel of his team and its success in Omaha.

On a trip to Texas in March that season, hotel officials complained that some of the Titans were noisy and rowdy. Garrido suspended two players--outfielder John Bryant and catcher Bob Caffrey--for a week for missing curfew. A few others, Fishel among them, received less severe punishment: dawn patrol.

“Dawn patrol was getting up and going to run with the track coach at 6 in the morning,” Fishel said. “It was like eight or nine miles.”

To that point, Fullerton had been a team that lacked direction.

“We obviously didn’t have a goal in mind,” Fishel said. “We weren’t thinking about what lay ahead and what it took to get there.”

Bryant and Caffrey returned to the lineup, accompanied by a new attitude. After the Texas trip, the Titans went 49-12, finishing with a school-record 66 victories against only 20 losses.

Fullerton’s season nearly ended shy of Omaha. In a regional at Fresno, the Titans played San Diego State for the right to advance to the College World Series. Fullerton blew a big lead and the game went into extra innings. But in the 11th, Caffrey doubled and, after the next batter drew a walk, Bryant singled in the winning run.

At Omaha, Fishel, an outfielder, was at his best. He hit .520 with 10 runs batted in, and the Titans rebounded to win four in a row after a 6-4 loss to Texas in the second game.

In the final, a rematch against Texas, 5-foot 6-inch, 133-pound Eddie Delzer surprisingly got the start and allowed only two infield singles in seven innings before leaving because of leg cramps. Fittingly, it was Fishel who had the last putout of the series, a fly ball to left field that secured Fullerton’s 3-1 victory.

“I caught that ball and threw my hands up in the air,” he said. “ . . . I was 20 feet above earth, floating in to be piled on.”

When Fishel attended the super-regional games between Ohio State and Fullerton last weekend, he saw striking parallels.

The suspensions of four key Fullerton players was one, but so was the way the Titans jelled as a team, rallying for two victories after losing the opener.

“This team has that type of ability to overcome adversity,” Fishel said. “With all of the things that they went through, they were able to pull it back.”

1995

If it seems as though Mark Kotsay’s name routinely comes up at this time of year, it’s with good reason.

Kotsay, a sophomore on Fullerton’s 1995 championship team, delivered one of the greatest performances in College World Series history.

He had nine hits in 16 at-bats for a .563 average, hit three home runs, and made several spectacular defensive plays in center field. He also pitched 3 1/3 innings of scoreless relief, picking up a save.

It was the kind of performance that may forever overshadow what Kotsay accomplishes in his major league career. He is batting .241 in his second full season with the Florida Marlins.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” he said of his college heroics. “You’re proud of your accomplishments, obviously, but you want to have some type of acknowledgment that you are in the big leagues and you are an everyday player.”

A season earlier, Fullerton also reached the College World Series, but didn’t have enough to win a title, winning two games before being eliminated.

The Titans were spectacular from the start of the 1995 season, though, winning 39 of their first 45 games. But after a couple of losses to Wichita State and another loss to Nevada, a team meeting was called.

“Our main captain, [first baseman] D.C. Olsen, brought us together and basically said, ‘Look, we’re going to have fun,’ ” Kotsay said.”

The team also reminded itself of its motto: “ ‘When you’re in doubt, air it out,’ ” Kotsay recalled.

The meeting worked wonders. The Titans did not lose again, winning 18 straight and ending the regular season with a 57-9 record, a school-record .864 winning percentage.

In the College World Series opener, Kotsay saved a comeback 6-5 victory over Stanford. Two blowout victories over Tennessee--the Titans outscored the Vols, 22-1--set up a final game against USC.

Kotsay wasted no time in the championship game. His first two swings resulted in two home runs and five RBIs, both championship-game records. USC fought back, but a three-run homer in the seventh inning by Tony Martinez, followed by Tony Miranda’s home run, put the Titans in control.

Kotsay came on to close out the game, pitching the final 1 2/3 innings to secure an 11-5 victory over the Trojans.

Fullerton didn’t return to the College World Series in Kotsay’s junior season and he signed a professional contract afterward. But he left his mark on Omaha in his two trips. Kotsay, who in 1996 was selected to the all-time College World Series team, still holds series records with a .517 career batting average and a 1.103 slugging percentage.