A Great Rebuilding Job at Cal State Fullerton

Ah, the smells of baseball season. Freshly cut grass, a whiff of chewing tobacco. Construction dust.

Construction dust?

The Cal State Fullerton baseball team, ranked No. 2 in the nation in every preseason poll, arrives at Titan Field for practice on a sunny afternoon. But be warned. Nobody should take a deep breath. For finally, finally, the baseball stadium is being expanded. Two thousand new seats will be added, doubling the stadium’s capacity, plus a building for offices for the baseball and softball staffs and locker rooms.

The locker rooms will be especially welcome.

Stand in the parking lot outside Titan Field and watch the players from the No. 2 team in the nation sit on their car trunks to put on their spikes and change from a classroom shirt to a baseball jersey. No, they don’t put on their pants here. At least not that we’ve seen.

The No. 2 baseball team in the nation also has a TV contract this season. A modest one. Some 15 Titan games will be seen on the Orange County NewsChannel, though not any of this weekend’s opening series at No. 1-ranked Stanford, darn it. Don’t misunderstand. Fullerton isn’t getting any big bucks from this contract. Or any bucks. But Coach George Horton is getting a half-hour call-in show on the station most Thursday nights during the season and maybe some local high school players will watch and become interested in the Titans. Maybe some local baseball fans will watch and buy a ticket to Titan baseball.

This is a small reward for a very good team. And any rewards are unexpected for the determinedly underdog Titans.

Junior second baseman David Bacani firmly believes the Titans deserve their preseason ranking. He also says he was shocked, shocked, to actually find the Titans ranked so high.

But why? This team, which made it to the College World Series last spring and returns the top three starters from its pitching staff as well as cleanup hitter Chris Beck, Bacani, .378 hitter Aaron Rifkin and catchers Craig Patterson and Jeff Gates, should be thinking about a World Series repeat.

“People usually find it pretty easy to ignore us,” Bacani says. “Last year proved that, when we didn’t get to host a regional or super-regional game.”

The 1999 Titans were ranked in the top 10 for a good part of the season, in the top five sometimes. The school bid for the super regional, the second round of the NCAA playoffs. But Fullerton traveled twice, first to Notre Dame and then to Ohio State. Neither school has the baseball tradition of the Titans, who have three World Series titles and 10 World Series appearances. But what Notre Dame and Ohio State had were big, fancy stadiums and lots of money to spend on promoting the games. They had radio networks, TV contracts.

And so, welcome to the 21st Century Fullerton. This field expansion is long overdue. It isn’t enough anymore to rely on the great weather and strong crop of high school talent that will just wander on over to Fullerton and keep the Titans as World Series contenders.

The new seats won’t be finished until March at the earliest. The seat-back chairs may not get in at all this year. That’s OK. What Horton needs is for the bare-bones expansion to be completed enough for the Titans to get the chance to host the regional, and if they advance, the super regional.

Fullerton has never hosted an NCAA playoff game. The Titans were the only higher-seeded team last year to travel for both NCAA preliminary rounds.

Unfair? Maybe. But Horton admits that even if Titan Field had enough seats, all those seats might not have been filled, not like they were at Notre Dame and Ohio State.

It is also frustrating, Horton says, to turn on his cable channels, Fox Sports, Fox Sports West, and see teams like Baylor and Texas, Miami, Florida State, Washington, Stanford. It is easier and cheaper for these channels to pick up the broadcasts of faraway teams than to produce their own packages of games at Fullerton.

“The shame is that you have the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in the country playing this weekend and you can’t watch it on television,” Horton says.

Still, Horton says, it might have been difficult for the NCAA to take Fullerton seriously when it comes to handing out regional hosting assignments when the school hadn’t seen fit to expand its stadium and provide nearby locker-room facilities.

Expansion costs, all $3 million, are being privately raised. That’s why construction didn’t begin until November. There wasn’t enough money in the bank. And Horton says the expansion fund still needs $1 million.

If your Orange County business has some spare change, Horton would love to have you deposit it in the building fund. And it is a worthwhile investment. For Titan baseball is the county’s one and only national-caliber collegiate program. To keep it that way, though, Fullerton needs to keep moving ahead. The Titans need the better stadium. They need more TV coverage and a radio contract would be nice too. Did anybody try listening to the games over the Internet last spring?

It’s better than nothing, but it’s not good enough.

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