For Titan Baseball Fans, Omaha Feels Just Like Home

In mid-June, they hang the humidity like drywall. It covers everything. And I’m feeling it in the backyard of a cozy little house on South 13th Street, 1,500 miles from the climatic balm of Orange County but nonetheless content to be back here in my old hometown.

And, in a twist, talking to a bunch of people from Orange County and other points on the West Coast, who, in a way, are in their second homes too.

Me, because I grew up here. Them, because they’re Cal State Fullerton baseball fans here for the College World Series, which means they make almost as many trips to Omaha as I do. This is the Titans’ fifth visit to the tournament since 1999 and their 14th since 1975. Five times they’ve come home with the trophy.

And here on South 13th, across the street from the ballpark where the series is played, Titan fans are massing before their 6 p.m. game. This rented house has been their bivouac for the last few visits, and I’ve dropped in a few hours before the team takes the field in search of another title. Sixty seconds into my visit, someone decks me out in a necklace of orange beads and a Titan pin. A minute later, someone asks me to get him a beer.

I’m feeling at home. We’re all feeling at home.

I don’t even hear much griping about the plumbing being awry in the bathroom, as the Roto-Rooter man does his thing. “Good old reliable Midwest plumbing,” one fan says with a grin.

Seated on the living room floor and not moving a muscle is 9-year-old Blake Polley from Santa Ana. He’s getting his game face on, compliments of Sandra Davis of Fullerton, who’s painting an orange “F” on Blake’s left cheek. Then comes the wavy blue border that completes the Titans’ team colors.

Blake is wearing a Titan uniform with 9 on his back, the number of Brett Pill, his favorite player. Blake notes they have the same initials. “Just a coincidence,” he says.

As a Nebraska boy, I know a little something about sports devotion and fans traveling halfway across the country for something that -- for a brief moment -- is the biggest thing they’ve got going in their lives.

Husker football has unified Nebraska for decades -- in sickness and in health -- and Titan baseball has some of the same elements. That is, Husker football has put an otherwise unremarkable state on the map. Titan baseball, although revolving in a tighter orbit than college football, has stamped the largely unknown Fullerton school as a perennial college baseball powerhouse.

Which means the stakes are high. It’s fun to get to Omaha, but when you can sniff the title, you want to snag it.

Pat Bates is making her third trip to the series and says she’s never figured out a way to relax. She’s got “Grandma” and the number 2 on the jersey she’s wearing, a nod to the uniform of her grandson, Titan second baseman Justin Turner.

This is the first visit for Teri McArthur, mother of Titan third baseman Evan McArthur. She and her husband, also named Evan, left their home in Medford, Ore., on May 23 and haven’t been back since. They moseyed down to Southern California before making the drive to Omaha.

“I’m getting the jitters,” Teri says. “The energy is so high around here.”

Her son has played baseball since he was 4, she says. As he grew up, one of his dreams was to play in the College World Series. “I was excited driving up, but last night we saw the stadium for the first time, and wow. We’ve been watching this for years on TV,” she says.

It’s too bad that while we were talking then, a couple of hours before game time, she couldn’t have known her son would hit an important home run that night.

The Titan fans found their rental home by way of good, old Midwestern hospitality. In 2000, Titan coach George Horton was driving on 13th Street in search of a parking place. The team didn’t make the tourney but Horton came, anyway. He stopped and asked a resident if he knew of a spot, and the guy said, “Yeah, just pull in the backyard.”

That was the house of Tony Aliano, a junior high school teacher. “I had no idea who he was,” Aliano says. “He said he was George Horton. I said, ‘I’m Tony. You want a beer?’ ”

The Titans made the tournament the next year, and Horton came back to say hi to Aliano. One thing led to another, and Aliano eventually led them to the house three doors away that has become the Titan House in Omaha. When Fullerton won the championship in 2004, some Titan fans gave Aliano a flagpole and a Titan flag, which he is flying during this year’s tournament.

It’s a funny thing about this sports loyalty business. “You got five minutes to listen to my story?” says Harry Luettchau of Lake Forest, who was off in a corner of the backyard.

He’s grown somewhat tired of the Angels and major leaguers, in general, and heard about a 15-game ticket plan for Cal State Fullerton at a price he couldn’t pass up. He started going to Titan games. “I got hooked on fun ball,” he says.

Looking around at the other fans in his midst, he says, “I don’t know anyone here, and I’m not a small-talk guy,” but he decided earlier this year he was coming to the ’06 Series in Omaha, whether the Titans made it or not. He left Orange County, with his tent in his car, and doesn’t plan to return until July 9. He’s camping across the state line in Iowa for $11 a night.

“I’m 72,” he says. “I’m at the point where I do what I want to do instead of what I have to do.”

A late arrival at the house Friday afternoon was a guy who knows something about Titan baseball: Jerry Goodwin. It’s his last name the Titans’ home field adopted in 2000, after a major gift toward facility expansion. He’s No. 57 on the original list of Angel season ticket holders but feels his heartstrings being tugged a little stronger for the Titans.

Before he headed to the game, I asked for a prediction on the tournament. Goodwin is baseball-savvy enough to know better, but he offered one: “I think they’ve got a very strong chance to win,” he says of the Titans. “We’ve got three of the best pitchers in college baseball and a very good coach.”

Postscript: The Titans lost a 13-inning game Friday night that took nearly five hours, and then won a 7-5 thriller Sunday. They play again today.

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Dana Parsons’ column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. He can be reached at dana.parsons@latimes.com