August 31, 2007

Horton elevated Titans
The coach was given the charge of keeping CSF at the same level Augie Garrido left it. He apparently leaves for Oregon having pushed the Titans to a higher place.

MARK WHICKER
Register columnist

They gave George Horton the job almost exactly 11 years ago. Their hope was that he would maintain it.

Keep the bus in the same lane. Keep Cal State Fullerton baseball at the same uplifted place that Augie Garrido had left it.

Horton did no such thing.

Four of Horton’s past five Titans teams have visited the College World Series, including the 2004 team that won it. Nobody else at CSF ever did that.

Ten NCAA regionals or super regionals have been staged at Goodwin Field on the CSF campus. Before Horton? None.

Overall, the Titans went to Omaha in six of Horton’s 11 seasons and began doing so almost involuntarily, as in 2007, when they couldn’t beat anybody until somebody drew up a bracket.

Always it was the same. Controlled pitching, superlative defense, hitting in all directions, and the "gotcha" play that would have the opposing coach throwing water cups.

"They’d have first-and-third with two outs and the No. 3 hitter up," said Doug Smith, the UC Riverside coach who won the Big West in May, "and they’d drag bunt for a base hit. If they had a guy on third with less than two outs, you knew they’d find a way to squeeze at some point, and you couldn’t defense it.

"George was absolutely fearless about putting those plays on. His teams had every detail down. You couldn’t look away for one second if you wanted to beat them."

Fullerton played that way in both of Garrido’s terms, ones that yielded three College World Series titles, and also played that way for Larry Cochell. It played better for Horton than for anybody else, and brought the Big West up in the process.

Now Horton apparently becomes the coach at Oregon, although nothing has been signed. Oregon abandoned baseball in 1981 but returns it in 2009. The check will not be blank. Thanks to Phil Knight’s $100 million donation to Oregon sports, Horton will probably become the highest-paid coach in Division I baseball.

But the slate is certainly blank, with a new stadium, locker room and recruiting budget all sitting on blueprints, and that proved irresistible to Horton.

The chance to write his own story — and, incidentally, buy a galloping house in one of America’s sweetest cities — was the prize Oregon offered that Oklahoma, LSU, Texas A&M, UCLA and Washington State could not.

"I think people are going to realize how hard it is to win at Cal State Fullerton now," said Eddie Bane, the Angels’ scouting director.

It will be hard at Oregon, too, what with Oregon State having won the past two Omahas and inadvertently resurrecting Ducks baseball.

But eventually Horton no longer will be an underdog, a role he not only embraced but lived at CSF.

He occasionally signed a high-reputation player, but that player usually signed with the pros or couldn’t handle Fullerton’s rigor and transferred. He thrived on guys who were walk-ons as he once was, or made second-team Vista League or, better yet, grew up through the junior colleges.

That’s what Horton did, learning the game from Wally Kincaid at Cerritos. "Catch it, make contact, throw strikes," Horton kept channeling Kincaid.

Every fall, Horton claimed to see major clouds. Couldn’t find a rotation, didn’t know which infielders had the instincts. At the annual college coaches’ get-together at Long Beach in February, Horton bluntly listed the Titans’ failings as a team, then broke down the roster and praised every individual. It took a while, but those moving parts became a machine during the tournament.

He was quite sensitive to Garrido’s shadow and burned to win a CWS of his own. The fact that it came in a two-game championship-round sweep of Texas, with all their first-round picks, was perfect.

Then Horton felt the flip side of family rivalry when UC Irvine, coached by ex-CSF pitching coach Dave Serrano, ousted him in Omaha this summer.

Serrano’s wife planned the wedding of Horton’s daughter, and Serrano and Horton already have discussed a UCI-Oregon opener in ’09.

In the process, Horton’s next-door-neighbor personality became as contagious as Garrido’s smooth-operator style.

Dan Ricabal pitched for Garrido and Horton at CSF and is now pitching coach at Rookie League Tempe. "He’s got the duck-walk going, just like George," Bane said. "I told him about it and he said, ‘I do?’ But then everybody at Fullerton does.

"We used to have lunch before the season and George would tell me about his team, and he was always honest about his guys. Not all coaches are. He always made it easy for us. But I’m not going to drive up to Oregon to have lunch with him."

The new guy? Smith quickly suggested CSF should hire associate coach Rick Vanderhook, and certainly Tim Wallach and Arizona coach Andy Lopez will be mentioned. A mile-long list of applicants will follow and that, too, is what Horton is leaving behind. He was asked to put Cal State Fullerton baseball under a mattress. Instead, he rolled it over.