Taking the Short Cut : Erickson, Martin Perfect Bunt as CSUN Beats Opponents With Gentle Dispatch

Laid end to end, the four hits might have equaled one ground ball back to the pitcher.

First came a drag bunt, then a stolen base, then a fielder’s choice bunt, followed by consecutive squeeze bunts for runs.

Before this, the pitcher had been in command. Through four innings, she had allowed only an unearned run on three singles. How quickly that unraveled.

The Oakland Athletics win baseball games with the long ball.

The Cal State Northridge softball team does it the other way.

That style will be on display today when CSUN meets Lock Haven State in the first round of the national championship tournament in Sacramento.

The Lady Matadors have made Punch-and-Judy hitting an art form. CSUN has used what its players appropriately refer to as “the short game” to become the top-ranked softball team in NCAA Division II.

Rarely was the value of “little ball” more apparent than last Sunday in the fifth inning of the North East regional title game.

Northridge scored five runs in an inning without the benefit of an error and hit only one ball farther than 10 feet. Final score: CSUN 8, Sacred Heart 0.

“I think it’s an undefensible tool,” Coach Gary Torgeson said of Northridge’s strategy. “If you have speed from the left side of the plate, the opponent can’t play the drag bunt or the drag slap in the field unless it’s hit right to them. Once they have move, you’re going to be on.”

Torgeson is so sold on the style that he has begun to teach right-handed hitters to simply slap at the ball left-handed and run grounders into singles.

Lisa Erickson and Lisa Martin, Nos. 1 and 2 in the Lady Matador batting order, made the adjustment this season.

Erickson, a sophomore who had only 31 at-bats last season, replaced Barbara Jordan, a three-time All-American, at the top of CSUN’s order. She is batting .412 and broke Jordan’s school record for hits (82) and runs scored (54) in a season. Her on-base percentage is .560 and she has a team-high 21 stolen bases.

Martin, a senior, pitched her first three years in college--one at Arizona State before transferring to CSUN--and had never been allowed to hit.

Torgeson had always shied from using his pitchers as hitters or runners because of the chance of injury. His need for a No. 2 hitter in this instance was stronger than his philosophical stance, however, and Martin was tried first as a pinch-runner, then as a hitter, and finally as the starting left fielder.

The experiment has had its comical moments. Both coach and player recall a catch Martin made during a tournament game in Hayward, Calif., that received poor marks for artistic impression.

Martin described the hit as a towering blast “way, way” over her head. “I just kept running,” she said, “then I did a whole 360 and caught it.”

Torgeson remembers it more along the lines of a medium-range fly ball that Martin misplayed into a difficult catch.

Both agree, however, that the play did not help Torgeson’s battle against graying roots.

“I could see him in the dugout. He had his hat off and was going like this,” Martin said, running her fingers over her head. “It was hysterical.”

But while Martin is not yet a stylish outfielder, she has become a dangerous offensive weapon. She is batting .409, has 15 stolen bases and an on-base percentage of .489. She also leads the team with 19 sacrifices.

“She has done everything we asked of her,” Torgeson said of Martin. “We needed a No. 2 hitter and she stepped right in. I wish I would have been smart enough to let her hit a couple of years ago.”

Now, he lets her hit without letting her swing.

Erickson and Martin both set up far back in the batter’s box, then rush the pitch and slap at it while making a right-turn break for first base.

It is a batting style Jordan brought to Northridge four years ago, then refined.

“The more I use it, the more I believe in it. B. J. made me believe in it,” Torgeson said. “She was fast and has great reactions, but she didn’t have the speed of Erickson or Martin and she was still successful at it.”

This season the coach had the best of both worlds. He had players with the physical ability needed for the short game, and he had Jordan helping to coach them.

“It’s an honor to be taught by Barb because she’s the best,” Erickson said. “She’s taught me a lot.”

Of the records she has lost to her prize pupil, Jordan said, “If she didn’t break them this year, she would have broken them later. Now she can break her own records.”

Torgeson says Erickson is not yet the catalyst Jordan was, “but the gap is closing.”

“By the time she’s through, she could be every bit as good as B. J., maybe better,” Torgeson said. “She’s going to have junior and senior years that are just awesome.

“She does some of the same sassy, cocky things as B. J. did and you need a feisty, live wire up there first. When she gets on, I always think we’re going to score. We had that same confidence with B. J.”

Erickson, a sophomore from Crescenta Valley High, was originally a switch-hitting third baseman. Torgeson played her at first base and in the outfield last season, and last fall told her she had taken her last swing right-handed.”

At first, Erickson had average success batting solely from the left side. Then, all of a sudden, Torgeson says, “she started hitting everything in sight.”

“Her whole self-confidence changed,” Torgeson said. “We knew she was a good athlete, but we didn’t think she’d take off like she did. Once she started hitting, she just kept getting better and better.”

And she will get even better, Jordan says, because there is no way to stop her.

“If she was a power hitter, you might throw her outside and try and make her hit it a certain place,” Jordan said. “But what are you going to do with a short-game person? All you can do is bring everybody up. Then, when you do that, maybe we’ll poke it over your head.

“When you have speed, you can hit a grounder to the shortstop and it’s still a close play. Somewhere along the way, there’s going to be a bad throw and then something is going to happen. It almost always does.”

Against Sacred Heart, pitcher Pauline Madrid could only watch as her team folded under the pressure CSUN’s short game put on the infield.

A bunt, a stolen base, another bunt, a poor choice by the first baseman on another bunt, and the rout was on.

Madrid, who grew up watching Northridge softball, had seen it happen before.

“Once they get it going, they’re hard to stop,” she said. “Everywhere you turn, they’re running. They bunt and run and slap and run. And you’d better be ready, because if you’re not, they just keeping going. I’ve seen them do that to a lot of teams. I just which they hadn’t done it to us.”

Expect to see more of it in the future.

“We have about five more short hitters we’re going to convert,” Torgeson said. “Next year they’ll all be batting left-handed.”