Fullerton Four Have Done Their Time, Now Let Them Play

This was a glorious weekend of sports.

Charismatic tried so hard to win the Triple Crown at the Belmont, kept running even after he broke a leg and brought us to tears with an effort that should make every Laker hang his head. Steffi Graf made a spoiled, pouting Martina Hingis understand that 29-year-olds can have heart and extraordinary athleticism, in the women’s French Open final. A day later Andre Agassi marked himself permanently in historic greatness by becoming the first American since Don Budge to have captured all four major titles in his career in the most courageous way, by overcoming a two-set deficit in the French Open men’s final.

Larry Johnson kept alive championship hopes for his injured teammate, Patrick Ewing, by winning an NBA playoff game with a four-point shot. Tiger Woods found his putting touch and the crowd at the Memorial tournament in Dublin, Ohio, lit up brighter than the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.

And there was also a local team that proved as game as Charismatic, as heroic and courageous as Graf and Agassi, a team that pulled off performances as improbable as Johnson’s four-point play, as electric as Woods’ chipping and putting.

The Cal State Fullerton baseball team scored 24 runs in two days to support pitching performances from two guys who had thrown only 74 innings all year and less than 10 innings between them in the last six weeks. The Titans overcame their own disappointment at being sent on the road for two weeks even though they were the third-seeded team in the nation and then let themselves be convinced by Coach George Horton that having four players--a starting infielder, two starting pitchers and their best utility infielder--left at home after a foolish incident of drinking and rock throwing, was no reason not to go ahead and beat host Ohio State twice in three games.

Come on.

You thought the Titans were through after their horrific game Friday night, the one where if the Titan pitchers weren’t walking in a run, somebody was making an error and they lost, 10-7.

But there they were on Sunday morning, leaping into each other’s arms, with smiles that couldn’t stop, winners for the second day in a row over an Ohio State team that had seemed a little smug after Friday, what with having real starting pitchers left while the Titans Nos. 1 and 3 starters were back at home, thinking about what they had done in South Bend and praying that their teammates would win and give them another chance.

Adam Johnson and Marco Hanlon, the pitchers, and David Bacani and Chad Olszanski, the infielders, had put on their Fullerton baseball uniforms and gathered in front of a TV set Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Thank goodness, Johnson said, that OCN, the Orange County cable network, and the Fullerton marketing department had gotten together, sold some ads and figured out how to get the games on TV.

Just a week ago, after the Titans had won the regionals in South Bend by beating Michigan twice and Notre Dame, Johnson, Hanlon, Bacani and Olszanski had climbed onto the roof of a restaurant, and, they said, thrown rocks at trees. Rocks being rocks, gravity being gravity, the rocks ended up on the street and were falling awfully near some restaurant patrons. Johnson, Hanlon and Olszanski had also been drinking a bit excessively, according to the police report, and suddenly the four were being led away in handcuffs and charged with crimes like criminal trespass.

There had been only exuberance and no mean spirits involved, Johnson says. No property was damaged, no people were hurt. We hear so often of athletes stealing from dorm rooms, testing positive for drugs, physically abusing girlfriends. Chan Ho Park, with his taekwondo kick at Tim Belcher, acted much more irresponsibly Saturday in the Dodgers-Angels game and will probably not suffer near the punishment that the Fullerton Four have.

Much worse than an upcoming court appearance in South Bend was sitting at home and watching teammates make up for their absence.

“It was hard to watch,” Johnson said. “Very, very hard. The four of us, we cheered for our guys, tried to pump each other up. We talked to them over the phone, just tried to keep our fingers crossed and took deep breaths.”

What Johnson watched was a Fullerton team that walloped Buckeye pitching, hitting nine home runs over the three-game super-regional, two more than any other team did this weekend.

And Johnson also watched the gutsiest pitching imaginable. Sunday’s Fullerton starter, George Carralejo, went into the game with a 0-0 record and an ERA of 12.00. He had pitched 15 innings all season but he gave the Titans five strong innings. On Saturday Jon Smith, who hadn’t pitched more than two innings since early April because of shoulder weakness, hung in for 7 1/3 innings.

Horton’s voice cracked and his eyes filled with tears during his post-game TV interview as he gave his wife, Francie, a message. “I’m coming home Francie,” he said. “For a day anyway.”

The Titans had left for South Bend 11 days ago. They’d expected to come home to play this weekend but the NCAA chose Ohio State’s bigger stadium and bigger financial bid over the higher-ranked Titans.

Horton comes home now, triumphant but also facing a tough decision. Will he and the university allow Johnson, Hanlon, Bacani and Olszanski to rejoin the team and go to Omaha and a first-round game against Stanford in the College World Series?

Johnson hopes so. Desperately hopes so. “We’ve been punished a lot,” Johnson says.

He’s right. What the four silly Titans did in South Bend was wrong, stupid, foolish, immature. What they suffered this weekend, the torture of cheering for teammates that they knew they had let down, is enough punishment.

Let the Fullerton Four come back. The Titan team has earned their naughty teammates a reprieve. The punishment was swift. The punishment was strong. Let the punishment be over.

And let the World Series begin.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: [email protected]