Columnist Dean Juipe: Fullerton’s win has David vs. Goliath quality

Dean Juipe

Monday, June 28, 2004 | 9:07 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It wasn't exactly David vs. Goliath, but there were hints of it.

Look at the facts of the matter: The University of Texas has an enrollment in the vicinity of 50,000, and money, and power, and a wealth of academic and athletic achievements, while Cal State Fullerton has half as many students, a greatly reduced roster of athletic options and a sports legacy that is limited to a baseball program that appeared to have had its heyday years earlier when it was run by a man who has since moved on to Texas, of all places.

Yet it's the Titans who are still celebrating today, having won the College World Series by sweeping the first two games of a best-of-three series with Texas at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha. The clincher came Sunday as Fullerton's Jason Windsor pitched masterfully in a 3-2 victory that served as a reminder of just how scintillating collegiate baseball can be when it isn't besieged by an endless succession of hits off the hollow sound of aluminum bats.

For anyone tired of scores such as 17-13 or 15-12, the CWS came as a relief. It featured something most of us don't see very often: superb pitching at the college level.

College baseball is, in general, more boring than ever and it's primarily the result of the lack of wooden bats. The aluminum ones allow hitters to launch a steady succession of missiles and the games frequently dissolve into double-digit doldrums.

Windsor did something about it, even if it didn't appear as if he would survive the opening inning. But he got through a rocky first, giving up two runs, and went on to record a complete game victory in which he allowed only five hits and one walk while striking out 10.

Fullerton had wobbled Goliath a night earlier and it finished him off with a three-run seventh in which Texas' once-mighty bullpen was roughed up for a second consecutive game.

CSF as the national champion? It didn't seem too likely when the Titans were 15-16 on April 3.

And while it was the school's fourth national championship, it was the first since 1995 when Augie Garrido -- who's now at Texas and is the winningest coach in Division I history -- was the head coach. One of his former players, George Horton, coaches the Titans these days and he deserves praise for bringing the club home with a 47-22 record and a championship that every second-tier school in the country can look to for encouragement.

If Fullerton can win the national title, why can't any (warm-weather) school that puts its mind to it? What's to say any middling program with a little luck and the right connections can't provide an encore?

Of course it's easy on the West Coast to sing Fullerton's praises at a time like this, familiar as we are with the school's built-in thriftiness and limited athletic options. Out of financial necessity the school pulled the plug on a few of its programs -- wrestling and football among them -- while slipping into a niche mode that left it among the nation's also-rans in just about everything except baseball.

Texas, conversely, has had no such monetary concerns and is all but pictured as the Paul G. Allen or Bill Gates of prominent universities, spending money at will. And the 'Horns came into the CWS billed as all but unbeatable, Horton himself offering the comment before his team made its way to the final.

But one of those aluminum-bat specials -- a rocket off the foot of UT starting pitcher Sam LeCure to close the fifth inning -- played a role as Fullerton came back to win the nationally televised game. LeCure was hobbled for the remainder of the day and was driven from the game in the seventh, moments before the Longhorns' bullpen was touched, or torched, for the decisive rally.

It was a very fine game with some interesting tangents, not the least of which was this notion of David once again getting the better of Goliath. A week after Shaquille O'Neal and his Los Angeles Lakers were rocked by a supposedly lesser opponent, a slingshot has felled another fabled monster.