Stanford’s Power Trip Puts Fullerton in a Hole

OMAHA — Stanford has thrived on good pitching this season, but the Cardinal got strong hitting to go with it Saturday night against Cal State Fullerton in the College World Series.

The Cardinal ripped three home runs, including a three-run shot by Josh Hochgesang, and rode the six-hit, complete-game pitching of Jason Young to a 9-2 first-round victory over the Titans in front of 23,302 in Rosenblatt Stadium.

“We were confident in our ability to hit the ball,” said Hochgesang, who played at Sunny Hills High. “What we’ve done all year long is find a way to win, and that’s what we did this time.”

Adam Johnson, who had given up two hits in 6 1/3 innings in Fullerton’s season-opener victory over Stanford, was belted for 10 hits and seven runs in five innings. Johnson had been suspended for last week’s super-regional because of a rock-throwing incident at South Bend, Ind., a week earlier.

“When I pitched against them before, I threw first-pitch strikes, but I didn’t do that tonight, and I made a lot of mistakes,” Johnson said. “I don’t think it was rustiness from not pitching last week. Sometimes I hit my spots and sometimes I didn’t.”

The victory advanced Stanford (49-13) into the winners’ bracket on Monday against Florida State (54-12), which defeated Texas A&M; earlier in the day. The loss sends Fullerton (49-13) into an elimination game against the Aggies (52-17) later on Monday.

“In 1979, we lost our first game and came back and won five in a row and won the championship,” Titan Coach George Horton said. “We lost our second game in ’84 and won it. We just have to play better. But now we’ve eliminated any chance for error.”

The Titans made five errors against Stanford, three of them by relief pitcher Marco Hanlon, also one of four players suspended last week. Hanlon made two poor pickoff throws to first base, one of which led to two runs in the sixth.

By then, however, Stanford had built a 5-2 lead against Johnson on the homers by Hochgesang, Edmund Muth and Joe Borchard. “I thought we hit the ball well for the first time in weeks,” Stanford Coach Mark Marquess said. The Titans also lost a scoring chance in the third when when David Bacani was caught in a rundown between third and the plate when he failed to tag up on Spencer Oborn’s line-drive out to right. Reed Johnson was caught heading for third, forcing Bacani to break for the plate. “We botched that,” Horton said.

The Cardinal hit Johnson hard in the first two innings without scoring, but it showed signs of things to come.

In the first, Jeff Rizzo singled and went to third when John Gall hit a line drive to right, but Gall was thrown out by Robert Guzman trying to stretch it to a double. Borchard ripped a drive to right center, but Guzman went to the wall to catch it.

Stanford had runners on second and third with one out in the second, but Johnson escaped by striking out the final two batters in the inning. But Hochgesang homered in the third--his 17th of the season--with two on and two out. Muth’s one-out, bases-empty homer in the fifth, his fifth of the season, boosted Stanford’s lead to 4-0. Only a diving over-the-shoulder catch by Guzman on Gall’s drive to right center later in the inning kept two more runs from scoring.

Borchard led off the fifth with his 11th homer of the season, and Hanlon took over for Johnson (10-4) in the sixth. Fullerton came back with a triple by Shawn Norris and a homer to left by catcher Craig Patterson for two runs in the fifth, but the Titans gave them back in the top of the sixth on Hanlon’s throwing error.

“The bad thing is we had the guy picked off,” Horton said. “Marco was trying to hold on to the ball, and that’s why it was so wild. But as I told our players, we got a lot of crucial outs on those plays in the regionals, and we’re not going to back off our game.”

Horton thought Young (12-3) was the difference. “Young was tough,” Horton said. “He was in the (strike) zone when we weren’t swinging and out of it when we were, and that’s good pitching.”