By Staff
Coaching Management, 12.2, February 2004, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm1202/qahorton.htm
With three national championships on its resume, baseball is by far the most successful sport at California State University, Fullerton, and Head Coach George Horton appreciates the tradition. He’s also done his part to keep it going. Since taking over the program for the 1997 season, his Titans have appeared in three NCAA Division I College World Series and finished third last season, after which he was named the Baseball America College Coach of the Year.
Horton is among nine men to have appeared in the College World Series as a player and as a head coach, having been the first baseman on Fullerton’s 1975 team. His coach then was Augie Garrido, under whom he later served as an assistant coach at Fullerton, from 1991-96. Horton began his head coaching career by winning three California junior college state championships in six years at Cerritos College before moving to Fullerton.
In this interview, Horton talks about the benefits and pressures of the program’s storied past, developing a fundamentally sound team, and relations with professional baseball. He also discusses the challenges of coaching at a largely commuter suburban Division I-AAA school whose success sometimes gets lost in the sports din of greater Los Angeles.
CM: Your teams have a reputation for playing without a lot of mistakes. Is that because of what you look for in recruits, or because of the way you coach?
Horton: We try to recruit guys who are fundamentally sound and have what I would call big hearts—they’re self-motivated, have passion for the game, and are easy to coach. I’ve been around some legendary coaches, including Wally Kincaid [Head Coach at Cerritos College during Horton’s playing days], Augie Garrido [now Head Coach at the University of Texas and the winningest college baseball coach ever], and Dave Snow [Head Coach for 13 seasons at Long Beach State who went to Omaha four times], and I stole a lot of their fundamental philosophies. The single thing I sell to our recruits is the quality of our practices and our developmental system.
There are programs out there that put more emphasis on recruiting a bunch of stud puppies, whereas we get satisfaction out of seeing a guy go from a non-drafted high school player to a high-round pick.
Why do you run a West Coast offense, with lots of bunting, hit-and-run, and taking the extra base?
Three reasons. Number one is that by being able to use a combination of speed and skill, results can show up daily—even when you’re facing the best pitchers in the country. Usually you’re going to see that when you get to playoff time. It’s hard to say, “We’re going to sit back and hit home runs or get three or four hits in an inning to break this All-American pitcher down.”
The other big reason is that I think it’s very good for the young men who come though our program to be taught the complete game of baseball. We’ve been told many times that Cal State-Fullerton baseball players, when they move to minor league baseball, are well schooled. We feel good when we hear that.
Another reason is that it helps you defensively. If you’re learning how to run a first-and-third play, or put on a bunt play, or put on a delayed steal or other offensive maneuvers, you’re also learning how to defend those plays. We face teams that run those plays a lot here in the West.
Isn’t it more demanding on the coaching staff and players?
It is. We invest a lot of practice time in bunting, bat-control plays, and things like that. I think young coaches make a mistake by trying to do too much offensively but don’t invest enough practice time in it and their players aren’t able to execute. You can sit there and put on signs and have all these tricky plays to run, but unless you’ve invested time in practice, they are not going to be successful.
Can you teach baseball instinct, or does it have to be there by the time a player reaches college age?
I think you can teach baseball instinct as long as the young person you’re teaching has instinctive intelligence. Quite frequently that’s what we’re trying to learn about each new player. It isn’t until you get to actually see him in a stressful game situation that you can really determine whether he’s an instinctive player. I don’t think you can teach athletic or baseball instincts to a guy who takes a while to get the right answer. But I think a player who comes in without a lot of information but thinks quickly—I think you can educate him to be a more instinctive baseball player. [For more on teaching baseball instincts, see our cover story, “The Little Things,”.]
Do you work with pitchers’ mechanics or assume that at this stage a pitcher’s form is set?
I think there are some very knowledgeable pitching coaches out there who do too much with mechanics and it works against the prospect. If you take your five favorite pitchers in the major leagues, they all have slightly different mechanics. They’ve got little differences in their delivery or in their windup or set position.
I have a great pitching coach in Dave Serrano, and I basically turn the pitchers over to him. I think Dave is very good at not changing just for the sake of change. If there’s something we can change mechanically that will help a pitcher be more efficient or prevent injuries, then we’ll certainly look at that.
Do you feel extra pressure at Fullerton because baseball is the highest-profile sport on campus?
We are the flagship program and most of the donors want to be associated with our program because we’re successful, so that adds to the pressure of staying at the highest level. And even last year, when we finished third in the nation, there was some disappointment. That’s okay with me, though. I don’t think I could ever foresee myself coaching at a place where I wouldn’t expect to compete for a national championship.
It’s a good news, bad news thing. You get some little perks, favors, and acknowledgement off the field, but if you get yourself in trouble, that notoriety works against you because everybody knows who you are.
Southern California has a great baseball atmosphere, but does the location work against you in some ways?
There are only so many fans to go around and they get spread a little thin. That hurts our gate sometimes, even though we’re having success. But we do draw better than most college programs in the West, and the unusual thing is it’s not our student body. It’s the youngsters who have become fond of Titan baseball. We pride ourselves on trying to play the game right and serve as model citizens to the youngsters. I think the moms and dads are aware of that, and sometimes it’s a better example than the major league environment. It’s a more realistic goal for a youngster to think he’s going to be a college baseball player than a major league baseball player.
If we were in a different environment, my getting the Baseball America College Coach of the Year Award might be a front-page story. Instead, the Kobe Bryant story and Kevin Brown getting traded were on the front page of the local paper, and my story was inside in “Tidbits.” There are just too many stories and too many sporting events to go around, even for the millions of people in southern California.
How do you allocate your scholarships?
We cut ’em up. Nobody’s on a full ride here. I doubt we’ll ever get more scholarships for Division I baseball, and I don’t think it would be good for most programs. Let’s say the limit went up to 20 full rides. After the big boys get done offering scholarships, for the second-tier programs, there are fewer good players left. It would separate the elite from the average program even more. The rich would get richer, in my opinion.
Are there some issues in college baseball that need to be addressed?
I know professional baseball is frustrated with agents and it trickles down into our environment, where they’re all trying to get their hands on prospects at each institution. That doesn’t mean the agents are bad guys. It’s just that nobody’s controlling what they can and can’t do.
[In the post-season], I wish that we would go to a format similar to basketball, where they seed their 64 teams one through 64 and geography has nothing to do with it. In a perfect world, with money not being a factor, that would be the best way to do it competitively.
Most of all, we’ve heard rumblings that the NCAA may implement a start date and cut back on game opportunities. I’m hoping like heck that they don’t cut back anymore. We’re a sport that needs to be played quite often and we need a lot of time for development with our players. If they were to cut us back, you’d see more players signing right out of high school and not coming to college.
Professional baseball is starting to recognize the value of letting guys go to college for emotional, educational, and skill development, which makes our game even better. But if NCAA rules start cutting things back, I think we’re going to lose that momentum.