It was classic bad news/good news - aspirin one day, champagne the next. First, the bad news: One of the winningest and most respected coaches in collegiate baseball, Cal State Fullerton's George Horton, announced in August that he would be leaving his position at CSUF to accept the lucrative head baseball coaching job at the University of Oregon.
Horton had in his 11-season tenure compiled the kind of record of which legends are made: a national title in 2004, a College World Series berth in 2007 and an overall 452-187-1 (.707) record. The Big West Conference named him coach of the year five times.
Horton's abrupt departure stung. He was an old CSUF hand, having played two seasons for Fullerton under Coach Augie Garrido in 1975 and 1976 (the team won its first national championship in 1975). He later was hired as an assistant coach under Garrido and was named to replace him in 1996 when Garrido left to coach at the University of Texas.
Now the coach's office overlooking Goodwin Field was empty, and hands were beginning to wring.
Now, the good news: Another old Cal State Fullerton hand, a former player and coach like Horton, a proven winner who also had guided a team to its first College World Series appearance and, in the process, become one of the most respected coaches in the national college ranks, apparently changed his mind and accepted the job as head baseball coach at CSUF.
Dave Serrano, who built a winning and nationally visible program in only three years at the University of California, Irvine, resigned his head-coaching job at UCI not long after he had said that he was not interested in taking the Cal State Fullerton job. This change of heart generated some heated comments among the UCI coaching staff and others, but Serrano later told the Orange County Register that his earlier statement ¿was purely to try to help a friend, [longtime CSUF assistant] Rick Vanderhook. I would not have been disappointed at all if Rick had been named the coach. But once I heard Fullerton was going in another direction, I didn't want the job going outside the [CSUF] family.
Serrano's move generated nothing but wide smiles at Fullerton. The school was getting an old friend back whose baseball resume was almost entirely in the "win" column:
During Serrano's eight-year tenure as pitching coach and recruiting coordinator at Fullerton (1997-2004), the Titans went 356-154-1 (.698) and were in the NCAA Tournament every season. They won six Big West Conference championships, four NCAA Regionals and four NCAA Super Regionals to earn four trips to Omaha and the College World Series.
Every one of Serrano's Fullerton recruiting classes was ranked in the nation's top 20. He also has nurtured a long list of pitchers who went on to play professionally. He tutored six conference pitchers of the year and of the 25 All-American players at Fullerton during his tenure, 15 were pitchers. He developed three more All-American pitchers at UCI.
Serrano, who pitched for the Titans in 1986, began his coaching career as an assistant to Horton at Cerritos College in 1988. He succeeded Horton for the 1991 season after he left to become associate head coach to Garrido at Cal State Fullerton. Serrano returned to assistant coaching duties for 1992-94 for Cerritos before going to Tennessee, where he served two seasons as pitching coach for Rod Delmonico. The Volunteers went 97-36 and made their first trip to Omaha in 44 years in 1995, when they were twice routed by Fullerton's third national championship team.
At UCI, he compiled a 114-66-1 (.633) record over three seasons. The Anteaters' 47-17-1 season in 2007 earned Serrano national coach of the year honors from Baseball America, which ranked him as the nation's top assistant coach in 2004 when he was with the Titans.
Serrano, during an interview in his office, says he sees his new job as a kind of homecoming.
