Dietz heads for home on last hit.

Byline: JOHN CONRAD Register-Guard Sports Editor 

When Jim Dietz makes his annual fishing trip to Alaska this summer, former major-league stars Mark McGwire and Dave Winfield will tag along.

When Dietz was in Las Vegas recently, he held court with Tony Gwynn and former major-league manager Dick Williams.

When Dietz was honored in San Diego earlier in this, his 31st and final season as the head baseball coach at San Diego State, tributes from current major-league stars Mark Grace and Travis Lee played on the video screen.

But when Dietz finally returns to Eugene in the coming months, then he'll do something he finds really exciting.

He'll set about renewing acquaintances with former athletes who played for him at Crow, Lowell and Pleasant Hill in the 1960s, or a slightly older group who played summer semi-pro ball with him in the long defunct Oregon State League.

"I remember all of them," he said, "and a lot of them have stayed in touch all these years. A lot of them drop by to see me. There are great memories from those days. There are so many kids I want to look up and see what their families look like."

Dietz, 63, has put up some impressive numbers in three decades as coach of the Aztecs, and between collegiate coaching and 14 summers coaching semi-pro baseball, Dietz estimates 120 players who have played for him have made it to the major leagues.

His overall record at San Diego State is 1,228-748-18, and the Aztecs won the Mountain West Conference this spring with a 40-21 mark. He has taken eight teams to the NCAA regionals and is bidding for his ninth beginning Thursday in the conference tournament at Brigham Young.

And Dietz is totally at a loss to explain how this all came about.

"Somebody asked me recently what my legacy would be," he said. "I don't even know what a legacy is. I can't even give anybody an answer as to how all this transpired. I don't really know. I guess I always believed if you worked hard and applied yourself, good things would happen."

Dietz graduated from Eugene High School in the mid-1950s, then played

baseball at Southern Oregon College and briefly as an infielder in the Detroit Tigers' farm system. But he was always more about passion, determination and in-your-face competitiveness than jaw-dropping physical ability. Dietz was blessed with a burning desire to succeed, and to that the Aztecs owe the very existence of their baseball program.

"I was cut from every team I tried out for in junior high and early in high school," Dietz recalled. "But that just made me more determined. The more adversity I encountered, the harder I worked to get things done. I came from a middle-class family that worked hard to make things happen. I think I've over-achieved my whole life, but I don't know how you go from Crow or Lowell or Pleasant Hill to San Diego State."

Dietz remembers a telephone call from San Diego State athletic director Ken Carr to discuss the baseball job in 1972. Dietz was living in Pleasant Hill with Tom Jernstedt, Bob Donnelly and Ron Stratten, all University of Oregon athletic department employees at the time. He had shortly before that made a commitment to coach basketball at Lewis-Clark State.

"I thought it was a practical joke," Dietz said.

"I flew down for an interview and was hired on the spot," Dietz said. "I literally don't know how I got here. I went back to Eugene and somebody asked me how much I'd get paid. I hadn't even asked."

Dietz enjoyed some monster seasons early in his tenure at San Diego State. From 1979-84, the Aztecs averaged 55 wins per season and twice came within one game of qualifying for the College World Series.

Meanwhile, he was coaching the semi-pro Fairbanks Goldpanners of the Alaska League during the summers and posted a 348-151 record over seven seasons, including four national titles. He later coached the Boulder Baseline Collegians, the Anchorage Glacier Pilots and the Fairbanks Goldpanners again before finally retiring from summer coaching in 1993.

By then he had his hands full at San Diego State.

In the late 1980s, budget problems caught up with the Aztecs and baseball was among the sports threatened with extinction. It survived only because Dietz rallied supporters, many of whom had helped him keep the program afloat over the years via private donations and untold gifts-in-kind, and forced a face-off with athletic director Fred Miller.

Others verify Dietz's recollection of events.

"We campaigned through the media and we had 6-8,000 people show up at a press conference where they planned to announce baseball was cut," Dietz said. "Miller went back inside and then came out later and said that track and field would be cut."

Dietz paused for a moment.

"I didn't feel like I won the battle with that kind of a thing," he said. "But we did save baseball. I've got this reputation for being hard to work with, but I'm easy until they talk about dropping baseball. Then they've got a bear on their hands."

Dietz, who had a kidney removed earlier this year, has been open to retirement for a few years and there are some who won't be sorry to see him go. This is only San Diego State's second 40-win season since 1991, the last year the Aztecs made it to regionals, and there is a feeling they should be more dominant in the Mountain West.

Dietz argues that rumors the program might be dropped seriously damaged recruiting in the early 1990s, that the Aztecs lose many top prospects to professional baseball plus Pac-10 schools in California and Arizona, and that last year's team was gutted by injuries.

Dietz and Rick Bay, the former Oregon athletic director who now holds that job at San Diego State, have clashed and Dietz said he has had to fight to hold on to his job until he could be sure the future of baseball would never be questioned.

He began to feel that way when John and Becky Moore, owners of the San Diego Padres, donated $4 million for the construction of Tony Gwynn Stadium in 1997. The facility has been ranked No. 5 nationally and No. 2 in the West by Baseball America. He was finally convinced when Gwynn, who played for Dietz, announced following his retirement from the Padres last season that he would like to succeed Dietz.

Gwynn is assisting this year and will take over next season.

"I wasn't going to step down voluntarily unless there was a strong person to take my place," Dietz said. "Baseball has always been on the cutting table, so to speak.

"Once we got the big stadium in place, that made it almost impossible to drop baseball. But when Tony convinced me he really wanted to do this, and I always wanted an ex-player to do it, here's a guy who is stronger than the athletic director.

"Everything has worked out, and it makes retirement a lot easier for me. I'm still playing to win, but now I'll be ready when it's over."

And he'll have left his mark wherever he's been.

Dietz was named the 1967 winner of the Rollie Truitt Award, presented annually to the man who has done the most for amateur baseball in Oregon; he was named coach of the decade by the National Baseball Congress for his work with the Goldpanners; and he was named 1978 Breitbard Foundation Award winner for his contributions through baseball to the San Diego community.

If he has been somewhat controversial, his accomplishments have resulted in plans to retire his No. 4 jersey, and a bust of Dietz is to be constructed outside Tony Gwynn Stadium.

And, at Jim Dietz Day in San Diego, Dietz was presented with a new Ford F250 pickup by Gwynn and the Moores.

It will be bringing him back to Oregon in the days ahead.

CAPTION(S):

Jim Dietz has won 1,228 games in 31 seasons with the Aztecs, who are bidding for another NCAA berth. San Diego State University Tony Gwynn, who helped honor Jim Dietz (left) at a ceremony this spring, will succeed him next season.