FISH-BOWL FRESNO BATESOLE HEMMED IN BY BOOSTERS, EXPECTATIONS.

Byline: Chris Cocoles Staff Writer

FRESNO - Northridge wasn't like this.

On a chilly, sun-starved Sunday afternoon here last week, a paid crowd of 2,830 watched Fresno State's baseball team, with a 3-7 record, play unranked San Francisco.

Last year, when coach Mike Batesole was at Cal State Northridge and led the Matadors to a 41-17 record and the Big West Conference championship, 7,095 saw his team play - over 27 home games, an average of 262 per game.

``This is a community the Batesole family and the Batesole coaching staff may have never felt before in a different arena,'' said John Longstaff, past president of Fresno State's Dugout Club booster group. ``Not that it's better or worse, just different, very much different.''

Steve Rousey, Batesole's top assistant the previous two seasons at CSUN and his successor as the Matadors' head coach, figures his old boss will adjust in a hurry.

``He's good at figuring things out,'' Rousey said. ``He'll get used to it. He probably already is. It doesn't matter if you're at Northridge or Fresno State or Timbuktu. There's some little quirk there that goes along with that job.''

Batesole is just the third coach in 54 years at baseball-rich Fresno State. Having performed what many in college baseball believe were mini-miracles at CSUN with minimal financial support and inadequate facilities, he moved into a job with far more resources and potential.

And expectations.

At CSUN, he could focus on his team; at Fresno State, there are many other obligations pulling at the coach.

``I'm a grinder and I'm a baseball guy, and I do my best work on the field,'' Batesole said. ``Mostly on practice days. And when we don't win, that's the first thing I look to is how much better I could have been on practice days, how much more prepared I could have been. It just makes for a few more hours every week that you go and get it done.''

Batesole has learned that he isn't only expected to ``get it done'' on the field. Among his off-field duties, Batesole speaks at luncheons and entertains Fresno bigwigs. He even filmed a television commercial.

Batesole angered some of the program's longtime boosters by ending a long-standing tradition: a pregame breakfast with fans and players on Sunday mornings.

``There's a time to socialize and there's a time to get prepared to play,'' Batesole said. ``And two hours before game time, we're taking (batting practice). And that's time to get prepared, it's not time to see how many pancakes you can eat.''

Fresno State established itself as one of the nation's consistent winners under retired coach Bob Bennett and his predecessor, Pete Beiden. But many expected more given Beiden Field is arguably the West Coast's premier ballpark and the surrounding San Joaquin Valley spawns quality high school baseball talent.

``So far, yeah, there's a few people we probably rubbed the wrong way and won't agree with us,'' said Bulldogs pitching coach Tim Montez, a Pepperdine graduate who was on Batesole's CSUN staff in 1997. ``The majority of the people since we've been here have been fantastic. You're not going to make everyone happy. It's just impossible.''

There are a lot of people for Batesole to please, starting with a large fan base. Although support dipped in recent seasons, Fresno State continues to be an anomaly in college baseball west of the Mississippi. More than 2,200 season tickets were purchased this season despite the Bulldogs going 32-27 and not getting an NCAA Regional bid last season.

The booster organization, the Dugout Club, swelled to nearly 1,100 members whose contributions pay for such luxuries as non-Western Athletic Conference road trips out of state.

``Everybody loves progress, not everybody likes change,'' Longstaff said. ``For anyone who's been around the game as long as Bennett has, you've got 34 years of the same coaching style, 34 years of that dedication to the game, respect for the game. And there truly is a tradition.''

Batesole understood fans accustomed to Bennett could be lukewarm to a new coach, especially one that was chosen over Bennett's hand-picked successor.

Of the Bulldogs' four new coaches, only one, assistant Matt Curtis, has Fresno State ties.

``You've just had that continuity in place with Bob Bennett and Pete Beiden before him,'' said Steve Hosey, a former Bulldogs All-American right fielder, first-round draft choice and current analyst on Fresno State radio broadcasts. ``And this is a special place.''

Batesole is regularly under the glare of local media, something he rarely dealt with at CSUN.

This weekend's series at Pepperdine, which concludes today, was the first not covered by the local newspaper. Fresno TV stations shoot nearly every game at Beiden. Home games and most key road trips are broadcast live on radio.

``The good news is that people care about the program,'' Batesole said.

Fresno, unlike Los Angeles' smorgasbord of sports alternatives, has its beloved Bulldogs and little else for which to cheer, save for Triple-A baseball, semipro hockey and Arena Football League 2 franchises.

This is a city where the softball team led the nation in season attendance 10 of 12 years and set an NCAA single-game record, drawing 5,724 to an immaculate stadium that sits across Cedar Avenue from Beiden Field.

Most Southern Californians hardly noticed Batesole brought Matadors baseball back from the dead, literally, when the program was cut in 1997 and subsequently reinstated.

Should he someday return the Bulldogs to national prominence and to Omaha for the College World Series for the first time since 1991, he'll join worshipped football coach Pat Hill and recently retired basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian as the toast of Fresnans.

And many of them will moan if he doesn't.

``I think it was something we talked about in the interview process, to be prepared that this is a major metropolitan area that's a fish bowl,'' Fresno State athletic director Scott Johnson said. ``And that he was going to be scrutinized and he needed to accept that. I think Mike has done that. I didn't give him a chance to be apprehensive about it.''

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Former CSUN baseball coach Mike Batesole, right, has encountered a completely different atmosphere in his first year at Fresno State.