PLAY IT AGAIN FORMER CSUN COACH KERNEN RETURNS TO BASEBALL AFTER DABBLING IN THE WORLD OF PERFORMING ARTS.

Byline: HEATHER GRIPP

Staff Writer

FULLERTON - A young, female artist becomes obsessed with avisitor to her gallery in Italy, tells him she wants to do a painting of his hands, then holds him captive for days.

That story made Bill Kernen a finalist in a national playwriting competition and is in the process of being adapted for film.

When an earthquake leaves a college baseball program on the brink of extinction, the coach, thinking he'll no longer have a team to guide, moves from California to New York and leaves the game behind. He studies to be a playwright and travels the world in search of the next gallery or theater that will feed his hunger for the arts.

After 11 years, he comes home as a coach with one of the nation's premier baseball teams.

That's the reality Kernen is living.

The former Cal State Northridge coach returned to baseball this season as a volunteer assistant at Cal State Fullerton, where the Titans are learning that although Kernen's background might be unusual, the lessons he has learned can benefit them.

"Baseball and theater are more similar than people realize," Kernen said. "You practice, you perform, make adjustments, you budget, you have a team of people you have to bring together every day. When I was directing, it was just like coaching."

The Titans aren't big theater buffs, but they do know about success on the field, appearing in the College World Series for the 14th time last season.

"The common thread between us is we appreciate excellence," Cal State Fullerton coach George Horton said. "He's just more into the arts. He appreciates world-class anything. World-class pianists, conductors, tennis, anything. We talk to our athletes about excellence and he's able to bring examples from other walks of life."

Kernen, 58, hopes to land ahead-coaching job and remain in baseball for a while. He never anticipated the lengthy absence, but plans changed when the 1994 Northridge earthquake prompted Cal State Northridge to redirect funds to restoring the campus. The men's volleyball and baseball teams were to be eliminated, but when the teams were saved, Kernen had already left after the 1995 season.

"It wasn't difficult leaving baseball"

With no previous experience as a playwright, he moved to New York with $15,000 and studied dramatic writing at Columbia University for two years.

He worked at a real-estate firm to pay his bills, but still found time to write and produce two full-length plays by 1997. In all, he wrote seven plays that were performed at small theaters in New York. He directed three of them.

"I've always had a strong interest in other things, the arts in particular," Kernan said. "So it was difficult from the standpoint that I didn't know how I was going to live, because I didn't have a job or know anybody. But it wasn't difficult leaving baseball."

Kernen's writing has been put on hold while he and his wife, Betty, settle in their new surroundings, but he remains connected to the industry. His 1998 play "Galleria degli Angeli," the one set in an Italian art gallery and loosely based on one of his own vacations to Italy, is in early stages of film production, as is his 1997 script, "And other Fairytales."

Horton, who knew Kernen as a rival coach, is enjoying broadening his own horizons with an assistant "unlike the rest of us, watches something other than ESPN and reads something other than the sports page."

Kernan uses highlights of elite tennis players or Olympic champions from obscure sports to get his points across.

His search for the secret to success has included five trips to Wimbledon, where he often spent two weeks trying to distinguish what separated the good players from the great ones, often seeking advice from the coaches on side courts.

He also frequented Juilliard while living a few blocks from the prestigious performing arts school in New York. Among his favorite hobbies were listening to the musical competitions and trying to guess who would win.

"Whether it was sports or music or whatever, I'd go to other events and study those people," Kernen said. "I just thought, 'What makes these people so good?'. ... I tried to just really study what makes those guys tick and what really went into it.

"So what I do is just bring back those experiences to the players. They get sick of hearing about baseball every minute, so they'll perk up a little bit if you say 'Let's talk about the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta. Why is he so good?' Of course they don't even know who he is, but you get into things and they learn. What makes somebody successful? That's what it's all about. I've just studied all these different things and I found out it's all the same."

Different approach works, peers say

His former players say Kernen always has had a unique style, but they never guessed he would do anything other than coach.

"No question he definitely brought a different approach to coaching," said Mike Solar, who played for the Matadors from 1989 to 1992 and now coaches at St. Francis High of La Canada Flintridge. "He'd talk about Broadway plays and things you definitely don't hear from an everyday coach."

Kernen posted a 240-154-3 record, including three trips to the postseason, in seven years at Cal State Northridge. His 1991 squad finished in the top10 in the nation in its first year at the Division I level.

Kernen began his Division I coaching career as an assistant at Cal State Fullerton and decided to return to the school after a temporary position at North Carolina State in 2002-03 rekindled his passion for baseball. The Titans had an opening this season when former assistant Ted Silva took a job at Fresno State.

"I actually didn't really pay attention to baseball for several years because I was so engulfed in (theater)," Kernen said. "Then I went to N.C. State and once I did, I said, 'Wow, I don't think I'm finished with that yet. Maybe that chapter in my life keeps going.'

"I wouldn't have done this -- been a volunteer assistant ... anywhere but here. I felt it would be better to try to make a move from within the game than outside of it, and I felt people would know I'm pretty serious about it if I'm willing to move across country and take a job with no pay (his wife's job as a mortgage broker is supporting them). Of course that's what I did in New York, too, so I guess that's my thing."

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