By Kevin Acee
Union-Tribune Staff Writer

January 27, 2000

SAN DIEGO - They don't want to say it was easy, because practicing three times a day for 20 consecutive days is never easy. But compared with past years, San Diego State's January spring training was like a vacation.

"Everyone was able to play one step higher because they didn't have to look over their shoulder," said junior catcher Brandon Rogers. "Coach was joking around. He's still serious, but he wasn't the same old scare-the-crap-out-of-you coach."

It is true, say past and present Aztecs.

Jim Dietz smiles all the time, cracks jokes in the middle of practice and occasionally makes eye contact during a conversation.

"He's got this spark in him this year," said former Aztecs All-American Travis Lee, who works out almost daily at Tony Gwynn Stadium on campus. "It's not the Dietz I used to know. He seems so relaxed. I think it's all coming together for him -- the stadium, the team."

Dietz is in Hawaii today to begin his 29th season as San Diego State's baseball coach, having assembled his best group of players perhaps ever. His team plays its home games in the best college ballpark in the region. His own expectations are as high as anyone's for a season of unprecedented success.

"I am happier," the old coach acknowledged.

And yet he lies in bed at night, unable to sleep more than an hour or two at a time.

When he thinks about it, his insomnia began three years ago, around the time he got that new stadium, the jewel everyone assumes will ensure that his team is forever one of the elite.

There, in the middle of the night, the 61-year-old with a master's degree in counseling, a drill sergeant's voice and a father's heart tosses and turns and tries to figure out where he's taking his baseball program.

"The sad thing is if you're not winning, nobody cares about the development of the person," said the man with 1,120 career victories, more than all but seven active Division I coaches. "College sports now is win baby, win, and screw over the student-athlete."

That has never been Dietz's way.

Ask any current or former player and they will swear it is more important to Dietz that his players leave his charge as good people than good ballplayers.

Dietz has three goals every season. First, he wants his team to remain alcohol-free. Second, he wants to graduate everyone. Third, he wants to go to the College World Series.

"I've never been successful in any one of the three," Dietz declares without reservation.

Standing in his office above home plate one recent morning, Dietz waved an arm across the view of Tony Gwynn Stadium, completed in 1997 thanks to a $4 million donation by Padres owner John Moores and named after Dietz's most famous former player.

"One thing we might lose in this is players might be attracted here for the wrong reason," Dietz said. "They might be attracted by the stadium.

"I want kids who want to be here. I want kids who want to play for San Diego State, want to graduate, want to be alcohol-free."

Positioned to win as never before, Dietz feels the weight of a dilemma.

"It is going to be a little different this year," he lamented. "There's more pressure to win."

The boss has told Dietz and his team in separate meetings that it's time to win.

"The challenge of coaching is to achieve in all three -- winning, academics and citizenship," said SDSU athletic director Rick Bay. "You can have everyone on the dean's list and everyone a choirboy and end up (not) winning ... and nobody feels good about that."

The players were energized.

"I thought it was great," catcher Rogers said of Bay's talk. "It hadn't been stressed like that since I've been here. I mean, the players want to win, the coaches want to win, but when you hear it from Rick Bay -- the head honcho -- it makes you know you've got to do it that much more."

Bay said it was not his intention to put undue pressure on the players. He said Dietz's job is not in immediate jeopardy.

Still, although he cannot define what a successful season would be, he said: "We've got to win (Mountain West) conference, especially this conference. One of the weaker sports in this conference is baseball."

Bay said he has given or will give a similar spiel to all coaches, but he considers baseball a marquee sport.

"Not all of our sports are positioned as well as baseball to win," Bay said. "By all accounts, the facility is one of the top eight or 10 in the country. We've had an outstanding recruiting year. We've got an active coach who's won 1,000 games. We have a higher budget than we've ever had before. It seems to me we're positioned to win.

"Winning is important. It's time to win ... particularly in the high-profile sports, (where) we have not won a whole lot.

"Baseball is one of those sports, (after) football and basketball, that is about as high profile a sport as there is. To win a championship in baseball is more meaningful than in the other, more obscure Olympic sports."

Dietz understands Bay's frustration. Bay understands Dietz's hesitation.

But ...

"Two of those three don't get it," Bay said. "You don't have to sacrifice one or the other. Any coach worth his salt -- if a coach says in order to win you have to sacrifice academics or citizenship, I don't buy it. The challenge is to achieve all three. That's why coaching is hard.

"I appreciate Jim. He does have strong values, and he probably compromises less than other coaches. He's served this university well for a long time. I think now for the first time in his career, through a combination of his own hard work and some facilities being upgraded, he's in a better position to win at a higher level than he ever has before."

It still grates on some players.

They think Dietz did not give them a chance to win one of the most important games on their schedule.

Dietz thinks he was doing the right thing.

Unable to substitute with a big lead in a conference game at Brigham Young last April because no lead is safe in the tiny stadium 4,000 feet above sea level, Dietz compensated by starting mostly reserves in the Aztecs' next game.

Wichita State, a perennial baseball power, beat them 13-3.

It is not his own future that worries Dietz.

His uneasiness is for the players he won't have in the future.

"I've never wanted to be certain schools in (the College World Series) that just turned out players," Dietz said. "That's going to be the hardest adjustment for me."

Dietz is talking about giving marginal players chances, keeping a kid two years even if he looks like a dud as a freshman, looking for the late bloomer. He has always had to do that, given his inability to recruit the same top players as USC, UCLA and Cal State Fullerton have done.

"Now all of a sudden we're getting athletes that are highly recruited," he said, almost apologetically.

He paused and looked his visitor in the eye.

"I was always the athlete that was always cut," he said. "I know the pain. I know the rejection and the quiet nights by yourself. People stuck with me. I've always wanted to be that kind of coach."

He is certain he can no longer have that kind of patience.

"We're going to have to get down to basics -- can you play?" Dietz said. "They want us to be real aggressive and do things. Well, parents have to understand as a program gets bigger there will be more (kids) that we have to ask to leave ... We're going to have to hurt people in the process, but if that's what the public wants, we'll do it."

Dietz almost flunked out of Oregon State and got it together only after transferring to Southern Oregon, where he was an NAIA All-America infielder in 1959.

"I had never applied myself," Dietz said. "I realized if I didn't shape up, I'd end up working for Weyerhaeuser."

Dietz worked for the lumber company in high school and during his college summers. He didn't want to be doing that backbreaking work when he was 40, so he became his family's first college graduate.

His players miss games to take a mandatory test. He once was going to leave Lee, his best player, home for a conference road trip until Lee figured out how to fit a test into his schedule. He suspends players struggling academically before the school requires it.

"Everything he's ever told me has been right on," Lee said. "I was thinking he was a nut sometimes when I was here, but I wasn't thinking about all the things he was teaching me."

Lee is not alone.

"We all have a much greater appreciation for Jim once we leave," said Bud Black, who played for Dietz in the '70s and is now the Anaheim Angels pitching coach. "We didn't realize what great things he was teaching us at the time."

And so it is today -- though this year's team said it buys into Dietz's ideals and knows bad grades or alcohol-related problems will result in dismissal.

Older players have to counsel the new players sometimes. Senior pitcher Jeremy Cook said he's had this conversation with a teammate more than once:

"OK, he does some things different, but we don't go against him."

Dietz blames his team's troubles last year, when the Aztecs lost more than 30 games for just the third time in his tenure, on alcohol. Grades slipped, a player faced a DUI charge and there was outright insubordination.

Dietz has never fooled himself that he can get to every kid about the dangers of alcohol abuse.

"He knew what was going on," said Bill Dunckel, who played for Dietz in 1990 and '91 and now is baseball coach at Valley Center High School. "He wasn't a fool."

Still, Dietz was surprised and devastated in the fall when a recruit was accused of sexually assaulting a female student. The incident, in which charges were dropped a short while later, occurred at a house two players shared with the female student.

Alcohol was involved. One of the players was kicked off the team, the other suspended and Dietz was embarrassed.

So he keeps trying. He brings in speakers. He espouses a zero-tolerance policy his players know will be enforced.

Some of them have told him privately the difference he has made in their lives.

He has taken this year's team kayaking at Otay Lakes and hiking in the Cuyamacas. The outings were attempts at bonding and also an effort to show his players there were things they could do in their spare time beside pound beers.

He weeded out the "meatheads" and brought in 15 new players, making up a recruiting class ranked eighth in the nation even after losing four kids to the major league draft.

Players say the difference is that this year's team respects Dietz where last year's did not.

Whether they respect him or not, the 18-to 22-year-olds on the San Diego State baseball team believe almost universally they put winning at more of a premium than Dietz.

What they mean is that most of them put winning first.

It is not an unfair question to ask, considering the Aztecs have not been to the regionals since 1991 and have never advanced to the College World Series. Would the Aztecs have made it to Omaha if their coach cared more about winning? Not an unfair question, but a misguided one.

"I want to win as bad as anybody," Dietz said. "We're trying to win, but there are times you have to figure out what is more important."

© Copyright 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.