Long Beach cleaning up

By Mike Besack,

On-line Forty-Niner sports columnist

March 16, 1998

Dirtbags? Totally.

Of course, the nickname of the Long Beach State baseball team is not a derogatory one. Rather, it's a name the 49ers proudly have stitched on the back of their caps.

In 1989, Long Beach Coach Dave Snow, in his first season coaching at the school, took a team almost entirely made up of freshmen to the university's first College World Series. Add to that the fact that the team was between home fields, and had to practice on a local, all-dirt, Pony League field.

No, they weren't the cleanest bunch after a workout.

But mostly, Dirtbags refers simply to the team's style of play and success against higher-profile programs.

And are they ever playing like it.

A cardinal sin is to write off a team like Snow's bunch after starting the season 2-8 - and that's what many did. Blasphemy.

As of Saturday, the Dirtbags had rolled off 10 straight wins (tied for first with Cal State Fullerton at 5-0 in the Big West Conference) to rocket their record to 12-8. Quite a turnaround from a start that looked to be disastrous.

They're doing it the Dirtbag way: The scrappy manner of manufacturing runs, moving runners over, using sacrifices then lowering the boom. This year's squad is hitting the ball as well as any of Snow's past teams.

"It was a matter of maturing and delivery," Snow said of Long Beach's slow start. And they're delivering at the right time when it comes to winning ball games.

Friday night against UC Santa Barbara the Dirtbags put up 11 runs in the last three innings to post a 13-7 win. They had 17 hits.

Saturday night against UCSB the Dirtbags put up seven runs in the last two innings to post a 11-6 win. They had 19 hits.

Over the 10-game winning streak, Long Beach has averaged almost 14 runs per game (including a pair of 20-plus run outbursts against UCLA and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo).

The Dirtbag presence possessed by this year's team surpasses that of the 1997 squad, mostly due to its flat-out base-knocking. Whereas last season the team depended on pitching, this year it is the opposite.