Their Ultimate Party Town ... Omaha

Cal State Fullerton’s nearly annual pilgrimage to baseball’s College World Series began in earnest Tuesday morning when the enormous barbecue on wheels was hitched up and hauled toward Omaha.

For the next week or so, the grill -- large enough to cook scores of chickens at a time -- will feed a few hundred Titan faithful at a rented house on 13th Street, opposite the third-base grandstand of Rosenblatt Stadium. The rental will serve as party headquarters for anyone wearing Titan blue and orange.

When a team qualifies for college baseball’s ultimate prize as often as Fullerton’s has -- 14 times in the last 32 years -- pregame and postgame functions are more organized, fans are more fervent and expectations are higher.

Anticipating another trip to Nebraska, many Fullerton fans began booking their flights and hotel reservations six months ago. That the Titans begin their quest for a fifth world series title today with a game against North Carolina comes as little surprise.

“We really are spoiled,” said Milt Bower, a Newport Beach resident who played on Fullerton’s baseball team in the early 1960s when the school was competing in a lower division. “We expect to be in Omaha every year. It’s part of our schedule.”

Suddenly, the baseball fan from the commuter college in Fullerton is becoming much like the USC or Notre Dame football supporters who count on their team playing in a major bowl game every January.

Jay Satmary, a longtime Fullerton fan, is making his ninth trip to college baseball’s mecca. “This has become a ritual for my wife and me,” said Satmary, 76. “It’s like a vacation trip. We go to Hawaii every year. We might as well go to Omaha too.”

For local sports fans, Fullerton’s trips to the College World Series are about as close as Orange County gets to big-time college athletics. Fullerton and UC Irvine, the county’s two biggest universities, don’t have football programs, and it has been 28 years since Fullerton’s basketball team reached the NCAA playoffs. Irvine has never qualified.

And that’s fine with Fullerton’s baseball fans who don’t care to be grouped with the followers of perennial football and basketball powers who cheer on their teams in 100,000-seat football stadiums and state-of-the art basketball arenas. They are proud of their recently expanded 3,400-seat baseball stadium, where attendance averaged 2,000 this season.

“We’ve always been the blue-collar, poor state school going against the Stanfords, the USCs,” said Satmary, a Brea resident who been a Fullerton season-ticket holder since 1982. “We’re kind of the underdogs. And I like that.”

Of course, Fullerton’s growing legion of fans can’t all cry poor. A core group of about 75 boosters travel all over the country following their beloved Titans. This year, there were trips to Palo Alto, Houston and Tucson. The World Series trip alone will run between $1,500 and $5,000 depending on length of stay, accommodations and method of transportation.

Satmary said he will spend more than $200 a night to stay at a resort casino in Iowa just across the Nebraska state line.

“The place is three miles from the ballpark,” he said. “There’s gambling, good food and entertainment. Everyone sits around and talks baseball. It’s quite a place.”

Fullerton athletic officials say the locals in Nebraska have picked up on the underdog label and have made the Titans their adopted home team.

“We’ve been sort of the novel school that nobody knows anything about because we don’t have a football program,” said Mel Franks, Fullerton’s sports information director. “I don’t know if it’s because of that or because we’re the Southern California kids with bleached blond hair. But you’ll see more Fullerton hats in Omaha than you’ll see in the Brea Mall.”

There’s another reason for the Titans’ notoriety: Their best-known fan is film star Kevin Costner, a Fullerton alum.

Costner has attended a few games this year, but he couldn’t be blamed if he didn’t attend any. Franks said Costner’s appearance at a Fullerton regional playoff game in Wichita bordered on the ridiculous.

“People wouldn’t leave the stadium until he walked out of the press box,” Franks said. “They just wanted to see him.”

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Looking for five

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Cal State Fullerton’s Titans are making their 14th trip to the College World Series in Omaha this week and are trying for their fifth national title.

Year Place Notes

2004 1stvs. Texas

2003 3rd Rice wins title

2001 3rd Miami wins title

1999 5th Miami wins title

1995 1st vs. USC

1994 3rd Oklahoma wins title

1992 2nd Pepperdine wins

1990 7th Georgia wins title

1988 3rd Stanford wins title

1984 1st vs. Texas

1982 7th Miami wins title

1979 1st vs. Arkansas

1975 7th *Texas wins title

*Tied for seventh place

Source: National Collegiate Athletic Assn., Cal State Fullerton Athletics Baseball