On the Field, Titan Plays It Straight : Baseball: Hattabaugh is the merry prankster to his teammates, but he hopes his numbers this year are good enough to get him drafted.

FULLERTON — You’ve heard about Augie Garrido, the hard-driving, highly intense Cal State Fullerton baseball coach who is all business on the playing field.

Now meet the Anti-Augie, Titan catcher Matt Hattabaugh.

Hattabaugh’s idea of a joke is to tell wide-eyed freshman pitcher Greg Brannis an hour before the second game of the season that he would be starting against national power Stanford.

“He was extremely nervous, let’s just put it that way,” Hattabaugh said.

Hattabaugh once put a live rat in teammate Phil Nevin’s fanny pack.

“He jumped out of his drawers,” Hattabaugh said.

He stuck a 3 1/2-pound carp in former Fullerton pitcher Rich Faulks’ bat bag.

“There was a terrible smell on his clothes,” Hattabaugh said.

He shot spit wads at Titan pitcher Bill Fitzgerald on a bus ride.

“He wanted to fight me,” Hattabaugh said.

Reminder: Don’t fall asleep on a bus with Hattabaugh around. Former Titan center fielder Domingo Mota, who had the misfortune of dozing off on the trip home from Arizona last season, can tell you why.

“I stuck a wad of toilet paper in his mouth,” Hattabaugh said. “He didn’t know it was there until he woke up--a half-hour later.”

Hattabaugh, a 1987 Marina High School graduate, is more than a merry prankster. He is a part-time surfer with an off-the-wall personality that’s the behavioral equivalent of a knuckleball--you never know where it’s going.

Example: The Titans are in the middle of a tense practice when Hattabaugh belts out his impersonation of a turkey or a monkey or his all-time favorite, two cats fighting.

“He keeps everyone on the edge of their seats,” Titan second baseman Steve Sisco said.

Hattabaugh says it’s all part of his job.

“The coaching staff here is pretty intense, and most of the time they’re not in a joking mood,” said Hattabaugh, a 6-foot-1, 215-pound senior. “But we have a young team, so I try to balance things out between being intense and having fun. There are times to be serious and times to have fun.”

This is a serious time, at least by Hattabaugh’s standards. The subject is last year’s professional baseball draft, and for a change, the laughs aren’t weaving their way through the conversation.

Hattabaugh, a 41st-round pick by the Minnesota Twins after high school, was certain his performance in last season’s NCAA Central Regional, where he hit two home runs in four games and played solid defense, would improve his pro stock. But dozens of rounds passed, and he wasn’t picked.

“Man, I cried,” Hattabaugh said. “I was devastated. It was like my life came to a screeching halt. I didn’t know which way to turn.”

When he heard that Garrido and George Horton, his former Cerritos College coach, would be coming to Fullerton, Hattabaugh decided to stay for his senior year, and he completed 12 summer school units to remain eligible.

He’s having another solid season, batting .308 with seven home runs and 37 runs batted through Friday. On defense, he had thrown out 32 of 67 runners attempting to steal and had not had a passed ball.

Horton says Hattabaugh “is one of the best college catchers in the country as far as performance,” and predicts he’ll be drafted next month. But Hattabaugh is still uneasy about his future.

“Scouts tell me I’ll be picked, but they said the same thing last year,” Hattabaugh said. “It’s not in my hands. I can’t draft myself.”

Hattabaugh can get into better shape, though, and if he is to go anywhere in professional baseball, he knows this must be a priority.

Hattabaugh doesn’t run well. When he was first timed in the 40-yard dash at Cerritos College, Horton, then the Falcon coach, quipped: “Who was that, a pulling guard?”

But few catchers have great speed. What repels some scouts is Hattabaugh’s physique, which won’t earn him a guest spot on Body by Jake any time soon. He could stand to lose 10-15 pounds or convert those pounds to muscle.

“As a scout, you project what that body would look like in four or five years, and that’s what scares them,” Horton said. “Matt has size but in the wrong direction. If he puts more hard muscle on his frame, he could change their opinions.”

With the lure of waves crashing a few miles from his Huntington Beach home and with most spare hours spent in the batting cage, Hattabaugh says he hasn’t had the time or energy to lift weights.

“But hopefully a team that drafts me will grab me by the neck and put me on a weight program,” Hattabaugh said. “Some scouts might think I’ll be some big ol’ beer-bellied man in four years. I won’t let that happen.”

What Hattabaugh lacks in physical tools, he makes up for in knowledge and experience. Horton calls pitches, but Hattabaugh can shake him off. Horton says Hattabaugh doesn’t abuse the privilege and almost always makes the right choices.

“If he’s not back there, you miss the intangible things he provides,” Horton said. “He caught my State championship team in 1989, and he makes pitchers better. At worst, he could give a (pro) organization a guy who will help minor league pitchers. He’d be a wise investment, even if he doesn’t get to the big leagues.”

Let the good times roll. Some more.

Mike Kirby will never forget the first time he met Matt Hattabaugh. It was the fall of 1987, and about 100 players were at Cerritos College for tryouts.

Almost everyone was wearing the normal practice attire--double-knit pants, cleats, baseball shirts and caps. Hattabaugh sported purple high-top sneakers, shorts and a tank top.

“I was wondering, ‘Who is this jerk?’ ” said Kirby, a reserve catcher at Cerritos and now a graduate assistant coach at Fullerton. “I got to know him a week later, and we roomed together the whole time at Cerritos.”

Kirby passes on another Hattabaugh quirk. He isn’t sure why, but Hattabaugh loves lying down on his stomach when he eats. Especially when the meal is pepperoni pizza.

“As a matter of fact, we had lunch in the back of my pickup today,” Kirby said.

When Kirby was at Long Beach last season, he left a Hostess cupcake at home plate for Hattabaugh during the first inning of a Titan-49er game.

“He got ticked off and tossed it back at us,” Kirby said. “Then during the fifth inning, he said, “Damn, I shouldn’t have tossed that cupcake back. I’m starving!’ ”

It seems everyone has a different Hattabaugh anecdote. But one common subject seems to emerge in all Hattabaugh-related conversations--his 1971 Volkswagen bus, a family heirloom passed on to him by his parents and now the catcher’s signature item.

The outside doesn’t give you any hint of the owner’s personality. For a ‘71, the tan van’s body is in excellent shape.

It’s the inside that gives it away. Hattabaugh has replaced the stick shift knob with a baseball. The upholstery on the front seats is tattered.

Among the contents strewn inside are a fishing pole and tackle box, swim fins, volleyball, baseball bats, old chewing tobacco cans, beach chair, whiffle ball, Baltimore Orioles cap, small Texas flag and a candy bar wrapper. Most of the dirty laundry is piled in back.

“I just cleaned it,” Hattabaugh said, and he wasn’t kidding.

Sisco said the van has seen worse days.

“It’s kind of a combination of a hamper, a bat bag and a locker room after a three-game series,” Sisco said. “I look in the windows, and it hurts my eyes. But that’s him to a T. I don’t think he’ll ever get rid of that van.”

Neither does Hattabaugh.

“I’ll keep it forever--I basically live out of it,” he said. “Hopefully if I’m drafted, I’ll have the money to give it a paint job or something. If not, maybe I’ll just spray-paint it.”

The vehicle also helps keep Hattabaugh out of trouble.

“I’ve never gotten a ticket in that van,” he said. “It can’t go over 55 m.p.h., and it starts shaking when I get close.”

His van shakes, and Hattabaugh keeps his teammates rattling and rolling most of the time. And don’t think they don’t appreciate it.

“A lot of guys are caught up in baseball and think the game is everything, but he’ll say, ‘Let’s have fun, we’re only here for a few hours, so let’s get after it,’ ” Kirby said. “He keeps the team loose, but he’s also out there to compete and win.”