College World Series: Arizona assistant Sergio Brown remembers 1995 Cal State Fullerton National Championship

Here are some pretty good stories from the Wildcat coach’s trip to Omaha as a player

Tyler Crawford isn’t the only Arizona Wildcat that has won a National Championship as a player.

Assistant coach Sergio Brown was a member of the 1995 National Championship team at Cal State Fullerton, which was the third of four won by the Titans program.

CSF went 4-0 in Omaha that year, beating USC 11-5 in the final. The Trojans made it that far after downing Florida State by a score of 16-11 in an elimination game earlier in that CWS, even though a guy named J.D. Drew hit three home runs in that game, the first player ever to hit three HRs in a College World Series game.

Brown has a pretty amazing story from that trip though not relating directly to Fullerton’s run:

"My favorite non-baseball memory from 1995 was going with a group of about ten guys to the Henry Doorly Zoo. I had a video camera, and back then, video cameras were just kind of coming out, so my parents bought me this cool little camera and I got a ton of video. But going to the zoo, we just took the day off, and I remember we could hear the fans cheering, because you could hear the fans cheering from the zoo, and it was the day J.D. Drew hit three home runs, so that’s why it was going crazy, and we were walking out of the zoo when he hit his third home run."

And then there was another one: Augie Garrido and his elephant boxers. Here’s a quote I found from thepostgame.com about this particular incident:

He was so loose and confident that before the championship game he gathered the players around and promptly dropped his pants to reveal his boxers emblazoned with Tuffy Titan (Fullerton's elephant mascot). The players were in stitches before they went on to crush USC, 11-5, to cap their historic run.

That 1995 College World Series had some serious MLB talent throughout the teams that were in Omaha. Brown’s Fullerton team had Jeremy Giambi, Mark Kotsay (Tournament MOP) and Mike Lamb. Doug Mientkiewicz was on Drew’s FSU team. Alex Cora, Randy Flores, Geoff Jenkins, A.J. Hinch, R.A. Dickey, Todd Helton, and Kyle Peterson were there as well.

Peterson will be calling Arizona’s first game on Saturday. Maybe the 1995 magic will wear off on the current Wildcats.

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