The semester before Cal State Fullerton won baseball’s College World Series in 1995, Matt Kastelic was a Titan, which made perfect sense.
The speedy outfielder grew up and played high-school baseball in Anaheim Hills, California, then spent two years at Rancho Santiago Community College in Santa Ana, California, winning a community college state championship one year and finishing second the next. Anaheim Hills Canyon and Rancho Santiago were within 10 miles of Fullerton, and the Titans had been to the CWS every other year from 1988 to 1994 when Kastelic started there in the fall of ’94.
Yet, there Kastelic stood at Jones AT&T Stadium a couple of weeks ago, being recognized as a new inductee into the Texas Tech athletics Hall of Fame. Fullerton didn’t suit him, Kastelic said, so he bolted after one semester, wanting to re-up with Texas Tech assistant Greg Evans, who had coached a team Kastelic played on in Elkhart, Kansas.
“I played for coach Evans in summer ball the year before and it didn’t feel like home at Fullerton,” Kastelic said, “so I ended up transferring at semester. So I’m the original transfer-portal guy. I just came to Tech and immediately felt at home. I had no idea Fullerton was going to win the College World Series that year.”
Kastelic figures he lost out on a ring, but won in the game of life choices.
What he did in only two years with the Red Raiders still has his name all over the school record book. Beyond that, he caught the Texas Tech and Lone Star State fever. He decided his college days wouldn’t be his last in Texas. So 12 years ago, Kastelic, his wife and three daughters moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and settled in Frisco.
One daughter is a sophomore at Texas Tech. Another, a high school senior, “wants to cheer for Tech next year,” he said.
And it’s easier to stay connected to his old Tech buddies from DFW than from Southern California.
“Even though he is a SoCal guy,” former Tech pitcher Matt Miller said, “he is a Red Raider through and through.”
Matt Kastelic still holds Texas Tech baseball records for hits, stolen bases
A lot of good baseball’s been played at Texas Tech over the past three decades. Kastelic thinks he and his teammates started something. During his two years, the Red Raiders went 51-14 and won the Southwest Conference in 1995 and finished 49-15 in 1996. They were the first two Tech baseball teams to make the NCAA postseason.
Being the table setter was Kastelic’s role. His 46 stolen bases in 1995 and 51 in 1996 remain, after 30 seasons, the top two marks in Tech history. Just on those two years alone, he still holds the school record for career steals with 97. The single-season hits record is his, too, with 114 in 1996, when two outlets named him a first-team all-American.
Jeff Peck, a pitcher on those teams, called him “an on-base machine.”
“Hits, walks, bunts, slashes, always getting on base. That was kind of his strong suit,” Peck said. “Once he got on the basepaths, he was just a chaotic distraction to the other pitchers and defenses. Always causing something, always starting something, real aggressive. It was just fun to watch him, what he did to other teams when he got on base.”
“I’ve never played with a guy that knew his skill set and was so confident in his skill set,” said Miller, who made it to the big leagues with the Detroit Tigers. “That was his secret sauce.”
Texas Tech baseball’s strong teams in mid-1990s missed out on CWS
The Red Raiders, as good as they were in the mid-1990s, advanced only so far. The 1995 team won its first three games at a regional in Wichita, Kansas, but lost the last two to Stanford. The 1996 team went 2-2 in a Lubbock regional. That one ended with an 11-inning, 13-10 loss to No. 1 Southern Cal in one of the most memorable games ever played at Dan Law Field.
College World Series trips, seemingly so close, were still years away for the Red Raiders.
“It eats at me,” Kastelic said. ‘We were actually going to be matched up with Cal State Fullerton in the first round if we had beat Stanford. But the great thing is we’ve seen Tech make the World Series several times now since, and I view our years as the foundation for this program. And before us, too.
“You had a couple of generations, like the Gary Ashby years, then you had our years. We saw the facilities expand and grow, and now we’ve seen that expand with (Tim) Tadlock and some really successful teams. I’m really just looking forward to the program getting back to those glory days. We have it in us.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: College years inspired Texas Tech baseball great Matt Kastelic
Reporting by Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
