A Summer To Remember For Fullerton Baseball

Right: A panoramic view of Amerige Park in Fullerton, the site of the PONY World Series running until Wed. Teams from Iowa, Texas, Virginia, Puerto Rico, and Mexico are here.

By Allen Bacon
The Daily Bosco

In a town known for it's baseball excellence, this was shaping up to be a quiet baseball summer in the city of Fullerton.

First of all, our minor league team the Flyers, after losing their lease at Goodwin Field and possbily pouting over the fact that the city wasn't going to let them take over Amerige Park, decided to sit the Golden Baseball League Season out. The Flyers would usually fill the summer months until the first part of September after the Cal State Fullerton Titans finish their season in June.

Secondly, the aforementioned Titans made a quick exit from the NCAA playoffs at the beginning of June in a Regional hosted by the City of Fullerton.

Thirdly, our Fullerton College Hornets didn't even qualify for the playoffs and three out of the four Fullerton High School teams (with the exception of Troy) didn't make CIF.

So, we were possibly faced with a long summer of going to Anaheim Angel games which as we later found out wasn't that bad...given the current good run by the team.

But as soon as the last Titan batter went down in the NCAA regionals this is when Fullerton baseball got interesting.

That's because Freshman Titan outfielder Michael Lorenzen, a product of Fullerton High School, boarded a plane for the East Coast to join Team USA. At the same time his old FUHS teammate Dominic Ficiociello, was also doing the same thing because after a wonderful Freshman year at the University of Arkansas, the Razorbacks had just been eliminated from the NCAA playoffs.

So, you had a very unique situation. Two players from the same High School..Fullerton High on Team USA. To put this achievement in it's proper perspective, this is the team that would be playing at the Olympics if it was Olympic year and Baseball was still an Olympic sport and if Pros were not allowed to participate. This is a high honor to play with this team, in other words.

Lorenzen was originally supposed to play until his fellow Team USA teammates got done with the NCAA Playoffs. But he did such a great job out of the chute, that the coaches promoted him to a full time status position.

Both Lorenzen and Ficociello, not just content filling that beautiful USA uniform, contributed in every single game. If Michael was having a quiet game, then Dom would do something to win the game...and vice versa. It seemed like in every game in the 30 game schedule that either Dom or Michael was dominating.

To top it off the final two games against Japan to end the Team USA summer season were played at the brand new TD America Ballpark in Downtown Omaha, home of the College World Series. So Dom and Michael made it to Omaha this year....just not with their College teams.

While that was winding down, the Little League All Star Season was just getting started.