DATE: Tuesday, March 18, 1997               TAG: 9703180488

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Tom Robinson

                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

GOING DEEP: ODU HAS ITS OWN 1-MAN HR MACHINE

Pitchers, not being the dumbest things on two legs, have figured it out. If you give Old Dominion's Ron Walker a ball to hit, you can be fairly sure that he will hit it, in many cases 400 feet or more.

They have seen the scary vision of Walker, a 6-foot-2, 215-pound block of muscle, at home plate waving a stick of lively aluminum. They have read the numbers posted by the junior third baseman, notably 12 home runs, one shy of the ODU record for an entire season, in only 22 games.

They know trouble when it stares them in the face. So the light bulbs have clicked on. Suddenly, pitchers understand that pussy-footing around Walker is much less threatening to them than pitching to him.

They've started serving up junk, something fast up and in, something slow, low and away. They want to test Walker's patience. They want him to fish for bad balls. They want to make any Monarch but Walker beat them.

James Madison's pitchers were the first to do this with some success. They held Walker to a single in eight at-bats last weekend. They struck him out four times, walked him three times and hit him twice.

They also lost two of three games in the first Colonial Athletic Association action for either team. So who outsmarted whom?

Let the CAA pitchers, those who know Walker best, nibble at the corners, ODU coach Tony Guzzo says. Eventually, mistakes will be made.

Fastballs will stray across the plate. Sliders will hang. And the promising thing for the Monarchs is that Walker has never been more equipped to pound mistakes into dust.

Walker's compact, righthanded stroke shoots balls to all fields now that he's not the dead pull hitter he was as a freshman out of Shawnee High School in Indian Mills, N.J.

That first season, he hit five home runs and batted .314 for ODU. A year ago, Walker went deep 11 times and bumped his average up to .335.

This season, as he works to recognize and drive his favorite pitches with even greater consistency, Walker is hitting .398 and holding at 12 home runs heading into non-conference games tonight at Campbell and Wednesday at Radford.

Non-league competition means pitchers less familiar with Walker than within the CAA. So though it took Sean O'Hare the full 1985 season to hit 13 home runs, as it did Matt Quatraro, who reached 13 in each of the last two seasons, it's probable that Walker will clear a fence or two before the Monarchs (16-5-1) resume league play this weekend at North Carolina-Wilmington.

``There have been some good hitters in this program, I can't believe 13 is the record,'' Walker says. ``Hopefully, I can take it over 20, knock on wood. But it's something you've just got to let happen.''

That Walker is even around to pursue the record is sort of a happening in itself. Last summer, as Guzzo interviewed for the North Carolina State job, Walker sought his release from ODU so he could transfer to Mississippi State, where former ODU coach Pat McMahon now works, if Guzzo left.

ODU refused to release Walker, but that little controversy became moot when Guzzo stayed. The focus then returned to the field and Walker's future, which probably includes a June draft selection somewhere in the first four rounds and a six-figure signing bonus.

Walker will just have to be patient till then. As if he hasn't discovered by now. ILLUSTRATION: With 12 home runs, junior third baseman Ron Walker is

one shy of the Old Dominion record for an entire season, in only 22

games.

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