Three years ago, the landscape of UCLA sports was much the same as it had been for decades.
The Olympic sports teams were, for the most part, dominant. The football team was muddling its way through another middling season. The basketball team was experiencing growing pains under yet another new coach looking to recapture the magic of John Wooden.
And the baseball team, much like it always had, played its unnoticed games in halfway-hidden Jackie Robinson stadium, never rising too far above mediocrity.
All-time nice guy and all-time underachiever Gary Adams led the baseball team to an unexpected playoff berth that year, but it was not enough to save the man from retirement.
Adams, famous for sending players to the major leagues and not doing much with them when they were at UCLA, took the Bruins to one College World Series in his 30 years of coaching. He generally ran a clean program of nice guys who occasionally made a run into the playoffs.
For 29 years, that was fine. Baseball, the redheaded step child of UCLA athletics, had never been very good, and for 29 years, mediocrity was acceptable.
That 30th year, though ““ that year things changed.
Athletic Director Dan Guerrero had made baseball one of his priorities when he was hired in July of 2002. A former second baseman on the baseball team and former athletic director at UC Irvine, Guerrero had a desire to see some real success in his beloved sport, and after Adams was retired following the 2004 season, he knew the perfect man to resurrect the program. A man he had already hired once.
The builder
One of Guerrero’s missions as the athletic director at UCI was to relaunch the Anteater baseball program which had been eliminated in 1992 because of budget cuts.
In 2001, he had to find a coach who would be willing to take a year off from coaching to help build a real program at Irvine. A coach who would have the patience to spend an entire year recruiting.
He found John Savage.
Savage, then the pitching coach at USC, was a rising star in the coaching ranks. He was a big part of USC’s success and had gained some renown as a pitching guru, helping Mark Prior and Barry Zito, among others, rise to eventual major league stardom.
But while the opportunity to become a head coach was enticing, there was some trepidation about taking a year off from coaching.
“The biggest issue I had was taking a year off (from) coaching,” Savage said. “That was tough. I had gotten into this Omaha mode, and then all of a sudden you’re not coaching anymore.”
After discussions with Guerrero about how they would go about building the program, Savage accepted the job and spent the next year evaluating talent and recruiting players.
During the following year, his first head coaching experience at UCI, the Anteaters won 33 games.
Thirty-three wins in his first season as a head coach. Thirty-three wins in his first season at a new school. Thirty-three wins with an entirely new team.
“We got a good group of players in there and we believed from day one that we could play with anybody,” Savage said. “There wasn’t a transition period of a soft schedule. It was, “˜Let’s go into the fire.’ It was a big roll of the dice, no doubt about it. But then we did well in conference.
“We felt we belonged.”
Savage stayed at UCI for three years and quickly built the team there into a true West Coast baseball power. His stay with the Anteaters culminated with a first-ever playoff berth for the school in 2004.
Then Guerrero came knocking again.
The former Anteater needed another program resurrection from a man who was becoming an expert in the field. In theory, it would be easier. UCLA had facilities and a team already in place.
In reality, not so much.
“We knew it was going to be a tough year,” Savage said. “We never knew that it was going to be as difficult as it was.”
That season was one of the all-time worst for UCLA as the Bruins went 15-41. At one point, UCLA lost 19 straight games.
Savage had not had time to recruit players prior to his arrival at UCLA, and the Major League draft had taken the top talent from Adams’ last team. What was left was simply not enough to compete in the Pac-10.
“We tried everything, and the players stayed with it and we stayed with it,” Savage said. “We just kind of looked toward the future; we looked into the crystal ball at the vision of the program. It was just an uphill battle, but we got through it and I think it was the best thing that could ever happen to me as a coach. It’s a humbling experience.”
What followed that season has been nothing short of amazing.
In Savage’s second season, with a new crop of players breathing fresh life into the moribund program, UCLA went to the regional playoffs. The Bruins did not show well in the regionals, but the coach and his team had made an emphatic statement with their success that season.
“I knew I was at the right place,” Savage said. “I knew you could win here and be a national program here. I just knew I had to fight and get through the first year because help was on the way.
“I knew the freshman class was good, but I don’t think anybody thought it was going to be this good.”
Those freshman, now sophomores, have led UCLA to back-to-back playoff appearances, and now UCLA stands poised on the cusp of recognition as a true baseball power.
The architect
The man who jump-started the UCLA program and hired Savage is sitting in the last row of the stadium in a black UCLA hat and a gold UCLA jacket, watching the Bruins play the University of Illinois”“Chicago in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Long Beach. He has spent the day in San Diego at Pac-10 meetings and will have to return to San Diego the next day to continue those meetings. But for now, he is here, surveying his program.
“I’m kind of playing hooky today,” Guerrero said. “(Baseball) is my heart. My ability to play baseball at UCLA has transformed my life.
“But this is one of the sports that has not had the kind of success, at least from a championship standpoint, that we would like. Now we have an opportunity to change that, and that’s exciting.”
With the Savage hire, Guerrero changed the entire philosophy of the baseball program.
Where talented teams with no fundamentals once languished in mediocrity in their stadium off campus, there is now a team that not only has exceptional talent, but is also fundamentally sound.
“I think (Savage) is an outstanding coach,” Guerrero said. “He plays the game the way I like it. He emphasizes pitching. No matter how you slice it or dice it, pitching and defense allows you to win games. He’s as fine a pitching coach as you’d find anywhere. That’s pretty evident. There’s no question in my mind that this program is headed in the right direction.”
But it is not satisfaction on Guerrero’s face when he says that. It is determination.
UCLA is a school of champions and Guerrero sees no reason why baseball, under Savage, should not soon be included in that tradition.
“I knew when I brought John in, his whole mind-set would be getting to Omaha,” Guerrero said. “And I felt very clearly that we could do all those things: win a regional, get to a super regional.
“And ultimately, get to Omaha.”