Janicki Strays From Fold to Become a Bruin : College baseball: Though his siblings have Fullerton connections, Pete turns down Titans to pitch for UCLA.

John Janicki, showing support for a certain UCLA pitcher with the same last name, put a Bruin bumper sticker on the rear window of his pickup last fall.

It turned out to be a big mistake.

The sticker apparently didn’t go over too well in the Janicki household.

After all, John Jr. graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in physics and daughter Sue studies accounting at Fullerton. Youngest son Paul is a sophomore at El Dorado High in Placentia.

But Pete Janicki, the freshman with the fastball, broke sibling tradition and strayed to the Westwood campus last fall to play baseball. And dad’s bumper sticker let everyone know it.

“Sue got a little mad when Dad put the sticker on the truck,” Pete Janicki said. “She threw a Fullerton one on there right away.”

Sue Janicki argued that she “only wanted fair representation” on the window.

“Pete came home from UCLA one weekend and brought Dad the sticker,” she said. “We had to get him a Fullerton sticker.”

Pete Janicki (6-1), a right-hander, turned down a scholarship offer from Fullerton last spring to attend UCLA. He also turned down a $50,000 signing bonus from the Boston Red Sox, who had drafted him in the ninth round, as well as scholarship offers from Pepperdine and Arizona State.

“I was a little surprised I got him,” UCLA Coach Gary Adams said. “I thought he’d go to Fullerton.”

Janicki’s five-game winning streak will be on the line tonight against, who else?, Cal State Fullerton.

The 21st-ranked Bruins (34-21) play the 17th-ranked Titans (29-20) at 7 p.m. at Titan Field.

Janicki has mixed emotions about pitching against Fullerton. His former El Dorado teammate, Phil Nevin, plays for the Titans.

“Phil’s got Placentia in the palm of his hand,” Janicki said. “He’s sort of a hometown hero there. I wanted to go away to college, but not too far.”

Though only a freshman, Janicki is the No. 2 pitcher in the Bruins’ rotation. Adams planned to use him as a mid-week starter, but with injuries to six of his top eight pitchers, Adams had no choice but to use Janicki in pressure situations.

“I never like to rush a freshman,” Adams said. “With all the experienced veterans returning, I let him take his time (at first) and have him pitch against teams that aren’t much of a grind on him.”

Janicki’s only defeat was a 7-1 loss at Hawaii Feb. 3, and two victories in his streak have been against top-10 powers Arizona State and USC.

“I recruited him more to pitch as a sophomore,” Adams said. “I never dreamed he would be in the position he’s in now.”

Neither did Janicki.

“I’m just a freshman,” he said. “I don’t have much pull on this team. I just hang out. But we’ve had so many injuries, I’ve kind of had to be a leader.

“I was taking it slow, but it seemed like everyone on the staff got hurt. We had a bad round of luck. Real hard luck.”

Janicki, 6 feet 3 and 205 pounds, has learned all about hard luck and injuries in the past year. This season, he was sidelined a month with a sore shoulder.

Last year, he fought off a case of pneumonia and earned three victories in the playoffs as El Dorado won the Southern Section 5-A championship.

“Pete’s kind of like Orel Hershiser,” El Dorado Coach Steve Gullotti said. “He’s a quiet bulldog. But he was a competitor in high school, especially during his senior year.

“I was watching a tape of the championship game (against Long Beach Millikan) the other night and I could see his concentration every time they zoomed in on him. He was very focused. Nothing could distract him that night.”

Armed with a wicked split-finger fastball, Janicki has 35 strikeouts and 13 walks in 37 1/3 innings this season. He has given up 26 runs (only 15 of them earned) and has a 3.62 earned-run average.

“He’s not Roger Clemens but he has good movement on the ball and a great split-finger (fastball),” Gullotti said. “In the playoffs, he threw that 75% to 80% of the time. But the biggest thing about him was that he has great control. In (82 1/3) innings (his senior year) he had only 15 walks.”

Janicki had a 1.75 ERA early this season, but a shoulder injury sidelined him for a month in late February and early March. He felt stiffness in his right shoulder and though X-rays showed no muscle tear, Janicki spent the next few weeks on the training table.

“I could feel (the shoulder) clicking when I threw,” Janicki said. “It eventually loosened up with the rest. Now, after I warm up, it’s really loose.”

But as Janicki was leaving the training room, other Bruin pitchers were forming a line outside its door. As a result, Adams moved Janicki to the No. 2 spot in the rotation.

One of Janicki’s biggest tests came against third-ranked Arizona State April 22. He overcame a shaky start to record a 12-9 victory, breaking the Sun Devils’ 23-game overall victory streak and 13-game conference streak.

“I didn’t think much about the streak,” Janicki said. “Everyone was talking about it. It was my first start in a while and I wanted to keep the score down.”

Janicki gave up four runs in the first inning, but settled down and was supported by some timely hitting from his teammates. He left in the fifth inning with a 9-7 lead.

“Slow starts have been my nemesis all year,” Janicki said. “I was throwing too many fastballs early and I was getting in a groove. I would get it up a little bit in the strike zone and they would hit it out of the park. That’s been the big change for me since high school. There’s no way you can get a fastball past these guys.”

Six days after the Arizona State victory, Janicki was on the mound again, this time against eighth-ranked USC. Janicki scattered nine hits and three runs over 6 2/3 innings, earning an 8-6 victory.

“Right now he’s one of our main cogs in the road to the playoffs,” Adams said. “He has remarkable poise. Even the common fan can recognize that he pitches like a junior or a senior. He handles an error behind him just as well as he handles a great play behind him.”

Janicki said college has given him time to mature. He said he will play at UCLA for at least three seasons, then test the major league draft again before his senior year.

Janicki was disappointed with his ninth-round selection last year. He said scouts projected him to go in the top five rounds, but his stock dropped after he signed with UCLA in the spring.

“I expected more out of the draft,” he said. “Signing at UCLA probably dropped me in the draft, but I had made no plans of going pro after high school.”

Gullotti said Janicki caught the scouts’ attention during his senior year at El Dorado.

“He really came into his own as a senior,” Gullotti said. “Up until then he hadn’t put in the effort in the weight room. He lacked concentration. He would be beating a team, doing really well, then start throwing mystery pitches up there.”

Janicki began lifting weights after his junior year. He added 15 pounds and some zip to his 87-mile-per-hour fastball.

But the bulk Janicki added in the off-season quickly disappeared. He lost 15 pounds and missed three weeks of the season with pneumonia.

“The doctors kept giving me a different diagnosis each week,” Janicki said. “It was nasty.”

Gullotti understood Janicki’s situation, assuring him a place in the rotation once he returned.

“He was so worn down and sick he didn’t care about baseball,” Gullotti said. “He couldn’t eat and he lost all that weight. It was scary. We thought it could be worse than a virus. That kind of puts baseball in perspective.”

Janicki returned midway through the Empire League season. He wasn’t sharp in his first few appearances. The illness had drained his strength.

“He was hit a little bit after he came back,” Gullotti said, “but the last week or two he had his strength back and he wasn’t tired from pitching. He was fresh.”

He was fresh enough in the 5-A final against Millikan to pitch a three-hit shutout. The 2-0 victory was his third win of the playoffs and improved his record to 8-1.

“It was a classic,” Gullotti said. “Going in, we had beat Lakewood in the semifinals Tuesday night and Pete had pitched from the third inning on. I had thoughts of starting Jay Hassel for the final game. But Pete asked me on Wednesday and said, ‘I want to start.’ That made it an easy decision for me.”

Janicki was 18-3 in three years with El Dorado’s varsity. El Dorado was 69-17 in those three seasons, winning the Empire League championship in 1988 and the 5-A title last year.

With that kind of success, Adams knew he had to wrestle Janicki away from Fullerton.

“Steve (Gullotti) made the product back there at El Dorado,” Adams said. “And I’m just polishing him up a bit.”