PREP WEDNESDAY: ALL-COUNTY BASEBALL : Livernois Battles to Be the Best : Player of the year: La Quinta’s junior pitcher doesn’t let up when he’s on the playing field.

There’s a competitiveness to La Quinta’s Jim Livernois that borders on being vindictive when he pitches.

Not such a bad thing, really. On the contrary, it has advantages.

“Nobody likes to lose,” Livernois said. “But I’ll get mad if I miss one pitch. If I hang a curve or give up an 0-2 hit, it gets me very upset. I’m out there to win for the team.”

Livernois, The Times Orange County player of the year, has not let the Aztecs down. He has parlayed that tenacity into a berth in the Southern Section Division III championship game. La Quinta plays Tustin today at Anaheim Stadium for the title.

That the Aztecs are playing in a championship game for the first time since 1979 is mostly Livernois’ doing. No one player can take a team this far, but Livernois is as close as one can get.

He is 13-2 with a 2.10 earned-run average this season. The Orange County record for victories is 15, set in 1963 by Western’s Andy Messersmith. Livernois also has five saves. That makes him directly responsible for 18 of the Aztecs’ 25 victories.

He is hitting .376 with one home run and 19 runs batted in. He is the leadoff batter and has stolen a team-high 13 bases.

When not pitching, Livernois plays center field. Twice this season, he has saved games by throwing out runners.

Any wonder the Aztecs were Garden Grove League co-champions.

“And the best thing I can say about him is he’s only a junior,” La Quinta Coach Dave Demarest said.

Livernois grew up a competitor. With four brothers, three of them older, how could he avoid it? They would go to the park to play almost every day.

The first three Livernois kids went to Mater Dei. Two played baseball--both catchers--and one football. His younger brother, C.J., also plays for La Quinta.

By the time Livernois was ready for high school, the tuition at Mater Dei was too much for the family to afford. Livernois lived within the Santiago school boundaries, but his family got an inter-district transfer because they feared the gangs at Santiago.

It was an unexpected bonus for La Quinta.

Livernois was brought up to the varsity as a freshman for the Upper Deck tournament. He pitched two shutout innings against Esperanza--then the No. 1 ranked team in the nation--and beat Tustin in relief in the third-place game.

“I started going, ‘Hey, wait a minute here, looks like we got something,’ ” Demarest said.

By the end of the season, Livernois was the team’s No. 1 starter. He finished 4-2 and had one save. Last season, he was 7-3 with two saves.

This season, he has pushed the Aztecs through the playoffs. He had a four-hitter against Santa Fe Springs St. Paul in the first round of the playoffs and came back to beat Woodbridge in the second round.

In fact, Livernois has pitched at least two innings in all of La Quinta’s playoff games.

“The thing about Jim is he throws strikes,” Demarest said. “He doesn’t overpower people, but he has the ability to throw different pitches for strikes. He’s always thinking ahead a pitch or two. Of course, sometimes, he out-thinks himself.”

Case in point: La Quinta’s season came to an abrupt end last season, when Livernois hung a 0-2 curve and Santiago’s Louie Perez homered in the seventh inning. It ended the Aztecs’ string of 14 consecutive playoff berths.

Think Livernois didn’t remember?

“I hate it when people get hits on 0-2 pitches,” Livernois said. “I’ll always remember Louie for hitting that home run. I couldn’t wait to face them again.”

La Quinta and Livernois beat Santiago, 5-1, in the Garden Grove League opener. Livernois struck out 10, including Perez three times. The second time the teams played, Livernois pitched a one-hitter for a 7-0 victory.

Vindictive?

“Those were the two biggest games I had this season,” Livernois said.

* ALL-COUNTY TEAM: C6