UC Irvine’s baseball team won’t back down

This college baseball program is a bit different.

Walk into the UC Irvine baseball office and be greeted by a dog pile of Anteaters — not a photograph but a watercolor painting by former player Aaron Lowenstein, an art major.

Different.

Step into Coach Mike Gillespie’s office and notice there are no photos of him. At 71, he has a bit of a Dorian Gray complex. “I don’t like pictures of me because they remind me how old I am,” he said.

Different.

But when it comes to the best college baseball programs in a region where there are several accomplished ones, Irvine blends right in. The Anteaters proved that again this season, a victory over UCLA on Sunday moving Irvine to within two victories of a trip to the College World Series.

Irvine (42-16) opens a best-of-three NCAA super regional series against top-ranked Virginia (52-9) on Saturday at Charlottesville, Va.

UCLA eliminated the Anteaters from the postseason last year. Virginia ousted them in 2009. Those are facts not lost on catcher Ronnie Shaeffer, who said, “UCLA knocked us out last year. We got some payback. A couple years ago, Virginia knocked us out, and we’re going to hopefully get some payback there too.”

Shaeffer’s comments weren’t accompanied by a chest thump. But they were made by a player who clearly believes his team matches up with the best college baseball has to offer.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it. You’d have to be asleep to not know that Virginia is really, really good,” Gillespie said. “But it would not be an upset for us to win.”

Irvine resurrected baseball in 2002 after a 10-year hiatus. On paper, it looked like a long climb from there to the top.

Up the freeways were national power Cal State Fullerton and perennial Big West Conference title contender Long Beach State. There were also Pacific 10 Conference schools to contend with. They annually harvest many of the best players Southern California has to offer — UCLA’s Gerrit Cole, the No. 1 overall pick in the Major League Baseball draft Monday, is from Orange Lutheran High, just up the 55 Freeway.

Yet, this is the Anteaters’ third super regional appearance in five seasons.

“It’s Orange County, it’s a UC education, there’s a beautiful ballpark,” UCLA Coach John Savage said. “There are a lot pluses to look at as to why Irvine has become a national program.”

Savage helped Irvine become one after being hired to restart the program.

The Anteaters have been to seven NCAA tournaments in 10 seasons, reaching the College World Series in 2007. They never made the NCAA tournament as a Division I team from 1977 to 1992.

“We had complete support from the administration,” Savage said. “We felt the blueprint was in place.”

Savage left for UCLA in 2004 and Dave Serrano, his replacement, moved over to Fullerton in 2007. Gillespie, who was fired at USC in 2006 after 20 seasons as head coach, inherited a program that was established but had lost 11 recruits before he was even offered the job.

“They were fortunate Mike was available,” Savage said. “He never runs away from the weakness of a team. But he always finishes with, ‘There will be no surprises if we win.’”

Savage has seen that from two vantage points, as an assistant for Gillespie at USC and from the UCLA dugout, watching the Anteaters score two runs in the bottom of the ninth in the decisive regional game Sunday.

“All of a sudden we win and I’m still standing in the third base coaching box saying, ‘How the hell did that happen?’” Gillespie said.

Others know.

“There is not a situation that Coach Gillespie has overlooked and not prepared us for in practice,” said Brian Hernandez, Irvine’s third baseman and closer.

Said Gillespie: “We don’t get the kids everyone wants. We get kids and try to make them into ones everyone wants.”

Hernandez bounced from Cal State Los Angeles to College of the Canyons before landing at Irvine. Matt Summers, the team’s No. 1 pitcher, was set to go to the Pac-10, but Arizona State wavered on its scholarship offer.

Hernandez leads Irvine with a .351 average. Summers is 11-2, having won nine consecutive games, including a no-hitter against Long Beach State.

Gillespie is skittish about the subject of talent, saying, “I have to tiptoe around this because I don’t want to offend any of our guys. But players on this team, almost none of them were recruited by Pac-10 schools.”

There are four Pac-10 teams — Arizona State, Stanford, California and Oregon State — among the 16 still alive in the super regionals. And then there’s Irvine, the only other team from the West still going.

“Sometimes we get left out of the conversation,” Hernandez said. “We’re a lower-budget, lower-everything kind of school. We’re just a bunch of blue-collar guys. But we’re doing pretty good right now.”

chris.foster@latimes.com

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