For nearly an hour late last week, John Savage anxiously leaned forward in his nice chair in his beautiful office at Jackie Robinson Stadium, his leg frantically pumping away. Not once did he lean back.

The last time we saw Savage and his UCLA baseball team, they were slowly walking off the Rosenblatt Stadium Field for the last time, the venerable stadium bidding farewell to the College World Series, watching the South Carolina Gamecocks celebrate on the infield dirt as national champions.

“It seems like it’s been a long time,” Savage said. “We’ve been champing at the bit to get into this season, to build off of last year. There is still a memory of just being so proud and enjoying the moment, but for me as a coach, I need to get back into a game. I need to get back into the competition, dealing with umpires, dealing with the game itself. I need that. It’s been a while.”

Eight months, in fact.

In those eight months, Savage has replaced nearly an entire pitching staff – except for his two aces, Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer, who return for their junior seasons. He’s brought in a recruiting class that could very well replenish that staff immediately and set to work instilling an attitude that he believes will keep the Bruins hungry, motivated, angry.

There is a sting, to be sure.

After a 27-29 2009, UCLA entered 2010 with a chip on its shoulder the size of Ohio. Maybe Texas. The Bruins, loaded with talent, were not an under-.500 team, and they knew it. Twenty-two games into the season, with 22 wins and zero losses, they started to prove it. A couple bumps in the road later, they kept proving it all the way to the playoffs.

Regionals? Check.
Super-Regionals? Check.
And then the College World Series, Omaha, the last go-round for Rosenblatt Stadium. Three wins in four games to set up the final series.
Then…disappointment.

“Yeah, we tasted it, but we didn’t swallow it,” UCLA catcher Steve Rodriguez said. “We kind of spit it back out. That’s our mentality as a team. We could just say, ‘Well, we made it last year, good for us’ – but if you want to be the best you have to win it all. We didn’t finish it. We’re trying to get to the promise land and finish this time. No one is satisfied with last year. We came in second. At UCLA, second place? Second place isn’t what we celebrate. We have 106 national championships. We want to get one for baseball.”

The journey started on Friday and, as if to appease Savage’s rabid impatience – he wishes the 2011 season started around July 1, 2010 – a looming raincloud pushed the game against San Francisco from 6 p.m. to noon.

Savage knows the real journey started much earlier, as he began to reassemble a pitching staff that lost more than 50 percent of its innings. Gone are spectacular Sunday and Tuesday starters Rob Rasmussen and Garett Claypool, who combined to win 19 games. Gone is much of the bullpen, including closer Dan Klein, who led the team in ERA, along with set-up men Erik Goeddel and Matt Grace.

But still here, striking fear straight into the core of their opponents, are Cole and Bauer.
Cole, who threw a complete game shutout with 11 strikeouts and four hits against the Dons on Friday, was 11-4 last season with a 3.37 ERA and 153 strikeouts, good for third in the nation. Doing him one better, doing the nation two better, was Bauer, whose 165 strikeouts led the country as the crafty then-sophomore finished 12-3 with a 3.02 ERA.

“It’s very unusual to have two guys of this ability playing at the same time together,” Savage said. “We all know they’re different in a lot of ways, but they have two qualities that any coach would want: They’re the most competitive guys on the field, and they really care about how their teams play. I feel very lucky to be around them.”
As he should, as Cole and Bauer were brilliant last season as sophomores.

But lost in that shine was the performance of the pitching staff around them, and if UCLA is to have such success in 2011, the Bruins will need similar success from a collection of relative no-names. Freshman Adam Plutko will get the first crack as Sunday starter, sophomore Scott Griggs and freshman Zack Weiss will square off for the Tuesday slot, and junior Mitch Beacom, redshirt freshman Ryan Deeter, sophomore Chase Brewer and freshman closer Nick Vander Tuig round out the bullpen. And there’s Eric Jaffe, a prized prospect who originally signed with Cal, but hopped to UCLA when the Bears eliminated the program.

“A lot of people are going to be very surprised,” Rodriguez said. “Everyone is used to the household names – the Rasmussens, the Kleins – and now we have the Beacoms and the Deeters and the Brewers. We know those names. We trust those guys fully. But people don’t know them at all, and they’re going to be very surprised.”
UCLA’s batting lineup is a bit more familiar.

Though the Bruins lose the departed Blair Dunlap, Niko Gallego and Justin Uribe, they bring back a solid core, five of their top six hitters, including junior infielder Tyler Rahmatulla – who suffered a broken wrist in a dogpile celebrating the Super-Regional win over Cal State Fullerton, then broke his foot in the fall, (since recovered) – along with outfielders Beau Amaral and Cody Keefer, and infielders Dean Espy and Cody Regis.

It is a lineup that inspires confidence, coming off a season in which the team posted its highest batting average (.304) since 2001, with seven hitters over .300, paced by the freshman All-American Amaral’s .354 clip.

“We know what we have,” Bauer said. “We know what we need to do. Let’s go out and do it. We fully expect to get back. We have the talent to do it and a great coaching staff.
“There is an expectation that if we do things the right way, we’ll be back there.”
And that is what motivates the players, the coaching staff, Savage.

Before the interview, he strolls around the office, pointing out pictures from Omaha.
There’s one of Bauer on the mound, a bird’s eye view.

There’s the front page of the Omaha World-Herald, featuring an imposing Cole.

And Savage’s favorite, the random Associated Press photo of two young boys – who just happen to be Savage’s son, Ryan, and hitting coach Rick Vanderhook’s son, R.J. – in UCLA uniforms, watching the fireworks at Rosenblatt.

Savage remembers, vividly. He can’t forget.

“Our program is still very, very hungry, and that’s a good thing,” Savage said. “Yeah, we got to the national championship game and we were right there with a couple of pitches, but at end of the day, we didn’t get it done. It really does eat at me. I do wonder a lot of times if we we’d gotten to that game three…That still eats at me.”

This is no time to sit back and relax.
And Savage isn’t.