Unofficial home run champion
When you think of the premier sluggers in WPIAL baseball history, a few names come to mind — Baldwin’s Tom Kail, Plum’s Alex Kirilloff and, most recently, Serra’s Mark Black — just to name a few.
But you can’t have a discussion of the area’s all-time greatest high school home run hitters without naming a player who eventually made it to the major leagues as a pitcher — Jordan Jankowski.
“He just loved to swing the bat,” said former Peters Township baseball coach Joe Maize. “Unbelievable bat speed. I haven’t seen too many high school kids who had bat speed like he had.”
When Jankowski graduated in 2008 after leading the Indians to back-to-back WPIAL championships, he was believed to be the WPIAL’s career home run leader. Twelve years later, he still holds that distinction.
“I didn’t even know that was a thing [at the time], but it’s definitely cool to know that,” Jankowski said. “It’s funny that the most prolific home run hitter in WPIAL didn’t even take one at-bat professionally.”
Jankowski grew up in Carrick, where he began playing baseball when he was about 5 years old. There was only one problem, though — Jankowski would cry before every game he went to because he didn’t want to play.
By the time he was 12, though, he was playing for an AAU team as well as two different Little League teams, and there were no more tears before games.
“My dad said I played like 120 games when I was 12 years old,” Jankowski said. “I think at that point, I was like, ‘Maybe I like this a little bit.’”
While playing for Little League teams in Carrick and Peters Township as well as his travel-ball team, Jankowski belted 60 home runs in one summer. Around that time, he and his father started to believe he might have a future in the sport — only they assumed he would do so at and behind the plate.
“My dad would take me to the field probably six days a week to make sure that I was putting the work in,” Jankowski said. “We have a station in our basement for the winter time when it’s cold. Before I was allowed to play any video games or hang out with my friends, I would take like 250 swings per day in my basement.
“It was a pretty serious thing once he realized and I realized I had a chance to be pretty good at something.”
At first, Jankowski was primarily a catcher, albeit one with a rocket for a right arm. As he got older, he started taking pitching lessons, and by his sophomore year he was pitching for the Indians.
Meanwhile, he was still mashing at the plate. Jankowski hit five home runs as a freshman, eight as a sophomore and 14 as a junior, which is believed to be the singleseason WPIAL record. He also led Peters Township to its first WPIAL title in 2007 as one of two aces on the team along with future Point Park pitcher Nick Merich.
“They were different types of pitchers,” Maize said. “Jordan was your power pitcher and he’d go right at you and then he’d break off a curveball, and Nick was more of a placement type pitcher. He had an OK fastball, but he probably had the best changeup of anybody we’d seen.”
As a senior, Jankowski hit .540 with nine home runs and 35 RBIs, giving him 36 homers and 132 RBIs for his career. On the mound, he went 6-1 with a 2.00 ERA and 73 strikeouts in 49 innings, though perhaps his finest pitching performance came in the WPIAL quarterfinals against top-seeded Seneca Valley, when he pitched a shutout to lead the Indians to a 1-0 victory on their way to a second consecutive WPIAL championship.
After high school, Jankowski was selected by the Houston Astros in the 34th round of the 2008 MLB draft, but he chose to attend Miami (Ohio) instead. He started out as a two-way player, but when the team started to run short on pitchers, he started devoting more time to practicing in the bullpen and less time in the batting cage.
Eventually, he decided to convert to being a pitcher full-time. But at the advice of some friends and former teammates, he decided to do so somewhere warmer.
Jankowski transferred to Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C., where he ranked among the NCAA Division II leaders in strikeouts as a junior. He went undrafted following his junior season, but after graduating in 2012, the Astros drafted him for the second time — again in the 34th round.
“It was crazy, because it was two different positions,” Jankowski said. “When I was in high school, I was a catcher, then when I got drafted out of college, I was a pitcher. I would love to see how many people got drafted in the same round by the same team at different positions.
“You develop at different times in your life as an athlete. I think I plateaued as a hitter and I kind of took off as a pitcher at a weird time. Most people do when they’re younger. It happened to me when I was in college, really.”
After spending five seasons working his way up through the minor leagues, Jankowski’s manager with the Astros’ Triple-A affiliate Fresno Grizzlies called a team meeting after a lopsided defeat. Once he was finished chewing everybody out, his manager informed the team that Jankowski was being called up to the majors.
“They all mobbed me at my locker,” Jankowski said. “I couldn’t even breathe. They were all jumping on top of me. It was pretty cool.”
Although he only appeared in three big-league games as a reliever with the Astros before being designated for assignment, Jankowski’s lifelong dream of being a major leaguer was complete. Not only that, he received a World Series ring after the Astros defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in an epic sevengame series.
The Dodgers actually claimed Jankowski off waivers after the Astros released him, but he never appeared in an MLB game after his stint in Houston. He signed a minor-league contract with the Los Angeles Angels in April 2018, but he retired from the sport after being released a month later.
Jankowski, 30, now focuses his time, energy and competitive drive into his new life as a real estate agent for Berkshire Hathaway. He has been doing it for about two years, and he said most of the same concepts he used to shine on the baseball diamond apply to his new career as well.
“It’s similar to sports. There’s a lot of competition,” Jankowski said. “It’s a people thing. If you don’t perform, they’re not going to stay with you. If you don’t find them what you’re looking for, it’s no different than performing on the field. If you don’t find them a new house, they’re not going to want to keep you. It’s different, but it’s similar at the same time.
“In my experience with baseball, I dealt with all different types of people. You get to make a connection with them, and that’s no different from baseball with your teammates trusting you.”