Former major leaguer Jack Aker seeking players for travel team
By: Jim Green
Local amateur baseball players have a unique opportunity, and most don’t even realize it.
There’s a great deal of competition out there for young baseball players, with every team having numerous travel teams for each age group. With so many options, picking the right instructor for your child can be a difficult proposition and an expensive one, especially if wrong choices are made.
Two years ago, however, an amateur baseball coach with impeccable qualifications moved to Princeton Junction and started up a 12-and-under travel baseball team. Now he’s looking for two new players to fill out his roster for the spring season and he will fully fund any new player that makes the team.
The coach is Jack Aker, a retired 11-year major league veteran. Aker, who spent parts of four seasons with the New York Yankees in the late 1960s and early 1970s and once held the single-season major league saves record, also has 10 years of experience as a minor league manager and two years as a major league pitching coach. There simply aren’t many if any amateur instructors with that kind of résumé.
"There’s fewer and fewer guys from pro baseball involved in amateur sports," Aker said. "It’s just a matter of economics. You hardly see a guy come from a successful major league career becoming a minor league coach. You don’t see as many guys coming up through the majors and going back into amateur baseball."
Aker is the exception. After quitting as the Cleveland Indians pitching coach in 1987, Aker came to a crossroads in his baseball life. Following a long and successful career as a minor league manager, in which he won two division titles and posted a .520 winning percentage, he decided he no longer had the desire to coach professional baseball.
"I said, ‘Let’s do something else,’" Aker said. "I’m thinking, ‘What else can I do?’"
So, he and his wife Jane began organizing travel baseball teams with the goals of keeping costs low and helping young boys stay interested in baseball.
"It really has been enjoyable," said Jack Aker, who moved with his family from Florida to New Jersey two years ago. "I’m never going to get tired of this."
Jack Aker has instructed children as young as five and men as old as 61. But he believes his specialty lies in teaching middle school-aged players. That, combined with the fact that his son Adam, 11, is an avid baseball player, led him to start up his first New Jersey-based 12-and-under team this past fall.
While the team does not yet have an official home field, it plays about 50 games a year many in Central Jersey and practices in the Princeton area. The team is a member of the United States Specialty Sports Association and is looking to add two players to its core roster for the upcoming spring season. Any interested players must not turn 13 before Aug. 1. The only requirements for trying out are that the player must have a strong arm and his own glove and be committed to making practices and games.
"The key is to find the kids for whom baseball is their number one sport and they want more than their rec program has to offer," said Jane Aker, who has experience both as a baseball coach and as a sports reporter. "The kids on our team have the advantage of having someone who was not only a professional player, but also a professional coach to help them.
"If you’re not one of the top 12-year olds, children tend to drop baseball. The goal for us is to try to make it so some of those children don’t drop off and try other sports. We want to get the children as they hit 7th grade and build confidence in them."
The Akers, who personally handled 60 percent of the cost for their team last fall, will fully fund any new player that makes the team. They believe Jack Aker’s professional experience makes him the area’s premier instructor for middle-school aged players.
"This for us is a pleasant experience," Jack Aker said. "We’re presenting this level of instruction for the lowest possible price. That’s sort of a sore spot with us. Travel baseball was not meant to be a business to make money. It was supposed to be so kids could play more games at a high level."
The main reason the Akers are able to keep the cost down is they cut out the middleman. Since a travel team can be started by anyone with enough money, many teams are founded by coaches who have little or no experience. The cost of the team then rises because that coach has to hire an experienced outside instructor to prepare his or her team for the upcoming season.
With Aker himself coaching his team, however, there is no need to bring in an outside instructor.
"The problem with travel baseball is anyone can start a team," Jane Aker said. "That sometimes means the coaches aren’t up to snuff. If you cut out that cost, the program is fairly affordable."
One might expect a former major league pitcher who earned the nickname, "The Chief," to be tough on his players. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth when it comes to Jack Aker’s philosophy about dealing with young players.
"We spend a lot of time on instruction, but it’s not heavy-handed," Jack Aker said. "You succeed at something you enjoy. When we get a new kid, we’ll find out right away if he enjoys the sport. If he doesn’t, we don’t push it.
"In all youth leagues, you have coaches who are not experienced coaches. Experience is the best teacher. Sometimes, we’ve seen coaches who are out of control. If they had the opportunity to coach longer, they would know, most of the time, a pat on the back goes a lot farther than a kick in the rear. You can embarrass a kid out of the game in one instant if you’re not careful."
That goes hand-in-hand with Jack Aker’s belief that you don’t grade players on wins and losses.
"Our players are graded on individual improvement as we go through our season," he said. "A lot of teams got to tournaments and display those trophies. We’ll win more games than we lose because the players are improving. All of a sudden, you have a winning team. We have a couple of players that had trouble playing catch when we first got them. If the kid is raw and shows some desire, there’s room for improvement."
The team plays on "big fields" with 50-foot distances between the mound and home plate and 70 feet between bases. All players who try out must be able to make a strong throw from third to first, regardless of their position.
"If they have a great arm, Jack can make them into a pitcher," Jane Aker said. "You have to find the right place for the child on the field, and Jack is a master at that."
Just because Jack Aker was a major league pitcher, don’t make the mistake of thinking he can’t teach hitting. He was drafted as an outfielder out of junior college before being turned into a pitcher in his second season of pro ball. And he pitched before the designated hitter rule was instituted, so he had to learn not only to get major league hitters out, but also how to hit major league pitching. On top of all that, he played alongside such legendary hitters as Reggie Jackson, Hank Aaron and Thurman Munson during his career.
"You’re already working with Jack for your pitching why wouldn’t you work with him as a hitter?," Jane Aker said. "You can’t spend 30 years in the dugout with Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson and Tom Seaver and not know more about the intricacies of the sport than someone who doesn’t have that experience."
That experience currently is being bestowed upon 12 team members, including Adam Aker, Hopewell resident Skye Samse and six players from the West Windsor-Plainsboro district. While all players have the opportunity to learn how to pitch from a major league veteran, Aker would like to assure any interested parents that no arm will be abused under his watch.
"We don’t go to that many tournaments because you don’t have that many kids who can pitch," he said. "If you keep winning, you have to be real careful about how many pitches a kid throws. It’s not worth the risk to me."
Jack Aker certainly knows what it takes to make a pitcher. In addition to being a standout hurler himself saving a then-record 32 games with a 1.99 ERA for the Kansas City A’s in 1966 he pitched on the same staff as Seaver, Hunter, Ferguson Jenkins and Mel Stottlemyre, among others.
"One thing I greatly admired I played with guys like Seaver and Jenkins, guys who completed half their games," Jack Aker said. "They always had their best stuff from the seventh inning on. Bob Gibson was the same way. If he had us beat by a run after seven innings, I might as well go home. I miss that in today’s guys."
Jack Aker witnessed many great moments up close. He was warming up in the bullpen during Hunter’s perfect game for the A’s in 1968 and was in the Braves’ bullpen when Aaron hit his 715th career homerun in 1974 to pass Babe Ruth’s major league record. As a member of the Yankees, he was the last pitcher on the mound during the Washington Senators’ last game in Washington before moving to Texas, and he was on the mound at Yankee Stadium in 1969 when a game was stopped to announce that man had set foot on the moon.
Any parents interested in having their children benefit from Jack Aker’s vast experience should send an e-mail to [email protected]. Further information on the Akers’ team and private instruction is available at the Web site, www.jackakerbaseball.com.
"Baseball’s a sport for life," Jack Aker said. "Like golf once you play golf, you always love golf. I loved football when I was a kid, but now I can take it or leave it. Baseball’s a lifelong remembrance."