Music. I guess this whole time the Mets were like trying to sign me and we were in 29 Palms. I think that's kind of like near Joshua tree by a Walmart. And my friend Kevin gets a call on his phone. Um, and I didn't even have a cell phone yet at that time. This was like 2002. And, um, and it was a guy, Steve Phillips, who is the general manager of the Mets calling from the, from the draft, like draft headquarters in New York.
And they were like, where the hell are you? I was like, I'm in the desert. Who is this? He's like, Steve Phillips, the general manager of the team. He's like, we've been trying to sign you. And I was like, I didn't like your offer. He's like, this isn't what people do. Like you're supposed to counteroffer. He's like, you got to get back to cell phone reception as soon as possible. Yeah. And so we had to cut our summer trip short and get back.
That was Jamar Hill. He's a coach now, but before that, he was a pro baseball player in the Mets organization. He grew up in Anchorage, where playing baseball wasn't always easy. Limited facilities, long winters, and not much opportunity to play year-round. He says that in Alaska, you get about a quarter of the playing time compared to other places. But in a way, that made him love the game even more.
As a kid, he followed the Alaska Baseball League, one of the best summer leagues in the country. It brought in top talent every year, future first-round draft picks, and watching those games gave him an early sense of how the baseball world worked. By the time he was 16, most of the teams he played on included at least one major league player. And by the end of high school, he was drafted by the Mets.
He became one of their top power prospects, a lefty bat who hit right-handed pitching especially well. He went on to hit over 100 professional home runs, but beyond the stats, it was his early exposure to high-level talent and his ability to adapt that shaped his perspective. That perspective is still with him today, as a coach, a mentor, and someone who's all about creating opportunities for the next generation. Today, Jamar is focused on giving back to the community that raised him.
As a youth coach and founder of RBI Alaska, he's spent the last 10 years helping young athletes grow, as players and as people. He's currently leading the development of the Mountain View Fieldhouse, a year-round indoor training facility that will give local kids access to the kind of resources he didn't have growing up. For him, coaching isn't just about skill development.
It's about building character, creating opportunity, and showing kids that their environment doesn't have to limit their ambition. He mentors with intention, using his own experiences in professional baseball to help young players navigate the mental, emotional, and physical sides of the game. Through that work, he's helping shape confident, resilient athletes who are prepared for whatever comes next, on the field or off.
So here he is, Jamar Hill. Welcome to Chattermarks, a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, dedicated to exploring Alaska and the Circumpolar North through the creative and critical thinking of ideas, past, present, and future. My name is Cody Liska, and I'll be your host. Do you consider yourself more of a power hitter, contact hitter, or somewhere in between?
Oh, we're talking baseball. Okay. I, you know, it was kind of an identity crisis for me in the sense of growing up, I just didn't want to strike out. And so I defined myself as a contact hitter. And every now and then I would catch a barrel and the ball would go over the fence. And once the scouts started to show up, they were like, yeah, let me see more of that. And so that was kind of my ticket to kind of get into pro ball. And then when I got into pro ball, I had some good power seasons.
So within our club with the Mets, at times, I was the biggest power prospect in the organization. But had trouble trying to get called up to the major leagues. And I remember there was one time in the offseason, I couldn't understand.
I was with a big market team. and it just seemed like i might get called up and then they would like sign cliff floyd for like 70 million bucks okay so i just couldn't i couldn't get over that hump and i was hitting in the off season with ryan howard who was like a former mvp with the phillies hit like rookie of the year hit like 50 bombs okay and we were uh we were hitting with tony gwen and we're hitting wiffle balls and um and i would take my round he'd take his round and he was breaking the
balls like it was stressing the ball so much that they were breaking in half and i was like oh you know like i could you know on a good swing i could hit the ball over the fence but the guys that they're paying to like hit home runs at that level like they're missing balls and they're going over the And so it would be more wise for me to define myself as a more well-rounded hitter, as opposed to just an all or nothing approach,
trying to hit home runs and falling short of whatever that was. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Was there a particular type of hitter or pitcher matchup that you found especially challenging or fun to play against? Um i as a player i hit i hit left-handed pitching extremely well and i'd say that that kind of propped up a lot of my stats is like i i could deliver the big hits the the the like ideal numbers versus those pitchers um sinker slider guys gave me a little more trouble um but uh.
A hanging slider was also my friend. I could hit those a good way. But the pitch that gave me trouble was the split-finger fastball. And I had some baseball mentors because they play different.
It's kind of like soccer. like soccer culturally they play soccer different ways in different parts of the world like uh european soccer is very different than brazilian soccer in the same way american baseball is very different than japanese baseball versus baseball in the caribbean and uh i had a baseball mentor that was like if you ever face a pitcher um from an asian country and he throws you something you don't know what it is, it's probably a split finger fastball.
And that is a very challenging pitch or was a very challenging pitch for me because of the arm speed. It's just, you have to throw it as hard as you can, um, to execute it, but it's 12 miles an hour slower. So it's just, yeah, it's a very deceiving pitch. So you're just not used to it. People in or players in American baseball, they're just not doing that pitch or what? Yeah, it's not as popular of a pitch.
In Japan, it's changed with Otani and Yamamoto and some of these guys, but in Japan, they usually don't have the power, arms or power bats. And so for their league, they're usually importing those from America. And so like philosophically, they, they pitch backwards, meaning that in American baseball, it's high velocity fastballs early, and then strike, strike a guy out with a secondary pitch, a slider or curve ball.
And in that country, it's your secondary, your, your off speed pitches, your slower pitches early and then strike a guy out with your fastball because setting up your slower pitches earlier will make your fastball be perceived as being faster. And so usually Asian pitchers have better command of their secondary pitches than American pitchers. Hmm. Okay. And what was it like seeing those guys miss a ball and the ball was flying? You know, you were talking about this earlier.
I mean, that was special. I mean, that guy, Ryan, he had just a special leverage. And at that time he was in his prime, you know, hitting 50 bombs a year in the big leagues.
It's just, you're a top, your top two or three bat in the entire world and so you know that that was and i've got, you know i've been around a dozen players that you know could really grab your attention or show you something special swinging the bat that was just um that was just one uh another guy that stands out gosh there's so many but i i played a lot against um.
Matt kemp for the dodgers um and he their their training complex the dodgers was like a commuter trip for us with the mets meaning that like there's a grapefruit league and the cactus league so the grapefruit league is all the spring training setups in florida and the cactus league is all the ones in arizona and the dodgers were like anchorage to eagle river okay i mean it was like 12 miles or something so you'd play them 40 times a year the different
the different players and we came up together and it just that guy he was he was like an all-american basketball player super athletic could run could jump hit for power and um and could get it on base in all sorts of ways but he would hit he would hit uh it just was so when he was on it was so easy for him to hit bombs um and just to see you know you see somebody become that caliber of a caliber of a player and And that's really the X factor is that they're good when they're not good.
Yeah. Yeah. Aaron Judge. Aaron Judge is that guy right now. That guy's hitting with a two-strike approach and hitting him 15 rows out at Yankee Stadium. It's pretty impressive, but he's like 6'9". Yeah. Do you think your size and athleticism gave you any specific advantages in the outfield? Or did you rely more on reading other players and footwork um i i um i didn't really play outfield full-time until pro ball and um it's so going into pro ball um.
Here's what happens in low league. You have, you have, uh, you just kind of put a lot of guys can't drive the ball. Um, and so you really don't need quality outfielders as much as the youth levels, but then you get these kids who are just like, oh, I just saw this Ken Griffey Jr. Highlight or Fernando Tatis highlight and he just threw a guy out from the fence. And so I'm going to do that.
And then they get the ball hit to them and then they like sail the ball over the whole field and all the runners like score just because they're trying to like recreate a highlight.
Yeah and like uh and so i never played outfield but when you're like i was always the kind of the catcher infielder and uh just understood how like disruptive that was and so when they moved me to outfield by mentality it was just like hey if it gets hit to me someone else screwed up like the pitcher gave up a hit or the ball got through the infield and i'm just gonna like get it in as quickly as possible. And to minimize the damage, I looked at myself as like damage control.
And, uh, and, and I think that that was appreciated, but mostly I would say, um, I could hit the ball. I think from a young age that that wasn't something that was extremely like stressful for me.
Um, but I grew up old school. Like I was hooping every day with my buddies playing like football okay neighborhood and stuff and i just like i like playing sports i like making catches i like doing those things and so when it came to baseball i was comfortable playing wherever they put me and so if there was a job opening i know in college they had me playing second base third base shortstop when i got into the high school i was i was playing catcher um i just kind of had an
attitude where like how can i help you anywhere there's an opening i could play that. And that gave me the opportunity to get my bat in the lineup. Yeah. That's a very, uh, teamwork mentality. You know, it sounds like you didn't go out there to shine on your own. Yeah. Uh, you know, baseball, especially in Alaska, it's, it's super like geographically restrictive.
So you got to play where you live and, um, to use anchors as an example, like, uh, the east side programs kind of struggle because it's you don't have the facilities um alaska's weather doesn't really support the sport so you're playing about 25 as much baseball as people from other places and so like usually you'll you'll kind of find there's a correlation between people with disposable income and their kids having high achievement in the sport which
is really counterintuitive because you see the people who thrive on TV, they're coming from like third world countries, but they have the weather. But anyway, um, Yeah, I know we had, we had a good run in like little league. There's a group of us from like a cul-de-sac that just played all the time during Nacca Valley. And, uh, and we were like, uh, like second in our district. And then you get to high school, we would lose a lot. And there's a lot of kids. I went to Bartlett.
Bartlett's like a very transient high school where it's by the military base.
So people are getting moved in and out. there's a lot of uh like multi-family housing like four plexes apartment buildings so people just move and then we just had trouble having kids make grades and so we were constantly team building it was like trying to recruit a kid off the basketball team to play baseball to just have a team and uh when i was about 16 um i started getting recruited by these like regional travel teams that would go to these big showcase national events
and those teams would win all the time. And so I was like, this is sweet. I'd like have never had the opportunity to win because we've always had, uh, we were always missing pieces, um, so to speak. And, and so just coming up from that pedigree of just like, we're just doing every, anything to keep the ship afloat to have a baseball team to go in like, oh, we're on a high school team and there's future major leaguers.
On the 16U team, um, kind of really changed things for me, but I kept that attitude all the way through of just like paying attention where our weak points, you know, what can I do to help? And, and that, that fortunately allowed me to play for a long time. Is there a play or a moment that still stands out in your mind from playing ball in Anchorage?
Yes similarly and it's not really my own moment but like as I said growing up, We, uh, never really have the winning team came real close that the like youth baseball, like the sweet spot is like 12 you baseball because they have like the little league world series and it's like a pageant. Like you have, you could play in your neighborhood and you could have the opportunity to like keep winning and play on ESPN. And so that just kind of captivates the entire country.
And so our little league team was like, uh. Usually the Anchorage team most often, uh, goes on to the regional event, but we were like second in the region to like the South Anchorage team.
And uh we were we lost that game and we were all sitting on a curb just bawling crying it was just like an important loss like in my childhood of just like i don't ever want to feel like this again and then uh you get into the age levels higher than that and then high school baseball a lot of the kids that were on that south anchorage kid team went to like service which is now south anchorage high school or the demit the the geography of it is that and uh we didn't beat that team for three like
my entire high school like they really every single time every single game we played and that's pretty demoralizing yeah yeah and again resources play into that you want to kind of have life lessons that come out of sports but it's humiliating um But anyway, I went to high school with this dude, Jeremy Deep. Jeremy Deep was just like kind of a bro. He was involved in like student government and just was a pretty well-rounded kid. He's in the military type of person.
You're like glad that is like, you know, protecting our country, so to speak. Yeah. But, uh, he was a, a pretty, he, he was a pretty unorthodox baseball player. He had kind of, he pitched, he had a funky arm motion. He hit, had kind of a interesting swing and he just didn't do it enough to have like the polish, but he's just like, Hey, I just came from another activity. I'm playing baseball now. What do you need me to do? I'll get the job done.
Yeah. But anyway, our senior year of high school opening day of high school baseball, he pitched a complete game and hit three home runs to beat service and it was the only time we beat service our whole four years of high school and it's it still sits as like one of the top high school baseball performances in alaska like ever amazing he was just like yeah he wasn't even our best player he's just like i'll go out there and see what i can do it just took over the
game and it was just like i and that's like my favorite moment of like playing youth baseball up here yeah yeah Yeah. You know, what's interesting is that, you know, I asked you a moment or a play that sticks out in your mind. And I feel like, you know, most people would interpret that as a play that involved you, you know, maybe where you were the focal team player in this memory, but it wasn't.
It was somebody else. i mean it's just like i said baseball is very geographically restrictive so that was a very big moment for an entire quadrant of the city of kids who play baseball like this is a game that you expected to lose every time you played that team that other team would walk on the field like oh we're just gonna like run through this team like for four years and uh and so like that was, it was just, it was senior year too.
Uh, baseball season starts pretty late. Um, I mean, it's, it's well into May when you're kind of playing these opening games. So you're about to graduate high school. I was drafted out of high school. I think I was, I think I was about to get drafted. So I was riding that wave and playing with some kids who I knew I was probably never going to play with again.
And, and that was just, uh, in contrast to like, like I said, our little league team was a lot of those same kids like literally i would say a large 75 percent of that team because it is geographically restrictive and you go from little league to middle school to high school with the same kids they were all on that that curve like bawling crying because we lost this really game and that's the way you wrapped up with high school yeah and so i mean that was that was that was pretty cool um,
I think for me recently and in hindsight, like I didn't think about it at the time. Like I said, I tried to find myself as a contact hitter. Um, but I did my senior year of high school. I hit a ball that I was kind of fooled on. There's like a clover of fields by Mulcahy stadium. So it's like four fields and they're all numbered. One, two, three, four Kaczynski field. So K four faces Anchorage football stadium.
And uh i hit a change up out to center field i was fooled on it and it it went to the state the football stadium and at the time like there wasn't there wasn't social media and so like written media was exciting like you wanted to get the daily news and read the box score and and that's also as players how you kept tabs on who else was having a good season.
But what was really fun was the ADN narrated it they're like Jamar hit a ball from K4 into the football stadium oh that's awesome yeah yeah and I was I was talking to I run a youth program now and the kids were were they were like what's the furthest ball you ever hit and I don't think this is the furthest ball that I had ever hit but it was just a field that we had in common they're a field that they play on now I played on I was like well I hit one in high school that like went
on k4 to the football stadium and a kid they're way more techie than i am he pulled it up on like google earth and it was like near 500 feet and so they were just like i got some credibility with the kids because they pulled up this mapping app and they're just like holy crap that's really really far um so that was a fun moment but when i hit it it was like an accident I was just like trying to not strike out and just got a good barrel and it went a long way.
And I really didn't see where it landed. I saw like the next day in the ADN, but like come full circle, like the kids gave that more context, which was fun. So at the time you didn't know how far it went. You had to read about it in the paper. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty common. Like I've hit, I've hit, I've been fortunate enough. I feel like there's certain things in sports that like we want to see all the time, but they're kind of a miracle.
Like if you hit one home run in a game in your life, that's a pretty cool feeling. And, you know, I was fortunate enough in my career. I had like a hundred and over a hundred professional home runs. And like rarely, I would say a handful. You're just like, oh, that's no doubt.
It's over the fence. For me, the type of hitter that I was, because I would try to hit line drives, I usually would hit it and I would just be running like heck, and then the umpire would be like, oh, it went over the fence. But they would come as a surprise. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's funny because, again, I coach now and the kids have so much media that they see all these home run highlights. And so they're they're like they're trying to hit home runs.
Yeah. And there's just like a lot of swing and miss. And so it's like having to scale it back to go, let's make a lot of contact and it'll come. And I would like to think I would have some credibility for having done it. But no, they want to see the ball go over the fence so bad. Just try to lift everything. It sounds like throughout your entire baseball career, starting at a young age, a lot of things happen by accident on the field.
It sounds like you hit this home run that landed in the football stadium. That was an accident. You just mentioned a pro ball game and that was an accident. You're out there running and then the umpire's like, no, no, no, that was a home run. Oh, yeah, that happened all the time. I had one home run I hit. I had one home run. We had this rivalry. I think I was in single A, and it was the Tampa Bay Rays.
I have this long-standing hatred for the Rays, and it started with this rivalry in single A. I don't know if you've seen the movie Moneyball, but like there's these small market teams like the oakland a's and the rays that are like very economical with how they run their their organizations because they don't have as much money as like the yankees or the dodgers or whatever and so like their draft philosophy is they would get all these guys
who are like seniors in college um that they could sign very cheaply and that would be their whole minor league system and they would have all these guys who like. We're just kind of pissed off. They were like, they had student loan debt. They didn't know they were going to make it. And they were just kind of knew, they knew how to play ball. Although they were more baseball savvy than the younger signees or a kid from an academy in the DR Venezuela.
And, uh, and they, they're, they had a certain style of play. And, uh, and we'd have all these tense games with the rays. And, um. Again, they were like, uh, similar to what I described, the Dodgers, a commuter team so we played them all the time and. It was late in the season and in that league we.
Were kind of going back and forth and they have this left-handed pitcher Gio Gonzalez I think he went to the big leagues with the nationals or right he loved his curveball he was just like the kids have a good curveball they like especially before they learn how to pitch they just want to throw it all the time okay uh and I was like I'm gonna sit on this guy's curveball because I hit left-handed pitching well it's like i'm gonna sit on this guy's curveball and i'm gonna like
i'm gonna get him yeah and uh and he threw one he tried to backdoor it which means like he's throwing it off the plate away hoping it's gonna break back over the plate because the left-handed pitchers their arm side is towards first and uh and so he tries to backdoor this curveball and i i'm looking for it so i basically like step on the plate to like hit this pitch that was like in the other batter's box and i got it and i hit it for home run and the
way that i finished my swing my swing came back around and i dropped the bat between my legs and i tripped myself on my own bat and like fall on my face like after a home run which usually like you think of like a majestic home run a guy like holding his arms up and having like the slow trot it was just like just facing in the dirt yeah like fell it's just uh yeah i i uh i didn't always know when they were out and i played on a team with uh pete rose's son who was a super fun.
Teammate pete rose jr okay and uh and he used to just always make fun of me because i'd run the bases so fast and you're like why don't Don't you just act like you've hit one before, like one time? And that kind of slowed me down. Did playing professionally change how you saw the game? Good question. I don't think it's taken... Well, it's taken a long time for me to realize it, but I think that growing up in Alaska in ways was a huge advantage for me because I really liked baseball.
I genuinely really enjoyed just being a fan of it and watching it. And I would go to the Glacier Pilots games and the Bucks games and stuff as a kid.
And in those days like it was it was the top they have these collegiate summer leagues and so um amateur levels of baseball use like metal bats and it's it's easier to hit with a metal with a metal bat than it is a wood bat wood bats just like a dense object it may not be bad balance is a big factor it may not be balanced to you or you might be figuring out what works for you and uh.
And so they'll send these college kids to these wood bat summer leagues to kind of figure out how to hit with wood. And then the better leagues will kind of consolidate the better pitchers in the country so that scouts can come and go, OK, who's going to actually have success at higher levels of baseball? And so the Alaska Baseball League historically is a very iconic league.
It's one of the best in the country. And growing up, I mean, there was usually about three or four first round draft picks every single year that were coming out of the Alaska League. And you could show up to the games and kind of have an idea of like where the baseball industry was headed.
Um and so i think i paid enough attention to that to kind of have a better understanding of the baseball industry than i otherwise would growing up in the type of climate that alaska offers um and so that was helpful and then um. I was drafted out of high, I played, I had just great youth baseball experiences. I played on like, uh, some like elite level travel ball teams. What I tell people is like every team I played on from the time I was 16 on had at least one major league player.
Hmm. Okay. And so when you think about it, you're talking to a young person, you're like, you know, the odds of you like making it in sports are super low, but it's, it can end up being consolidated in such a way when you think of a youth baseball team, it's like 12 to 15 kids. Um, and then you move on to a college professional baseball team. It's like 25 guys.
And so, you know, if you're going, if you're going to at least like one in 15 or one in 25 and you see the, you know, the type of contracts they're dishing out, like those are pretty good. I'd go to Vegas with those odds. Um, yeah. Yeah. And so, uh, youth levels, I was playing at a, at a pretty high level. My college coach, I got drafted out of high school. Um, I ended up going to junior college, uh, because it, I, I was an infielder.
I needed to be on a dirt infield all the time to actually develop at that position. And I was fortunate to play at the top junior college in the country. Don Sneddon is one of the winningest college baseball coaches ever and a college baseball Hall of Famer. And so it set me up to play at a high level. The Mets did a pretty good job of past playing. I feel like the Mets philosophically had a really good system because they valued winning in the minor leagues.
Some teams don't. Some teams are just like, let's just move our prospects up, even if we lose every game. And then they... They valued, uh, how would I define this? They valued, uh, if I were to define it, they'd say sports represent social issues.
Okay. And so we would go like, they would take players, American players and be like, you're going to spend the off season in the DR and you're going to see what it's like to live in a third world country and know what these players that are coming here are dealing with and adjusting to American culture.
Or you know a lot of the latin players would have they'd be tasked to learn another language and so uh they would be taking english classes they'd make the american players take spanish classes to kind of understand that or yeah just different things like if you're if you're living in the deep south like culturally like what are you walking into like i played my first uh i played my first pro game in Pulaski,
West Virginia, which is like where they wrote the founding documents of the Klu Klux Klan. Okay. So it's just, just like, this is, this is like where you're living. Yeah. What these leagues go through. And so they kind of give you an education on just America in general, but I would say like pro ball, they want you to know what you're doing. Like you should not get into professional baseball if you don't feel like you can go into it and do well, it's going to be a really bad experience.
Um for you um but yeah point being i had i had a good education at the youth levels and i would say. Probably about 16 i was like i kind of have an idea of how baseball operates i just i need more experience and i need to get stronger yeah yeah yeah, Do you remember where you were when you got the call to play for the Mets? Uh, uh, yeah. Are you thinking of when I got drafted or when I signed? When you signed. Okay. Um, so. Or actually, what's a better story?
Uh, they're both good stories in their own way. Um, in their own way. So I, I was a, I was a pretty good, like high school level, like travel ball player. Like I was, I would go to, they would have all these regional tournaments. I usually get like kind of all tournament team, um, you know, collect my hits and, and a lot of the kids that were doing well in those tournaments were eventually drafted. You'd see them in pro ball.
They consolidate it in such a way to where you're kind of seeing the playing field at that age. Um and so in my mind i felt like i i needed to be i felt like i should be the. A first round pick i thought like but that was my 16 year old brain um at the time and uh but i had talked to all the teams all 30 teams um i had talked to a scout for those clubs and uh and And there ends up being some very high-profile showcases for high school seniors because it's like a pageant.
And so those kids kind of brawl it out to raise their stock to see where a team's going to sign them or draft them. And in my senior year, I needed an elbow surgery that I just put off because I wanted to play and I just didn't know about elbow surgeries. Or I wasn't raised in such a way where I had an expectation to have a pro playing career. So in needing the elbow surgery, I was like, well, I might not play baseball ever again.
So I played, I kind of played, I think that's one of the things that made me effective as a high school player was I would literally play like that. I'd be like, I don't know if I'll ever play baseball again, so might as well just have a good time. And get this elbow surgery in the fall of my senior year. I don't go to any of the showcases and then, uh, I'm just playing high school baseball in Anchorage.
Um, I have a decent, I kind of had a re ignited buzz because our high school team did a spring break trip to LA and, uh, and there's a ton of scouting in LA and had a good showing in California and going to my senior year, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, wasn't talking to many scouts. And at the time, there was a guy in Anchorage, coincidentally, who was an elite high school prospect. He was a top 25 player in America.
Right-handed pitcher getting Brian Montalvo, who was a pitcher.
He threw like 95, had a couple of pitches that he commanded and so there was just like a sea of scouts coming to see him we played him i want to say like our prom night of my senior year and i don't know if you've ever been to mulcahy stadium they have these grandstands so all the seating under behind home plate that was just like usually it's like a handful of a sprinkling of parents it was all major league scouts with radar guns really okay and so we played him they're there to see him
i was very familiar with him because we had like i said baseball in alaska is like this pageant so if you want to play in a big game you got to get through your local teams and so you would know it could be december in alaska you go if i want to play in a meaningful game i got to get past this dude who's who's uh you know six 5 at 15 and throwing in the 90s. And so he was a highly touted player and I had a pretty good game off of him. I got a couple hits. I hit a double.
Scored stole two bases and the Mets scout came up to me after the game. His name was Jim Reeves and he goes, hey, I'm Jim Reeves from the Northwest Mets scout.
I saw you play in eastern washington last summer on your travel ball team and i'm seeing you again and i'm gonna draft you okay i'm like sweet this is just like after a high school game yeah it's funny because like all my buddies are there something like he's dropping on this conversation like they're my little agents or something like yeah we're creating this like entourage and uh and i'm like sweet went around he's like i'm gonna draft you in the 50th round and i was like which
and there was 50 rounds so it's basically like you're gonna be our last pick and I was just like huh and I because at the time I talked to every single team I was like I think every team has to pass me for this to work out but he was the only scout that was like I will draft you okay in those days the draft wasn't on. It wasn't, it's televised now in ways, but it wasn't, it was just like a, on, it was like a spreadsheet that they would release on America online or something like that.
And so I didn't even, I just kind of wrote that off. And then I went to a walk on tryout for the Anchorage glacier pilots and I, that they advertised in the paper.
And so i go to that and i make the team and all these college kids are coming into anchorage and they're hoping to get drafted that's the reason they're up in anchorage and the draft happens and none of them get drafted and uh and and so there's all these college juniors and seniors and the best schools in the country florida state miami like university of arizona and then uh and they're bummed they're like no one on the team got
drafted they're like and the coach comes out He's like, one kid did and was like, who? And he points at me, uh, the 17 year old kid that just like came in off the street from a walk on tryout. And I didn't even know. And, um, and so I was like, kind of embarrassed cause I'm like just trying to fit in with these college kids. And, uh, and at that time I didn't, I didn't drive. So my mom had to like come and pick me up from this practice and she's like, Hey, did you know you got drafted?
And I was like, no, I just kind of learned this, this process. And uh and so that was fun that's how i found out i got drafted and then uh and then that scout had to evaluate me so then i ended up playing the rest of that summer in seattle um how i got signed was.
Um the following year i got i had an okay freshman year um in college uh just kind of dealing with like a new position and injuries it wasn't like i played uh hit over 300 but it just wasn't like spectacular and then uh same thing i was hitting extra batting practice at our field with uh my friend kevin rios who's still a really good friend to this day um the southern california med scout bob miner came through the fence and he was like after a game he's like
hey are you jamar He's like, yeah, he's like, I'm Bob Meyer. I'm the area scout. I'm going to draft you. Um, And I was like, what round? He's like 48th round. So I went up two. I've had a worse year. Went up two rounds. Yeah. And then he just leaves. It was like a 20-minute interaction. He watched me hit in the batting cage without saying a word for like 10 minutes. Said that, left.
Went to the ABL. I was playing for the Bucs, Anchorage Bucs, and played for like two, a week and a half, if I want to say, and then sat for like two or three straight weeks, didn't play in any games, which was very frustrating. But I do think that that was really important when I was playing. And the guy who drafted me in high school, he covers the Northwest, so he's up to scout the league, flies up to scout the league, calls me. He's like, let's take batting practice.
I was like, where do you want to meet? And he's like, we'll come to your area. So he meets me at my little league fields, Nunaka Valley, and he throws me batting practice. And then he has a meeting with the GM, then GM, Dennis Mattingly and the coach for the Bucs, basically advocating for me and just going, you know, there's a lot of politics. The ABL, they play kids from the larger schools, even if they're not the best option, because they have to keep the relationships with the big schools.
They won't keep sending them players. And I was kind of going through that to where I probably should have been playing, but the guys in front of me were from like Stanford or these bigger schools. But this Met Scout advocates for me. And then from then on, I play every day. And I went from like sitting on the bench to like, I think I was top 10 and hitting. in the league. I would platoon with a guy, Chris Carter, who played at Stanford, who was out of high school. He was an interesting dude.
Very talented player. He played in the big leagues with the Mets. And... They, from that experience, I remember kind of looking at the entire league and going, okay, these are the best players in America and college, and this is where I stand. And so there's a scenario where I could have a professional baseball career. And I took that to my next year in college, and I was, for the most part, had a really, really great year with the expectation of getting signed.
And when you get signed there's like a negotiation process. And I didn't really have like an agent or anything I was just a kid playing ball and so the Mets season ends I have a meeting with them in my coach's office, and they're like we want to sign you they give me a super low ball offer, and I was like okay thanks for you know coming to all the games I'm going to go to college and then I like I was playing in Orange County in Southern California and I like went out to the desert.
It just was like partying with my friend Kevin again for like for a long time, for like 10 days. We were just out there having a good time. And that was like the days of like the old snake phones.
Yeah. And so I guess this whole time the Mets were like trying to sign me and we were in. 29 palms, I think that's kind of like near Joshua Tree, by a walmart and my friend kevin gets a call on his phone um and i didn't even have a cell phone yet at that time this is like 2002 and um and it was a guy steve phillips who's the general manager of the mets calling from the from the draft like draft headquarters in new york and they were like,
where the hell are you i was like i'm in the desert who is this he's like this is steve phillips the general manager of the team he's like we've been trying to sign you and i was like i didn't like your offer he's like this isn't what people do like you're supposed to counter offer he's like you got to get back to like cell phone reception like as soon as possible yeah and so we had to cut like our like senior so like our summer trip short and get back um i had you know your college or broke.
I had like, I lived with like four guys, four guys on the baseball team. And we were, the season was over. Like we had lost in like the semifinals of playoffs. And so we were like preparing to move out of our apartment. And my other roommates were like having like a, their own party. So I get there and there's a bunch of people over in our apartment.
And it was that the Mets area scout waiting in front of like a college party going like I'm here to sign you yeah I'm like ah I was like well I was like my room's in the back it might offer some privacy and so he like went into he like went into our apartment and hung out there called New York and and just kind of worked it out and that's that's how I got into Pro Bowl wow he was adamant and you were uh how would you describe yourself at that time um
well the the way i was signed isn't actually legal anymore and so okay it was it was called uh they used to call it a draft and follow and so what it was was um. Baseball isn't like football or basketball, like football or basketball. It's pretty common to get drafted and then you're like right into the NFL or the NBA. With baseball, it takes a long time for players to develop. And for me, like I needed to, I needed, I like, I understood baseball.
I had some actions that were desirable for teams, but I needed to get more experience and I needed to get stronger.
And so in those days what a team could do is they can draft you really late which they did and go and not sign you but they would keep your rights for like a year so basically like the team would own you no other team could talk to you um if a team drafted you in this way and then they could sign you before the next year's draft and so i was drafted by the mets for two years in a row like that and that is puts the team in a really good position because they are super familiar with you and then
on top of that like what really makes a lot of these sports contracts get so high and so valuable is kind of the bidding war between other.
Teams and that that um style of drafting somebody kind of prevents that it prevents other teams having from having an interest in you um and so i think for that particular team it was good because they they knew me really really well um i mean i had a met scout at every home game we played my sophomore year of uh college he'd come he'd watch a couple of bats and he'd leave um and so they're familiar with me going in um but for me it made me very unfamiliar with maybe my value
to other teams and how the industry as a whole worked out. Music. You know i read that you grew up in a single parent household with your mom in what way do you think her background and her values help shape who you are today, I really appreciate that question, Cody, because I do think it, it, uh, it shaped me a lot. I think that, um.
Like it's, it's, it's when you, when you grow up in Alaska, Alaska has this climate thing where when it's like December, January, February, and it's like zero or like subs, like the climate is harsh. So you like leave, you leave the house, like it's hard out here and you know, there's that. And then we didn't have a ton of extended family in Alaska.
And so with it being my mom and me and my sister, it's, I'm sure my mom, you know, lived and walked around with this, uh, this thing where it's like, I can't fail. Like I have to, I have to like keep going for them. And that's a heavy burden to carry around. And as a kid from a single parent thing, you're seeing your parent just with this will to just make it happen.
And I think that like it wasn't ever anything that was communicated or whatever, but I just I think that there's a certain ethic that I just absorbed from seeing the way that she carried responsibility that has, I guess, if there's any high achievement that I've ever had in life, I somehow attach it to what that is. Are there any lessons or sayings from your mom that still stick with you?
Somewhat. I think that there's certain boundaries in my household that were very valuable in my sports journey. And I think that one was like my mom was not super concerned with what I was doing with sports. I just like coincidentally, I grew up a few blocks from the ball fields. And so, you know, in the summertime, I would just, you know, wake up in the morning, walk to the ball fields because all my buddies were there and I'd see multiple games.
I could catch a foul ball and take it to the snack shack and get candy. And it was just a it was a cool place to hang out. And that's where I got a lot of my skills from and experience and friendships. But it, I didn't have one of those like youth sports parents that were like highly involved and like yelling at umpires and stuff like that. It was just like, it was more or less like my mom, there were a few times where I got in trouble at school or I didn't have grades.
Like she would walk down to the field and pull me out of a game mid game. Really? You're playing baseball today would just yank me out of it. And so, um, I mean, I was, I wasn't a top student. I got, I became a student when I got to college. Um, but it was the message was, this is more important to me. Um, education. Uh, and so I think that was a boundary that was really enforced that I would have never, I, it really motivated me to finish college.
It really motivated me to get college funds out of my professional sports contracts um that was a definitely a message in my home um and then i touched on a little bit there there is like a culture of really overbearing sports parents um and i didn't have that and i think that that is that was very liberating in ways it allowed me to um exist in a place socially and emotionally that i think that people who have the burden of just like the uncomfortable drive home with a disappointed parent
or whatever um didn't have access to you know as far as like you know playing loose playing in a way that pleased me um and then um past that words. My mother really reinforced like affirmations and, um, but did so in a way that wasn't directed, directly connected to me playing sports. Do you have an example of that? Um, it could be just a dry, it could be a drive to school of just going like, Hey, like you could have a great day.
Like you could, you're fully capable of like really thriving in this class or in this social situation. Why don't you tell yourself that? It's like before we, before we enter the, before we get to school, you think you could tell yourself that 10 times.
I, it might've correlated to things she was thinking or whatever, but would just kind of like talk about those things with me to where they were, they were exercising and what people don't realize um when it comes to high level sports organizations um they are very invested in your psychology okay like if you're i mean at the end of the day when you see these massive sports contracts they're they're on the back end of that there's some very very rich individual who's
cutting these checks and that person like can't really afford for you to just psychologically melt down or not be able to like cope with the pressures of of playing a sport or performing or you know being a public figure and so i mean even if i didn't describe this earlier but those initial interactions with baseball scouts they they would give you like psychological, questionnaires of like, what is your makeup? And, um, and so, uh, I, I guess that would that those talks with my mom were
kind of an introduction to like, what are your thoughts like? Are they positive? Um, are you exercising this? And then fast forward, you go to pro ball, like there's, there's professionals.
This is the thing that my college coach, who's a college baseball hall of famer um really invested in was um we had sports psychologists and i tell people this like i would be at a practice in the infield because i hadn't moved to the outfield yet and i would have a sports psychologist there with me at shortstop or third base going like hey like. You made an errant throw last inning. You know, what were you thinking? Like, tell me exactly what you were thinking as the ball was coming.
And, you know, what do you want to be thinking? Like, you already made the error. Like, it didn't kill you if you're alive. Did you really need to take yourself that seriously? Like, kind of walking you through, like, the places that you go mentally in performance. And so I think that the way that those conversations unfolded with me and my mom, completely disconnected to sports allowed me to just like kind of dive into that.
And, and, uh, and then there's also things that she just didn't want to deal with. Like, I know, like I went to driving school because she was like me, like in a car with you before you have a lot, like, that's going to stress me out.
This is a straight arm relationship. and so like there are just certain things that she was just like you need to go to somebody else for this yeah as opposed to us like being at each other yeah um and and so she was she was good about that and i think that where i talk about like overbearing sports parents i think that that at times is a similar divide of just like hey maybe like you know as a youth sports mom or dad You got a kid who wants to play sports. You want the best for them.
But maybe like the way that you guys are with each other is like a bad experience. And you might just need to get your kid around somebody who just makes it fun or makes it makes it presents it in a different way. And she she was she it wasn't beyond her ego to just be like somebody else can do this better than I can. What did baseball teach you about how you think in the game? You mentioned these psychologists. And also...
How you thought outside of the game hmm i think that uh, gosh there's a lot of ways to look at that i'm trying to think of the way that's the most relevant um so uh i. Oh let's take a deep dive so but my uh my i went to scenic park elementary so did i and yep Yep. Scenic Park. Are they just the eagles or the golden eagles? I forget. I went there for two years and then my parents moved to the south side. But I grew up till I was eight years old on Muldoon.
Okay so i went to i went to scenic park wendler bartlett okay um and grade school we moved from like right around scenic park which is like the edge of tudor before it turns into maldoon to like the naka valley ish area kind of over by cheney lake and the baptist temple and um and so So the kids I went to school with were all like Scenic Park, Wendler, Bartlett kids. The kids I grew up with were all kind of like Clark, East Anchorage type kids. And those were the kids I played sports with.
And so we used to always play like neighborhood football, um, in the neighborhood that I grew up with. And then at scenic park at recess, we would play recess football, two hand touch football. And, um, and so sports were just a big part of like hanging out with the guys at school. And I have this thing like fourth, fifth grade where I would like, I just couldn't make catches. Like I'd put so much pressure on myself, but I'd miss the ball.
And then so you like for recess they'd line all the kids up on a wall and they'd pick teams and i'd be like the last picked and i just like oh man i gotta be like figure this out or i'm not gonna like have friends okay like recess and uh and it was all this performance anxiety because you get one or two recesses a day so you think about it all day at school like don't drop it don't drop it and then recess would have you drop a pass and then you'd have
to wait the whole next day to maybe hopefully redeem yourself and it became a whole thing yeah and uh but when i was playing with my neighborhood friends it wasn't a problem like i would play freely and like.
Didn't worry about it and so it was a thing i struggled with for like half a school year and um and i got over it um if i were to put put it in a phrase of just like slowing the game down of just like all right you're dropping these passes just like if somebody throws you a pass just like breathe and just make sure you actually see it go into your hands it's like make sure you catch it as opposed to like rushing to oh i gotta catch this
run down field and score a touchdown and just all the the the outcome we we fast forward to and so slowing the game down as a skill um. In a lot of different things, whether that's playing a sport or just dealing with just being overwhelmed in general in life, I would say it would be a kind of like the first, um, step to like, Hey, think about like how you're processing and thinking about these situations you get into. And are you landing into a place that's like really working you up?
Are you staying present and breathing and, and doing that? And so that was a skill. I mean, I was 11 years old or whatever and realized that was the thing. And ironically, ironically, like I became an outfielder and being an outfielder, it was about making catches and I'd never played football. I'd never played outfield, but I had all this experience from playing like recessed neighborhood football and wanting to make like the big catch in front of my buddies. Yeah. Well, that's interesting.
At what point did you start thinking about life after pro baseball i think from the time i got drafted really really okay yeah like from the beginning yeah from the time i got drafted um like i said uh the day i found out i got drafted out of high school um my mom had to pick me up from a practice and she was like okay what is what is uh.
What's the meaning of all this? I mean, baseball is, it's a pretty obscure sport, um, by Alaska standard, comparably to like Southern California or Japan or the Dominican Republic or something.
And, um, and so, um, I don't think the people around, I knew what I was involved in, but the people closest to me didn't really understand the level, um, that I was playing at and the, attention that i was creating and and so me being drafted was a really definitive like hey i'm this i'm getting consideration from professional sports organization so um on the drive home uh i was talking to my mom she's like what is your goal in all of this and,
i remember telling her i was like hey you know i i want to find out what my potential is in all this i want to pursue it but i'm also very aware that i could be very very i will likely at some point be very hurt and very disappointed by the way this unfolds because i'm you can't play forever i mean even if you're derrick jeter and you got to play for 20 years you still don't get to play forever you're gonna have to transition yeah and um and also being the team's last pick.
Yeah you just have to you you you have to take into consideration like who you are as an entire person um as opposed to who you're being made into as a as a as a baseball player and so um.
I've always kind of lived by the philosophy that like people who are successful in anything are kind of well-rounded they have other things they're interested in and would try to explore those things and um and so yeah and it uh it it's it's always been on my mind, and what brought you back to alaska i can i had always had it in my mind to start a sports program up here and it was one of my best friends today guiding pat breen went to college together Like I said,
you play in these high school showcase events, and he was on this Southern California club that we'd always miss each other in the bracket rounds of these high-end tournaments. And then we ended up being on the same teams. He had been drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays out of high school. He's a center fielder. And we were at the water fountain in the first college practice that I had after high school. And he played on.
A club team called the the colton nighthawks which is like kind of near the san bernardino area but they had gosh they had like an all-star team they had like uh nomar garciaparra's little brother they had um they had nala nala for the the marlins gosh his name escapes me on the starting pitchers for the marlins while i was playing okay i had several guys who became prominent big leaguers on this high school team and we would see them at all these tournaments i knew
he was on that team and i was just chatting with them about those players and where they're playing now. And uh and i was like hey man i was like you would not believe but i actually grew up with a guy that's the exact same player as you and this is a guy who's like a top high school player in america from a top baseball market in the country who's just like looking at himself like, I'm super good. How can this be that there's some kid in Alaska who's like at this level?
And he's like, really? And he's like, what's he doing now? And I was like, he's snowboarding somewhere. Because I grew up with this dude who was a really good baseball player, but he was an extreme sports guy and loved snowboarding. That was his thing.
And he just didn't have an outlet to pursue it. um at the level and so for me i just i i realized like there's a lot of kids in alaska that like could really have a future in baseball but it's just that that uh the way that that pageant is laid out doesn't really exist in alaska and so having navigated it myself um i could help assist in getting kids more opportunity to pursue it as a sport yeah when you're working with kids do you ever see similarities of your younger self in any of them?
Yeah, I do. And to be honest, it's, it's like, it's the biggest challenge I have as a coach. And for, for me, it's, it's philosophically the way that I look at, it's not like, oh sweet, you're like really good. And now like, I'm going to put my stamp on you and mold you. It's, it's more or less like, it's not the kid meeting me and me being impactful is like this pivotal coach.
It's more or less like I'm meeting a pretty special player and I have to shift my thinking in such a way that this player may be somebody who I can learn something from as opposed to they can learn something from me. I have to be I have to at least be open to that possibility and then um, And then from there, it also puts me in a mindset of like, where was I at this age? Like what, what is, how are they looking at things?
And they're on this fast moving stream to, you know, like pursuing baseball and, and, and just kind of being, uh, adjacent or along with them as they're, as they're making those decisions.
But for the most part, people who, the kids who like kind of have it, who have a good understanding of that it's like it's a very extractive sport so there's it's a there's a whole industry whether it's college recruiters or scouts or whatever who are who are there to kind of tell them um how good they are or or whatever but they the the main challenge that they have is identity like who do you think you are like what is your what is your self-esteem telling you,
you're, you're becoming and, and fostering that. Yeah, that's a tough question. That's a tough question for anybody at any age to answer. It's really tough, especially with, you know, the reality is, I mean, in Anchorage, we had a kid, Cohen Nikolai, um, I think so highly of him. And, uh, he was, he was drafted by the Marlins fairly high.
And uh and he's currently playing at the university of oregon um and uh and i met cohen it was such a cool interaction um covid happened and uh and he has a batting cage in his yard and his parents reached out to me and they're like hey we can't really do anything i got this kid who likes baseball you think you'd come work with him and nothing's going on so i go and meet done at his house during covid he lives in south anchorage kind of by service high
school he's a service high school kid and i'm like throwing batting practice he's good he's like good bat to ball skills he's a big kid and our batting practice gets disrupted because a family of black bears just like walks through their yard and disrupts it and it's like i'll never forget that like yeah he's obviously he's clearly a really good player but i was like that's a that's a really unique experience of having that happen.
But it was just, you know, knowing a kid like that, he was just answering the, a lot of questions that you would have for a young person early 14 15 is doing things every time you see them that would surprise you and um talent's talent but really what would stand out it would it would be like it takes a long time to reach the high levels of baseball even if you're a top player at that age you're you're a half decade away from reaching your goal and so to just see
a young person over time and see how rapidly they're learning new things and uh, and he is a super smart kid was learning things really fast and for me I was just like I have no idea what this kid's ceiling is like he's he's learning like anything that I'd go oh this is lacking he would have it figured out the next time I saw him and so yeah as a coach it was like.
How do you create space how do you create space for a developing player to become who they think they are and um and so that was that was really informative um to me to be around that and he's had he has a really good support system as far as like other coaches in the area that have really helped him to get to where he's going and a really good supporting family what does it mean to you to be a role model in alaska's sports community well it used to it's it's changed um at times
and so i know one really eye-opening thing for me uh is i per i don't drink um at all so i don't drink i don't really do any kind of drugs i used to um and and uh i used to like i used to like maker's mark okay and um and i remember i just like i'm in my 20s i like like maker's mark on facebook and uh and. I was coaching kids. This was like over 10 years ago. And there's a kid that I would spend a lot of time with. I had a great relationship with, and that really respected me as a coach.
And, uh, and I had a batting practice and that kid showed up with like a maker's mark hoodie on. And I was like, Oh, like the, the things that I do, like, like young, young people, like they're, they, they have this strong instinct to copy or mimic.
And so I'm like, okay, I'm like in indoctrinating this kid into this thing just because of how he looks at me that he doesn't really um hasn't really critically thought about and so that uh that was very impactful to me and i was just kind of from then on really uh like withholding of who i was and then just trying to be like an idealized version of myself and that's not the case anymore as much anymore like for me like i i try to be um more transparent emotionally to start so like if
i'm frustrated um the the the young people that are i mean they know i'm frustrated if i'm like happy and joyful they know that i'm joyful um and i think that as a role model like being you know the assumption of being a professional baseball player is that you are like really good at baseball um but for me like. To be able to do that for so long, like I would give myself credit for like, I, I know how to have, I know how to make a, uh, base, a day of baseball, a really fun experience.
Okay. Like that's really the, the goal. Like I want to have a great day. Every time I'm baseball field, I want to have a great day. Um, and I would say that that is, that's actually these days.
That's what I try to work harder to offer. i also think in the personal honesty it was just things like uh you know like personal values like sometimes we're we're like running around going to events with teams and we're riding around in the team vehicles and the kids want they want the aux cord and they want to play whatever they listen to and kids have different values so you don't know what you know one kid on the team's values are versus another kid's values and so as far as that goes i
try to tell the kids like hey like listen to your headphones if you really want to like uh be in control of the music thing but at the same time i'm like hey like i i listen to garbage i love it and that's just me you don't have to be like me and i'm just telling you like the like these are the songs i listen just so like i'm not i'm not like i'm not presenting uh like a fake version of myself yeah.
Now that you've been on the field as a coach a player and a mentor do you think your perspective on the game has evolved yeah in a lot of ways, I think that I've been coaching for around 10 years as far as teams go and, i feel like just now probably starting really starting about last fall not 2024 but like 2023 um. I have really been reflecting on, like, there's an old saying, like, you've forgotten more baseball than these kids actually know.
And I, like, my coaches would say that. And I'm like, oh, that's what that's like. But reflecting on what it's like to be a teenager. And really like those are emotions those are insecurities those are things that I like am so far removed from but really govern the outlook and the lives of the people that I'm dealing with and when I lead with that it's like it really changes what I prioritize as a coach.
And so leading with that is a totally different perspective, um, in me than whatever I was thinking about just getting out of pro ball and getting all the latest drills and being like, I'm just going to train these kids to be elite, like to really like reach a person. Um, that's the important stuff. And like, I'm kind of more in the weeds with that, um, Um, that I really was when I started, I think that's really changed my perspective. Um, and then what's really been fun is, uh.
The rules, like the rules of baseball. It's like a novel. It's written by lawyers. And, um, and to play baseball at a high level, like, it's not like basketball or football where there's drawn up plays, like really, it's more like jazz music. Like they just like throw you out there and you just like, it's impro, it's a bunch of random occurrences and it's improvised.
And so a team is really trusting your ability to understand situations, to under have a good rule interpretation and just respond in a way that is favorable to your club um and so that's there but fast forward today like the kids don't have umpires like the they have kids umpire the games because they're like i think that kind of really overly aggressive parents yelling at umpires over strike and ball calls are like less likely to yell at somebody else's kid yeah that makes sense.
And the rule book is really how you educate kids on how to play baseball and each age level is a totally different rule book and the kids aren't taking the time to like read it and so the like rule interpretation is incredibly nuanced and it's a cool teaching point to conceptualize the game for the kids and that's been really fun of just like diving into that and presenting it to your players in a way that gets them, that creates a spark
that goes, oh, that's a really interesting thing that I didn't know about baseball. Looking back on the time that you spent playing professional baseball, what does it mean to you now? I think that what it means to me now, I would say that like kind of a main ingredient that put me in the position to experience that, um, that I also feel that I'm still, um, carrying with me is an, an appreciation for other people's talents. Um, and I, I don't think that that's a common thing.
Uh, I think that as people in general, it's pretty common for people to be so into their own lives and the thing that they're doing to really not notice that there's a lot of great things going on around you um you know and just like to kind of give an example like going, i met i met uh a woman um, Her name is Greta, I think it's Greta Anderson, and she does the U.S. Ski team. She's an employee of the U.S. ski team, and she will come to Anchorage to scout Nordic skiers.
And in talking to her, she was like, I have to, there's a cup called the Besh Cup. And the best cup is named after mr besh which was the gym teacher at scenic park and so at scenic park we used we had we were outfitted in skate like we could do skating every kid in the school could do skating because they had a school's worth of ice skates the kids do skating and then you have like the presidential fitness test where you have to run a mile we would nordic ski a
mile because our whole school is outfitted in Nordic skis. So you're like exposed to that. But anyway, there's a Nordic ski race that's named after him. And this U.S. ski employee was like, I have to go and watch this event because there will be a kid who medals in the Olympics out of this event.
Meaning that our community produces so many high-level skiers that there will be a kid who competes at the absolute highest levels in the entire world out of a youth race that they just have in Anchorage. But anyway, at Scenic Park, I remember we were doing this, we were skiing a mile, and you have all these boys in the school who are ultra competitive because they like sports, but they don't know how to ski.
And so we got to ski this thing and we're like running in skis and falling and it's just like awkward and I was one of those boys and I get in I just like stumble across the finish and I'm like what's my time who came in first and I remember talking to Mr. Bash and he was like.
He's like uh keegan randall got first place i'm like who's keegan randall i'm in sixth grade yeah like she's kicking around as a girl in fifth grade it's like a girl one he's like yeah and he's like she can really ski it was one of those moments that is just like hey like you don't get it like she is like something but she's like a multi-time olympic meddler like a world-class skier that was just like a classroom away and at scenic park and then uh i went to you know
it was a grade above me is a guy justin johnson who went to the nhl with the rangers and uh there are just talented kids that you just you grew up with and uh and they're all around and and you you everybody wants high achievement and but they don't realize like it's all around anchorage there's there's people who are tremendously talented and uh but anyway you know like going in pro ball um yeah i just remember certain players like for me i
played a lot around a lot of great players hall of famers um and you know hall of fame is mostly about longevity. I, you know, I've played with Miguel Cabrera and Gary Sheffield and Chipper Jones and all these guys, but the best player that I ever, I feel I've ever seen, um, was Jose Reyes in his prime. He could just do, he was so fast. He had the strongest arm, um, could hit for power, could play a premium position.
Steel bases, and he would do something every single game that you'd just be like i cannot believe i just saw that happen this is the best player i've ever seen in my life and and he became a perennial all-star and won batting titles and and all those things and and um i think just having the lens of like i'm having a moment this is a really special player um and then seeing that kind of the cream cream right cream rises to the top or whatever,
like you see that rise to the highest levels of baseball. Um, I think past playing, um, you know, just having a great conversation with somebody in the community or seeing a young person with talent, you're able to hold on to the potential of. This is a really special person, or this is like a really impactful interaction. Like I need to hold this with me because this is going, this is going to grow into something more meaningful.
I think it's kind of uh my experiences have kind of given permission for that and i don't think everybody has that skill i think what's more common is to we live in a culture that makes it really easy to cut people down or look for things look for negative um things about people that undermine them or devalue them and um and so i i like going through life looking at things that way yeah i think that's a probably a really healthy way to go through life well i i think yeah
and that's a surprising thing is is that like i guess the moral of all that is you're really not that far removed from excellence none of us are and and it's just like if you if you open up yourself to to accept that that might be a possibility you're going to recognize it and who doesn't want to go through their day to see it's going i just saw something really impressive and it's there it's i promise you it's very it's more accessible than you realize.
Well jamar those are all my questions i want to thank you for your time for talking with me about baseball and for the work you're doing now to help Alaska's youth? Oh, not a problem. It's really enjoyable. I feel like baseball in Alaska is really on an upswing. There's some kids who are working really hard at it, are passionate about it, and we've got a super mild winter. So I think we're going to be on the fields pretty early this year. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get started. Music.
For more information about the Anchorage Museum, visit anchoragemuseum.org. This podcast was produced by me, Cody Liska, for the Anchorage Museum. With additional help from Julie Decker. Chatter Marks Music is produced by Keys Open Doors. Music.