Baseball
Favorite athlete: Cole Hamels
Favorite team: Phillies
Favorite memory competing in sports: Being part of the first state-qualifying team in the history of Upper Dublin High School Baseball.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Taking an entire practice to learn how to throw a curveball, while the majority were thrown over the backstop.
Music on iPod: Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, Jack Johnson, Zac Brown Band
Future plans: Live in San Diego
Words to live by: “If not me, then who…?”
One goal before turning 30: Travel to Africa and South America
One thing people don’t know about me: That I was 11 pounds 1 ounce at birth.
By GORDON GLANTZ
As injuries go, a lower back strain is barely a blip on the radar. Some rest, and you’re good to go.
But it was enough to keep Upper Dublin’s Dan Jacobson off the hill and on the bench for a stretch of a few weeks toward the end of the season.
For the fourth-year senior, it could not have come at a more inopportune time.
“I was out for three weeks with lower back strain,” he said. “It was a slight injury, so I wasn’t concerned. I was just more frustrated than anything, watching all of my teammates play.
“It was tough. Of all times, it had to be (at the end of) my senior year.”
As fate would have it, Jacobson would get the call one last time, in the May 8th season finale against Plymouth Whitemarsh.
And the Univest Male Athlete of the Week was able to live in the moment, ending his storied career with a storybook ending.
Avenging his only league loss, sustained against PW in his last prior outing before injury on April 16, Jacobson was near flawless in a 1-0 extra-innings win.
Going wire to wire, he allowed just two hits while yielding no walks and striking out seven.
He finished the season 3-2 with an earned-run average of 0.69. In 30 1/3 innings, he gave up just eight walks while striking out 35.
It was a grand way to go out, but also bittersweet.
In the blink of an eye, his career was over.
“It’s kind of crazy,” he admitted. “It definitely went by quick. I remember back to freshman orientation, they said it was going to go by so fast that. Turns out, it was kind of true.”
For Love of the Game
When Jacobson showed up as a freshman hopeful for the coach Ed Wall’s baseball team, his confidence as an athlete was not exactly riding on a high note.
He spent the fall on the junior varsity golf team and scored all of two points for the junior varsity basketball team during the winter season.
But baseball was different.
He not only made an impression on Wall, but stayed with the varsity.
“It was a great opportunity (to play varsity),” said Jacobson. “Honestly, I was concerned that I wouldn’t even make the junior varsity team.”
After excelling at baseball, above golf and basketball, he decided to focus his energies on the American pastime.
That commitment was year-round. He went indoor camps and showcases as far away as Georgia and Florida, which he knew was the way to punch his ticket to the next level.
“I just love baseball,” he said. “I would do it all day if I had to.”
Along with playing American Legion baseball for the Fort Washington Generals and climbing the ladder of importance at Upper Dublin, he maintained contact with various college coaches.
The recruiting process proved to be a two-way street, as he had to pursue coaches as much as they pursued him.
“I was always interested in continuing my baseball career,” he said, adding that training and conditioning were part of his routine as a self-starter. “But I knew that (playing in college) was going to be hard to do without going to the showcases and contacting coaches.
“A lot of it was about making connections. I met tons of people. Then it was just sending out e-mails and talking in person.”
The Road to Rhode Island
For a while, it seemed that Jacobson was going to take his fast ball – clocked as high as 88 miles-per-hour – close to home and play at Temple, but the varsity program was since dropped there.
“They were tops for a while,” he said. “There was interest both ways, but we couldn’t get a straight answer (about the future of the program).”
But Jacobson, with a 3.5 grade-point average and a resume of team-related community service activities, had other options.
They included Lafayette and West Chester.
And Rhode Island, which quickly rose to the top of the list for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it was located near the beach and had marine biology as a major.
“It’s not the easiest major to find,” he said. “I was willing to drop the major for baseball, but they had it there. It just kind of worked itself out that way.
“I always loved the beach, marine life and the tropics. I’m giving it a shot.”
Although the program under Jim Foster has a solid reputation, last season was what Jacobson called “a transition year” at Rhode Island, with only five seniors on the roster and four freshmen in the regular starting lineup.
Where he fits in is yet to be determined.
“They told me I will be coming in with a blank slate,” said Jacobson, adding that how he pitches during the fall season will go a long way to determining his role.
Although he throws hard, he realizes he will have to mix it up a bit to excel on the collegiate level.
“I’m a power pitcher,” he said. “I’m trying to develop my off-speed stuff. My slider, this year, was my ‘out’ pitch. I have confidence in my changeup and my curve ball is coming along. But it’s good to be confident with the fastball.”
A year to Remember
The opportunity to play right away as a freshman in 2011 was memorable for Jacobson, but nothing tops playing a major role on the 2012 team that reached the state tournament.
It was the first time in school history that an Upper Dublin baseball team had made it that far.
A sophomore, he was fully accepted and taken under the wing of the team’s upperclassmen.
Murray Hershgordon. Jesse Kohler. Dan Brown. Luke Felix. Andrew Yekel.
When you ask him about mentors and role models, these are the names he rattles off.
“We were like a big family,” he recalled, attributing that sense of unity to much of team’s success. “They treated me like one of them. We all hung out together. It wasn’t just three or four of them. It was the whole team. We were like brothers.”
And when he came out this spring, Jacobson was the last of the 2012 Cardinal family standing.
“We’ve been lucky to have Dan as a starting varsity pitcher for us since 2011,” said coach Ed Wall. “He is the last link remaining from our 2012 State Tournament Team, who has been a leader on and off the field. Whether it is in the classroom, a community service opportunity or on the playing field, you can always count on Dan to be the one to step up and get involved.”
Although he never had to be a vocal leader before, Jacobson found himself transformed this season.
“It was pretty weird,” he said of the 2014 landscape. “Those guys (from 2012) were all the big, tough guys that I looked up to. They were the ones who were always vocal.”
Jacobson added that he “let out a few battle cries” during the season, which ended with his masterful outing against PW on May 8th.
