The grandfather is a College Football Hall of Fame coach. The grandson is earning his stripes as a community college baseball coach.
Traits of the grandfather are inherent in the grandson.
There is the business-like approach that Jeff James brings to his job as hitting coach for the Everett Community College baseball team.
Likewise, Don James was all business when he stepped on the practice field each day as head football coach at the University of Washington.
There is the quiet, but firm demeanor of the younger man that brings up images of his famous grandfather. “There’s something about him that demands respect,” Everett CC head baseball coach Levi Lacey said of his 24-year-old assistant. “He gets his point across to the guys in a strict but easy way that they really listen to.”
Punctuality was and still is a very big deal with the grandfather. “When we leave for church, it’s ‘We’re leaving at this time or you’re driving your own car,’ ” Jeff said of the man known to Husky fans as the “Dawgfather.” Punctuality is also a very big deal with the grandson: He carries a stopwatch to time drills.
And then there are the vigilant eyes. When Don James was in his tower observing practice, he didn’t miss a thing on the field. Every player felt as if the coach’s eyes were fixed on him.
The same might be said of the grandson. “You don’t slack off in practice,” said Trojan outfielder Michael Malland, “because someone’s eyes are on you, most likely coach James’.”
Jeff James was standing behind three batting cages at the Trojans’ indoor facility recently, about to watch two dozen players hit. In one cage, they practiced sacrifice bunts, in another it was hit-and-run, and in the third it was moving runners over.
“Let’s go,” said James, his cap tugged down tightly so that you could barely see his eyes. “Six minutes, game on.”
In each cage, two teams competed against one another, earning points for performing the drills correctly. The winning team got to boast, the losers did pushups.
In the middle cage, a player fouled a ball off, then dug in for the next pitch.
“You’re out, you’re out,” James shouted.
“You’re out on a foul ball?” the player said with a groan.
The coach nodded and the player moved off to the side.
Moments later, something caught the coach’s eye in the third cage. He walked over and pulled a hitter aside. “Do you understand what we’re trying to do here?” he said in a calm but commanding voice.
Then he explained.
“I want to make sure I hold them responsible,” he said after the two-hour practice had ended.
“Nothing ever gets by him,” Malland said, “even if you’re across the room.”
When James speaks, players listen. And they learn.
Malland can attest to the coach’s teaching methods. “He helped me mature as a hitter,” said the sophomore from Kamiak High School. “Halfway through last season, I was really struggling. By the end of the year, I was hitting .362.”
James doesn’t just talk a good game. He played a good game.
As a player on a Lacey-coached semi-pro team several years ago, James was a “really good hitter,” Lacey said. “He was a great two-strike hitter. He was a situational hitter. He would move runners over, he could hit behind guys. He had the best approach on the team. We try to get him to instill that with these guys and he’s been doing a really good job.”
Two years ago, James was coaching a semi-pro team in San Francisco when he and Lacey again crossed paths, their teams meeting in a tournament in California. “I picked his brain and we just clicked right away,” Lacey said.
Lacey made him an offer to become a Trojan assistant, and James accepted.
But if Lacey were a betting man, he’d wager he won’t be able to keep him much longer. “He’s an up-and-comer,” the Trojan coach said. “I don’t think he’s going to be here for too long. But I’ll take my couple of years with him while I get them.”
Like his grandfather, the grandson wants to make a career of college coaching: a Division I job is his goal.
His grandfather had a hunch that Jeff would go into coaching, though “he was never really adamant about what he was going to do.”
“He’s a bright young guy, willing to work,” Don said from his winter home in Palm Desert, Calif. “It appears he’s willing to pay his dues.”
Is he ever. The San Francisco team he coached operated on a tight budget and sometimes made 10-hour trips in vans and cars to play games, then came home the same night. By the end of the summer, they had traveled more than 10,000 miles.
“That wore on the guys a ton,” he said.
It also made Lacey’s offer that much more appealing.w
To get anywhere in coaching, one needs to get to know a lot of people, and the best place to do this is at the National Coaches Convention, and Don has encouraged Jeff to go there and “network.” And to be a “good citizen,” not that he needs to tell his grandson that.
When he was coaching, Don James said a sure-fire way for a job-seeker to get crossed off his list was to complain about the salary he was making or to badmouth his current boss. “If you can’t be loyal to the guy you’re working for …”
His grandson appears to be very happy in his current job. “I love working for Levi,” he said. “He’s a really smart guy, and I love his energy.”
Like his grandfather, Jeff James was a quarterback, though he didn’t play football in college.
He went to Newport High School where he was the starting quarterback his senior year and also the kicker. Coming out of high school, he had an opportunity to become the backup kicker at Eastern Michigan University and play for his uncle, Jeff Woodruff, a former assistant at the UW, but he turned it down because he wanted to play baseball.
He played two years at Bellevue Community College before entering the UW, where he mostly sat the bench his junior year then became a graduate assistant his senior year after battling shoulder problems.
His first year at the U, he roomed with a future Cy Young Award winner: Tim Lincecum. James had once faced Lincecum in a semi-pro game and had “never seen anything faster or more electric” than what the slight right-hander threw that day.
So James had a strong feeling that Linceum, a first-round draft choice of the San Francisco Giants in 2006, was going to be a very good major league pitcher.
“I expected him to do really well,” he said, “but I didn’t see a Cy Young coming.”
Especially not in his second season in the big leagues.
One other thing that came out of that semi-pro matchup: Jeff’s team won and he got a hit off of Lincecum.
Not many can make that claim.
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