The realities of life have a way of telling a guy when it’s time to give up the dream.
That’s where Bucky Jacobsen was three years ago, embracing the memories of his seven blissful weeks with the Seattle Mariners in 2004 but also his undying belief that he could still hit a big-league pitch out of the ballpark.
Maybe Jacobsen should have listened to those in baseball who wouldn’t sign him because nobody but himself believed his wrecked right knee would ever be good enough for the big leagues.
Maybe he should have realized that playing independent ball in 2006 wouldn’t get him back to the majors, or that the Mexican League was no way to spend a winter when he could have been getting on with life.
But he couldn’t give it up.
He kept making payments on a $400,000 home, drove an expensive car and happily bought dinner for everyone at the table, spending as though the major league money was still coming in. He believed it would again, that the $600 he made every two weeks playing independent ball was merely temporary.
“I felt like I was going to get an opportunity to come back to the big leagues,” Jacobsen said. “My pride might have got in the way a little bit. Basically we had some early big-league bills. Our credit’s hurting a little bit. We’re upside down in our house. Our house is the last thing we have from making the big leagues and it was something I wanted to hold onto.
“We would go out to eat and if we spent $50 on dinner, I’d leave $25 for a tip. The last few years, I wish I had half of that money that I tipped people. If we went out with friends, I bought not to impress them but because I was in a situation where I could.”
That’s how far Jacobsen, perhaps the most popular player ever to have his cup of big-league coffee with the Mariners, had fallen by the winter of 2007.
Called up in July, 2004, he hit nine home runs in 42 games and belted his way into the curiosity of Mariners fans as a big, bald slugger who was a refreshing change in a last-place season.
But a knee injury that had bothered him for more than a year got worse, and he had surgery that September. Jacobsen spent the entire 2005 season rehabbing and trying to push his way through the minor leagues — making the major league minimum of $325,000 — but didn’t. A free agent the next year, he played for Long Island of the independent Atlantic League and, despite hitting 21 homers in 2006, still didn’t get a call.
Jacobsen played the following winter in the Mexican League, and that’s when he decided not to keep chasing the game if he couldn’t make decent money at it.
“I was going backwards, not just financially,” said Jacobsen, now 34. “In baseball I was below where I was five or six years before. It was a tough decision to make, to say enough is enough and move on.”
Newly retired, stepping into the next phase of his life became even more difficult. Jacobsen got his real estate license but the market tanked.
“The savings account was dwindling down to nothing and I fell into hard times,” he said.
He kept telling his wife, Jennifer, that things would get better. But they didn’t.
“I’ve always been optimistic, possibly to a fault,” he said. “I always thought I would make something happen, that I just had to figure out what to do.”
The one thing Jacobsen knew better than anything else was how to hit a baseball, and he’d long wanted to teach youth baseball players. But when he looked into starting a training facility in King County, he learned it would take $15,000 and at least a year to get all the required permits. He had neither the money nor the time.
“Not only was I not making money, I didn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “I’d had a new car but we sold that and I’m back to driving the ’99 Yukon that took me around the minor leagues my whole career. It didn’t matter what we cut out, we couldn’t make every payment. Our credit took a pretty big hit.”
Jacobsen can’t thank his wife enough for sticking with him and making sacrifices to help keep them from losing the house. When the big-league money ran out, she didn’t.
“Bless her,” he said. “She worked a couple of jobs and busted her rear end to basically keep us above water. If it wasn’t for her, we would have drowned a long time ago.”
Jacobsen found work where he could. A buddy who owns a construction company hired him to gut houses that were damaged in the 2009 Snoqualmie River flood.
“I’m not much of a construction guy, but I’m strong and I can rip a house apart,” he said.
He also used his brawn working on the grounds crew at a golf course that had been flooded.
“I’m out there shoveling some of the Snoqualmie River bed that had flooded onto the course. I’m out there picking up range balls,” Jacobsen said. “There were tons of times I would have little conversations with myself, and I’d ask, ‘How in the heck did I get here? Was I not in the big leagues just a couple of years ago?’”
He kept thinking about his baseball dream — not that he could return to the big leagues, but that he could teach kids. Five months ago, he opened a new business in a 5,000-square-foot facility in North Bend.
Bucky’s Baseball Academy (www.buckybaseball.com) is doing well, he says.
“It took me a few months once I put it together, but now I feel like I’m on the upswing,” said Jacobsen, who teaches individual and group lessons. “I love the teaching part of it. We’ve had probably 800 to a thousand kids come through here the last few months. Right now, everything I make is going back into it. But if I do the right thing, good things will start to happen again.”
He’s also a regular at Safeco Field this season, having joined KJR radio as an analyst on the station’s postgame show.
“It’s awesome. I’m getting to go on the air and kind of B.S. about baseball,” he said. “I usually don’t struggle for things to say, and let’s face it, I’ve got a perfect face for radio.
“I can see that things are going to end up being OK. My mom said that the tough times will make you appreciate the good times even more. I think I appreciated that time in the big leagues about as much as anybody can, but when I get back to a similar type place with financial security, I’m going to enjoy it even more.”
Kirby Arnold covers the Mariners for The Herald
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