Milford Native Writes Book on Being a College Athlete

Ken Jacobi, a 24-year-old Milfordite, has written a book about his days as a college baseball player. Jacobi hopes to help aspiring high school and college athletes to understand the reality of what it’s like to be a college athlete.

“Going With the Pitch: Adusting to Life as a Division I College Athlete” is written from Jacobi’s perspective as a former college baseball player, having been recruited by Binghamton University.

As a kid, Jacobi attended in Milford and the Hopkins School in New Haven.  Originally hoping to be recruited by a warm weather college, Jacobi found snowy Binghamton University in upstate New York to be the place that offered him the best opportunity with a “very generous scholarship offer,” and a place in their School of Management program.

When asked what Jacobi aimed to achieve by writing his book, he explained his goal was “to use all his knowledge and experience from school to help high school and college kids know what being a student athlete is like.”

“The reality, “ he said.  “The good and the bad.”

Studying while on the road, not being able to socialize because of a game the next day, and all the situations that go along with being a college athlete are things Jacobi writes about.  He kept a journal while in college of what he termed “the untold story” of what it is like to be a student athlete.

“It’s about all the things I had to overcome in school,” said Jacobi. 

The book is meant as a kind of road map for, as Jacobi put it, “the 99 percent of kids just trying to get into the lineup” as opposed to a book about a star MVP-type athlete.

In college, Jacobi said the realization came that the chance of making it to the major leagues was much slimmer than he had thought.  As he went through college, Jacobi saw how many good players there were and began to see the difference between getting recruited by a college and getting drafted by a professional team.

It was sometime in his junior year that Jacobi had what he termed a sort of “epiphany” about playing baseball.  He decided it wasn’t going to work as a career and that he simply wanted to remove the pressure and enjoy playing baseball for the rest of his college days.

“I decided to leave baseball on the field and enjoy the other parts of my life,” he said.

Jacobi feels that high school kids who are recruited to play college sports need to be ready to accept that “you’re not the big fish in the small pond anymore.”  They need, he said, to realize “that everyone got scholarship offers because everyone there was ‘the best’ on their respective high school team, just like you.”

A 2009 graduate of Binghamton with a BS degree, Jacobi is currently working in “traffic operations for a metal trading company” in Stamford. He plays on the company softball team where, although he has always been an outfielder, they “made (him) play shortstop and bat third.”   He hopes to coach baseball someday and calls his book his “connection back to baseball.”

Jacobi’s book is available at Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1460919890?tag=thenewjt30page&camp=213381&creative=390973&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=1460919890&adid=1NDBNY1E4ZJ058TXFF7N&) and also through his website at http://goingwiththepitch.com where he has a blog. He welcomes and encourages parents and kids to contact him.