Get to know Northampton HS alum, collegiate baseball player Jack Power
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — As a kid, Jack Power dreamed of playing for the Boston Red Sox. In that way, he may have been like most Little Leaguers in Northampton, envisioning soaring home runs that cleared the Green Monster and a wicked loud crowd chanting his name. To be honest, though, he didn’t believe he was an exceptional athlete. His dad enrolled him in three sports, and he was best at baseball. His first at-bat was in the local Cal Ripken League when he was 6, and by the time he was a teenager, the left-handed, power-hitting catcher had made Varsity as a Northampton High School freshman.
By then, he’d also met two people who would shape his career. When Power was 8, he was introduced to Erik Ostberg, another left-handed catcher from Florence. Ostberg’s father, who founded the Cal Ripken League, was responsible for the pivotal connection. Power was in awe of Ostberg, who was seven years older and a rising star at The Williston Northampton School. The future NHS standout started working one-on-one with his idol four years later – when Ostberg was on breaks from the University of Hartford, where he now played Division I baseball. Sometimes they trained at the local Advanced Performance Academy, which was owned by another superior player: Peter Fatse. As Ostberg was drafted out of college to the Tampa Bay Rays, Fatse was on his way to becoming the hitting coach for the Boston Red Sox.
Even though Power was honing his skills with big leaguers, he still didn’t think he was that accomplished. But he was determined. “The end goal was for me to get drafted and play professional baseball,” he says. “Coming from Northampton, which not many know as a sports town, that opportunity would mean a lot to my family.” But first: Division I baseball, where he would finally learn something that many had known for a while. As they might put it in Boston, he was mad good.
“I don’t think it really hit me that I had talent until last year,” says Power, now a sophomore at the University of Long Island. As a freshman, there were two catchers ahead of him on the roster, so his coach tried him at every position but pitcher and centerfield. He spent most of the year at second base, where he got a whole new perspective on the infield. At the plate, he also had to adjust. “In western Mass high school baseball, you rarely see [pitches] over 80 miles per hour,” he says. “In college, we’re seeing 92, 93, 95 sometimes.”
Add to that a 60-game schedule, constant travel, regular practice, and a full load of classes. It was stressful at times, and Power understood quickly that talent alone wouldn’t sustain him. His older teammates and Ostberg taught him that baseball is as mental as it is physical. “When you go through failure, when you struggle, it’s vital to getting better as a player and as a person,” says Power. “Consistent hard work is going to beat talent 10 times out of 10.”
Last summer Power played in the Future Collegiate Baseball League, where he faced the sons of beloved Red Sox Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz. This winter he will train harder than ever with Ostberg and Fatse. His upcoming season is clutch because, like Ostberg, he hopes to be drafted out of college during his junior year. That’s only 16 months away.
And then? Back to his dream.
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