Written by JOHN BAUMAN
Jackson Hicks remembers the first time he thought he was taking off his baseball jersey for the last time.
His team, the East Chapel Hill High School Wildcats, had just lost to Sanderson High School in the first round of the NC High School State Playoffs. Hicks, a senior, had just played his last high school baseball game. Without any offers from college baseball programs, Hicks thought that date, May 11, 2016, was the last time he’d step on the baseball diamond competitively.
“I remember sitting in the clubhouse for a long time, I think it was the last one to leave,” Hicks said. “And just thinking that, ‘This could be the last time I’d ever put on a baseball jersey.’”
“I went home to my family and we all cried thinking about all the memories from baseball.”
Hicks didn’t know it then, but that moment was far from the last memory he’d have on field. In the years since, Hicks has gone on an incredible baseball journey, from playing in the National Club Baseball Association to the United Shore Professional Baseball League to now, the Florida State League.
Today, Hicks is a member of Fort Myers Mighty Mussels, the Minnesota Twins’ Single-A affiliate. As of April 25, Hicks has pitched four innings, allowing four earned runs while striking out three batters. The kid without any offers at the end of high school is now a minor league baseball player with a 0.500 WHIP.
And none of it would have been possible without an amazing support system around him, lots of hard work and a simple question he asked one of his high school coaches.
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Hicks’ baseball career began in earnest in high school, playing for East Chapel Hill’s junior varsity and varsity teams.
Until his senior year, Hicks focused primarily on middle infield positions. He would later post a .321 batting average with 9 RBIs and 18 runs scored in his senior season.
But Hicks didn’t have much interest from college coaches as a shortstop. What changed Hicks’ trajectory was a question to his high school baseball coach Phil Woodell: can I pitch?
“There was finally one game where I think we were short a couple players,” Hicks said. “So, [Coach] let me go out there and throw. I threw an inning and did well and had a lot of fun. Kind of from that point forward, I started putting more effort into pitching.”
Hicks wasn’t totally new to pitching — he’d pitched in youth leagues and in middle school — but there was certainly some rust at the outset. Hicks described his own pitching motion at first as “throwing like a shortstop.” But with time, his form and accuracy improved.
His senior year stats — 30.1 innings pitched with a 5-0 record, 2.54 ERA and 28 strikeouts — were remarkable given all the context. But Hicks still didn’t get much interest from college coaches. His fastball topped out at around 83, 84 miles per hour.
After that Sanderson loss, he took the jersey off, put the glove away and prepared to attend UNC-Chapel Hill as a student.
There, he’d experience the second time that he thought he was taking off his baseball jersey for the last time.
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Hicks matriculated at UNC as a normal student, taking classes in the peace war and defense major, working for the UNC Phonathon and playing intramural sports for fun.
But, he’d also heard about the UNC Club Baseball team from friends and social media.
“I thought that would be a good way to just kind of continue my baseball career, like get to play baseball for another four years without compromising my studies or anything like that,” he said. “So, I made the club team as a pitcher my freshman year.”
Hicks played on the team all four years of college, enjoying the competition and camaraderie with his fellow teammates. He also worked hard at his craft. Slowly but surely, he improved as a pitcher and added a few more digits on fastball velocity.
“By the time I was a senior, I think I hit 90 [MPH] In one of my last starts in college,” Hicks said. “And I felt like I was getting better.”
Hicks’ senior year would have been the culmination of four years of practice. He was also the club baseball president. But, in the spring of 2020, his season was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There was a moment during quarantine, as well, when we kind of figured out that the 2020 college season was over and wasn’t going to be made up,” he said. “I was living with some of my teammates at the time. And we just kind of were sitting out on the front porch thinking like, ‘Man, this is it. We’re probably never going to get to play baseball again.’”
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Hicks graduated from UNC in the Spring of 2020, joined the AmeriCorps and built houses for Habitat for Humanity in Durham. But he also kept the baseball dream alive, even if it was just a flicker at that point. Hicks also trained at a facility in Durham called Baseball Rebellion, thinking about graduate programs and where he could potentially walk on to play baseball. Instead, he got word of a tryout for a baseball league up north.
“When he drove to Ohio and Michigan last May to try out for some independent leagues, he knew the odds were stacked against him,” Hicks’ mother, Linda Ashman, said. “He hadn’t been recruited out of high school, he’d never played in an NCAA or junior college program, and he’d be competing against players who had those backgrounds. But, he gave it a shot.”
Hicks showed enough during the tryout to end up making the league and became a member of the Westside Woolly Mammoths. He threw 33.1 innings in seven starts for the Mammoths. Hicks had new experiences, including living away from home, playing in front of fans and getting paid to play baseball for the first time.
That might have been where the story ended. But thanks to a 2.16 ERA and stellar 1.080 WHIP in that independent league, Hicks got another life-changing opportunity.
“I was sitting in my apartment in Michigan one day and got a call from my manager,” Hicks recalled. “And he was basically like, ‘Hey, the Twins bought out your contract. So, you’re going down to Florida to sign with them.’”
Hicks went from a high school baseball player to a club baseball player to a professional baseball player to now, a minor league baseball player.
Hicks joined the Twins’ Florida Complex League and Low-A Southeast teams in 2021. This season, he’s suiting up in Single-A, only two more steps on the minor league ladder from potentially playing in Durham against the Bulls in Triple-A.
Jackson Hicks, signing his minor league contract with the Minnesota Twins franchise. (Photo via Jackson Hicks.)
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From the outside, Hicks’ journey looks miraculous. But Ashman has seen this coming since her son was little.
“When Jackson was in kindergarten [and every year afterward,] he wrote that his goal was to be a professional baseball player,” she said. “He knows it’s a long haul to the MLB and the odds are still stacked against him, but through a lot of hard work and determination he’s managed to get his foot in the door and give himself a chance.”
This journey wouldn’t have been possible without help from Hicks’ support system.
“My girlfriend, Emily, she’s always been really supportive in wanting me to chase this dream,” Hicks said. “Even though it’s been hard on her, with me moving all over the country and never really knowing I could get picked up and shipped somewhere else pretty much at any time.”
“And then my parents, obviously,” he added. “I had a conversation with them a little bit, probably early 2021. Just kind of like, what my goals were in life and what I wanted to do. And I was like, ‘All I really want to do is play baseball and try to give that a shot.’”
At this point, Hicks has done more than just give it a shot. Despite competing against high draft picks, veteran collegiate baseball players and multi-year minor league veterans, Hicks has stuck around and thrived.
“It’s always going to be hard because the players at this level are so talented and every day at the ballpark,” Hicks said. “I’ll see someone do something and I’m like, ‘Holy cow. That guy is really good.’ And it’s amazing that I get to share a field with them.”
Thanks to lots of work in the offseason on his form and fitness, Hicks now throws around 92-94 MPH with a cornucopia of pitches to choose from, including a fastball, a slider, a splitter and a change-up that Hicks has just added.
Hicks doesn’t have a specific goal in mind for where the rest of his baseball career could take him. The only thing he knows for sure is that his baseball jersey isn’t coming off for a while.
“I’ve come a long way,” Hicks said. “And I feel like I’m getting better every day. So, hopefully, I can keep progressing.”
“And I know that it’s highly unlikely for me to have even made it this far. So why not keep going?”
Photo via Jackson Hicks.
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