WATERLOO • The nickname is ironic, but there is nothing but sincerity behind the streak of the Mon-Clair League’s iron man.
Jake “Wheels” Hurst is wrapping up his 12th consecutive season on the summer circuit with the Waterloo Millers.
In all that time, the power-hitting Hurst has never missed a game.
He has amassed a dozen years of perfect attendance, working his schedule around baseball, and not the other way around.
“Now I’m 31, and I’ll be 32 pretty soon, and I figure if I miss one game that is one more that I won’t have and can’t get back,” Hurst said on Sunday in between games of a home doubleheader against Fairview Heights. “I am leaving today after the game, hooking up the boat and going to Arkansas.
“It’s a seven-hour drive and it would have been easy for me to skip these two games and be on the road (Saturday), or even Friday afternoon. We will come back next Friday so I can be here for the game Friday night. I just don’t want to miss a game and look back and not have it.”
Hurst has always said he believes in fulfilling his commitments. He committed to play ball with Waterloo, and when there is a game on the slate, he feels it is his duty to be there.
But clearly, his love of the game is just as important.
“It’s a combination of both,” Hurst said. “I feel like everybody that comes out here needs structure. They should play every game in my opinion, unless you have a death in the family, and I might even be able to find a way around that.”
Hurst is a throwback to bygone days, and while everyone back then had an excuse for taking the occasional powder, they were much less likely to risk the wrath of grizzled veteran teammates with the fire in their eyes.
“I think a team needs that and I don’t see a lot of people doing it anymore, having the commitment to it,” Hurst said. “It is not really that I try to, I just do it. And the older I get, the harder it is to make it to every game.”
Hurst has two stepkids with his fiancee, Jamie, and works somewhere around 60 hours per week, but he has always felt that his weekend pursuits on the diamond are worth the sacrifice they take.
Time is creeping in, though.
“I am starting to ask myself that,” Hurst said. “It has been worth it all these years.”
Exacerbating the wear and tear of years is the fact that this season, for the first time in decades, Waterloo finds itself struggling to find an identity. Manager Vern Moehrs has seen veterans called away by family responsibilities and has had to plug the gaps with young players fresh out of high school who are getting their first taste of the Mon-Clair League’s intensity.
The wholesale changes, as well as injuries and defections, have caused the Millers to slide into unfamiliar, murky backwaters.
“It has been a nightmare,” Hurst said. “You don’t ever know who is going to be here, the kids are 16, 17, 18 years old. We have had a lot of problems, had a couple of people quit. I am about it, except for a small group of guys who were part of that last generation of guys who came out and just kicked everyone’s butts. Those days are over.
“It is more of a teaching game almost now, and I am like a parent to some of these kids. It is hard. I have never been on a team like this that didn’t win. It is starting to make it hard to come to every game and stay focused, be concentrated on your work that night. It is kind of a cancer.”
Waterloo has won the Monroe Division title for 29 years in a row, sometimes by the scruff of their neck, sometimes pulling their bacon out of the fire at the last possible second, but more often than not by a landslide.
This season has seen that dominance disappear. A split in the double dip against Fairview left the Millers gasping for air with one weekend left before the playoffs start.
“You don’t want to let it go, but it is not looking very good,” Hurst said. "It is almost looking impossible right now. You know what, though, it’s not like the other teams came out and they were that good. All these other teams are still the same teams with the same records, it’s just that we are not up at the top with two or three losses.
“I don’t want to take anything away from them, but they are still the same teams that they were. We are just that much worse. We just don’t have it.”
Waterloo’s legacy is decades in the making, but the roster boasts less college baseball experience than at any point in recent memory. All-Stars like Eric Caby, Jake Friederich, and the dynamic duo of Brian Fuess and Travis Dawson are done. Veteran pitchers Corey Blackwell, Brandon Musso, Brandon Waeltz, Chris Otten and Hurst are all that is left from the championship years.
The pitching staff is still a strong suit for the Millers, but inexperience has proven to be an Achilles heel in year-to-year consistency.
“These kids are so young and they have so much future in front of them that we don’t know who is coming back,” Hurst said. “One kid might go to college up north and then stay up there. The group of guys that was always good was the one where we were all just out of college. We had them from their early 20s into their early 30s, that was always a group of guys who came out here and were experienced enough to see a good curve ball after a 90 mile-per-hour fastball.
“These kids have never seen that before, it is like a foreign language to them, and they don’t have a chance sometimes. It is not their fault, they are just young and the guys they are playing against are good. It is a little overwhelming for them I think.”
A lot of the players who have passed through the exit door have been chased there by pressure at home, where the argument for playing amateur ball can’t be supported when the demands of family and work are so great.
Hurst has a full support system behind his playing streak. He is going to tie the knot this fall, but any plans beyond that will just have to wait.
He may not be the fastest from first to third, but the smart money is on Hurst being there on starting day 2012.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet, so I am just taking it one year at a time,” Hurst said. “I want to play longer, but I don’t know how much longer I will be able to. The older you get you have priority changes. I’m getting married Sept. 10, but she still wants me to play. My stepson, Jackson, is 11 and I like to watch him play ball. My fiancee enjoys it though and it is relaxing to come out here and watch.
“It is not so relaxing this year, it is more frustrating. The last 11 years, you come out and you win all the time, and when you lose you are like ‘What the heck happened?’ Now when we go out and win we say ‘What the heck happened?’ It is bad.”
