A look at college baseball’s Last Frontier escape

He ventured to The Last Frontier to find himself. To rediscover his confidence. To get his swagger back.

And in the future, if he ever loses any of that again, all Will Johnston has to do is look in the mirror, flash a smile and check out the scar above the right side of his grin.

“I turned around, somebody said, ‘Heads up!’” Johnston, a Keller High School graduate, recalled, “I turn and look up, and a ball absolutely smoked me in the face.”

There are 108 stitches on a baseball, and on that day, the ball left Johnston with 11 on his own face. The stitches are gone, but the scar remains, and if every scar has a story, Johnston’s could be the beginning of how he turned his college career for the better.

The college baseball season starts this weekend, but the lead-up has gone on for quite some time. For many, it started in summer baseball leagues. Cape Cod is the famous destination. Leagues in California and Florida just make sense. And then there’s Alaska, where the views are scenic, the air is fresh, and the baseball — surprisingly — features some of the best college players from the continental United States, including Texas.

It’s an unexpected match, college baseball and Alaska, that’s been in existence since the ‘70s. Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire hit home runs for a summer there. So did current Yankees slugger Aaron Judge. Randy Johnson struck so many batters out in the summer of 1984, that rumor has it opposing players would take days off just to avoid seeing one of his intimating fastballs.

The beauty of the Alaska Baseball League, though, isn’t rooted in its alumni. It’s found in the experiences of playing baseball thousands of miles away from home, surrounded by mountains and absent of stress. It’s a place where Texans can go to rediscover the joy of the game, and return a different ballplayer and a different person.

“If any kid playing college ball has the chance to go to Alaska, jump on it and go,” said Bubba Walters, a longtime coach at Central Point ISD who was an assistant this summer for the Mat-Su Miners of the Alaska Baseball League. “You might not ever get to see Alaska again, but you’ll never get the chance to enjoy Alaska that way.”

For the love of the game

Aside from his first season at New Mexico State, Ethan Mann had lived his whole life in Texas. He graduated from McKinney Boyd in 2018, spent two seasons at Midland Junior College, and did so well there that he earned a baseball scholarship to New Mexico State.

So, forgive him if the idea sounded a little strange at first, because to anyone from The Lower 48 without previous knowledge, it’s understandable.

“People play baseball in Alaska?” Mann thought when his college coaches first told him he’d be going there for a summer. “I just never thought in my life that ‘I’m going to go to Alaska one day’ … and then all of a sudden I have to get on a plane and spend my entire summer in Alaska.”

At first, he thought the idea was crazy. Then he did some research. His excitement and his expectations grew. What actually happened exceeded both.

This past summer, Mann led the Anchorage Glacier Pilots to the ABL championship. He hit .333 in 120 at bats with 18 RBIs, 13 stolen bases and four home runs. He won a Silver Slugger Award and was named the league’s Player of the Year. The performance mirrored his entire college career to this point. He hit 16 home runs his freshman season at Midland. The next season he batted .380. In his first season at the Division I level, he started every game, batted .308, and led New Mexico State in stolen bases (11), RBIs (50) and home runs (11).

Mann didn’t need to rediscover his confidence in Alaska. He already had that. He needed something different.

Baseball is often romanticized by the reason so many choose to play it. There’s a love for the game, discovered early and rekindled often. But the game is also one of failure, and for those who choose to pursue it to its farthest lengths, one of stress and high stakes.

Consider Mann’s baseball story for a moment. At McKinney Boyd, he earned first-team shortstop honors in one of the state’s toughest baseball districts, and yet received very little college interest. He went the junior college with aspirations of getting a Division I scholarship, just like all his teammates and every opponent he faced for two years. Now as a Division I college player, he’s hoping to do enough to get drafted, then do enough to climb through the minors and make it to the majors. A knee injury that could be the reason he misses this season doesn’t help.

“It never really stops,” Mann says with a chuckle of realization. “And even if one day I end up making the big leagues I have to continue to do good enough to stay there, so it’s constant stress you can put on yourself.”

In Alaska — unlike the stresses of a summer league like the Cape — he was just playing the sport he loved. Sometimes, in the brief stints he had without a hit, he’d get frustrated, then he’d take a moment, breathe, and remember he was called to play baseball in Alaska for a summer.

Eventually, when Mann and the rest of the Glacier Pilots dogpiled on the mound after winning the league championship, Katelyn Armstrong also had to take a breath in a moment of self-realization. She works a variety of jobs for the Glacier Pilots, which means she’s always on the go. When the final inning started, though, she stopped and took in the championship scene from the dugout.

It meant something to Armstrong, because she had a part in it, and not only because she works for the team. Her parents and her two younger brothers have operated as host families the last three years. The Armstrongs hosted Mann and his New Mexico State teammate, Tommy Tabak, this summer.

All the players are paired up with volunteer host families from the five towns where the teams are located. It’s an all-hands-on-deck responsibility. The families give players lodging, a car, take them kayaking and fly fishing — among other Alaskan activities — and cook them dinners. Katelyn’s mom, Chrissy, said Mann and Tabak’s favorite meal was Ritz cracker chicken. The two recently contacted her to get the recipe again.

“We do want to give them that Alaskan experience,” Chrissy said.

Rising to the challenge

When Pete Christopher, a north New Jersey native, moved to Palmer for his second stint in Alaska, he was asked if he wanted to be the General Manager of the Mat-Su Miners, the ABL team in the area. The previous general manager before him had died, Christopher said; the team hadn’t filled the position in the two years since.

Christopher, a former longtime scout for the Kansas City Royals, didn’t come to Alaska with baseball aspirations, but he liked a challenge. He figured he’d work as the team’s general manager for one season to help get it back on track.

“The place was in bad shape when I took over,” Christopher said. “The field was in bad shape, there was junk all over, and I felt in one year, everything I wanted to do, I couldn’t do in one year.”

That was September, 2002. This next season will be Christopher’s 20th as the team’s general manager. He’s 69 now, and he wants to keep doing the job for another 10, or until he can’t walk anymore.

In many ways, Christopher represents what the ABL is all about. He and his wife, Denise, have built the last 20 years of their life around the team. She works as the Mat-Su Miners marketing and community relations director in addition to her day job at a local hospital. He does everything from finding players for the team, to field maintenance. He’s quick to tell you Baseball America once featured Hermon Brothers Field in its annual calendar, and with a baseball field surrounded by mountains, it’s a picturesque achievement that makes sense.

Together, the Christophers also host three players — often catchers, like Pete back in the day — at their home. They put a $15,000 deck in the back of their home so they could feed the entire Miners team some of Denise’s beloved Italian cuisine.

Ultimately, though, the ABL is about the players at the table: the ones that draw an average of 900 fans per game in a town of 7,000, and even more if the game doesn’t have to contend with the popular fly-fishing scene in the area.

“Everybody fishes here in June and July,” Christopher said. “The reds are running, the kings are running, the silvers are running, but sometimes we have 1,200 people in the ballpark.”

Having talented players, Christopher said, is a reason why. Finding them is Christopher’s annual mission. He looks all over the country for players, tapping into pipelines that lead players to his Alaskan ballpark. And since 1994, when those players leave their Alaskan summer, they sign their name on the clubhouse panels, which are currently in storage in the team’s batting cage while Christopher and a few others renovate the clubhouse. Former All-Star Jed Lowrie signed the panel. So did Major League pitcher Garrett Richards and 2020 fourth overall pick Asa Lacy from Texas A&M.

This past summer, another A&M pitcher that reminds Christopher of Lacy signed the panels.

“Wily has a chance to go all the way,” Christopher said of Johnston. “He works hard — he really does.”

Johnston has shown that potential for a while. As a senior at Keller, Johnston went 8-1 with 85 strikeouts and a 1.20 ERA. He was a top 500 Perfect Game prospect that year and signed with Texas A&M. In two years at A&M — including a freshman season ended by COVID-19 — he’s thrown in 16 innings.

Admittedly, the first two seasons were a little bit of a struggle for Johnston. In Alaska, the left-handed pitcher had the opportunity to not only unplug from the daily stresses of the Southeastern Conference, but also show himself that he could be the pitcher he wanted to be.

By the time his summer in Alaska was over, Johnston had recorded 72 strikeouts in just over 54 innings. He was a perfect 5-0 and was named the league’s top pitcher and top prospect.

“I had to get my swagger back, per se,” Johnston said. “I needed to find it.”

And 4,000 miles away from home, he did.

Alaskan swagger

“Come on, Will,” new Texas A&M baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle says.

It’s a fall day in Texas, and Johnston is on the bump. He gets into his motion, rears back and pound the catcher’s mitt, provoking a chorus of cheers from his teammates and a clap of approval from his new manager. Johnston does a little hop step and waits for the catcher to toss back the pitch. While he does, he nods his head up and down slightly, emitting a confidence that he didn’t have a year ago.

“I don’t really remember doing that kind of thing,” Johnston says.

Because it’s become subconscious for him. It’s a feeling, a swagger that he rediscovered in Alaska and is now exuding on the mound in College Station. He was slotted to throw three innings that fall day and went all the way, allowing no hits and recording seven strikeouts.

This spring, Johnston is expecting to come out of the bullpen for A&M. He aspires to one day be the Aggies’ Friday night starter, but he knows he needs to have more consistent outings like that one in fall before that happens. But Johnston is also OK with that. He has confidence in his abilities and he said he’s prepared to execute whatever role he gets this season to the fullest. His summer in Alaska instilled that mentality.

“Going out and seeing it again, and the consistency of it, and knowing that it’s in there, is a great feeling,” Johnston said. “You know, baseball is full of failure, and I’ve gotten really good at dealing with that failure.”

And if there’s ever any doubt, all he has to do is look in the mirror and see the scar above his lip.

On Twitter: @JoeJHoyt

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