Littlerock Gains a Dutch Master at Shortstop in Jager

What kind of crazy place is this, where you don’t relax at a coffeehouse with your coach after a baseball game? Where a driver’s license doesn’t cost almost $1,000? Where Haarlem is spelled Harlem and is on the East Coast?

Life at Littlerock High, U.S.A., is different from life in Haarlem, the Netherlands, a city just west of Amsterdam that Toine Jager left in August to spend his senior year as an exchange student in Southern California.

But no matter where Jager is, Haarlem or Littlerock, some things don’t change: He is a Dutch treat when it comes to athletics.

Jager was a member of the Littlerock cross-country team in the fall and excelled for the Antelope Valley school’s soccer team in the winter, but those sports were merely ways of marking time until the rites of spring began, because what Toine (pronounced TWAHN) Jager does best is play baseball.

A shortstop who was on the Dutch junior national baseball team, Jager has turned heads on the Littlerock diamond almost as fast as he whips his beloved Easton bat through the air.

“He’s definitely NCAA Division I material,” Littlerock assistant Dave Toledo said.

College prospect? How . . . American of him.

But, on closer inspection, it’s not surprising. Jager, 18, temporarily quit soccer three years ago, giving up the Dutch national sport to concentrate on America’s national pastime.

He excels at the Grand Old Game, along with seemingly everything else he has undertaken, mixing good fortune with seemingly effortless skill and making it all look ridiculously simple.

“The remark that I always hear is that he makes it look so easy,” Toledo said. “Whether he goes to the hole, makes a throw or turns on an inside pitch, that’s the remark I always hear from other coaches and players.”

An example of his versatility: Jager, a shortstop by preference, has been reluctantly pressed into pitching duty.

“I don’t really like pitching,” he said. “But we don’t have too many (quality) pitchers.”

So, Jager pitched the opener against Mojave on March 5 and struck out 12 while throwing a three-hit shutout. In three games, he is 2-1 with a 2.45 earned-run average and 23 strikeouts.

“His pitching is (a nice surprise),” Littlerock Coach Maury Cauchon said.

However, pitching, like cross-country and soccer, is merely peripheral. Jager’s specialty is hitting.

“He’s not a huge guy,” Toledo said of the 6-foot, 150-pound Jager. “But the bat speed he generates is incredible. I think he’ll lead the Golden League in hitting.”

Jager’s hitting, by all accounts, started slowly. Through six games, though, he is batting .400, and he said he is more comfortable at the plate now that he uses an Easton bat, the most prominent bat in the Netherlands.

“I have a feeling that Easton can hit the ball harder,” said Jager with a flat, Nordic-sounding accent. “I bought a Louisville Slugger, but I never believed in that bat. I called my dad and told him and he said, ‘Buy a new bat.’ I bought an Easton and got three hits. I said, ‘OK, that’s the bat.’ ”

Easy, right? Most things seem uncomplicated to Jager, such as how he made it to Southern California.

“You just say (to the placement agency) that you want to be as close to Disneyland as possible,” Jager said. By chance, he was placed closer to Magic Mountain and, coincidentally, he said, his host family was the Toledos. To avoid possible questions from Southern Section officials, he moved in with Pat Palsen in January.

But Jager is no accidental tourist. He toured the eastern part of the United States in August, 1991, as a member of a Netherlands all-star team, playing exhibition games against high school teams in Baltimore, Boston and New York. He also visited Florida during spring training in 1990.

“It was kind of impressive,” Jager said. “All the fields have lights and there’s a lot of attention in the papers. America--I always want to go there.”

Luckily for Jager, his father, Peter, is a successful lawyer who could afford to make his only son’s wish a reality. “He gives me this trip to the United States, he works hard so he can do it for me,” Jager said. “I know how lucky I am to stay over here.”

But even the kid with the charmed life has run into a few snags, including his arrival in the high-desert town.

“I had a bleeding nose for about two weeks, because it’s at a higher altitude and warmer (than the Netherlands),” he said. Half of the Netherlands, which means “lowlands,” lies below sea level.

The rest of his stay has been relatively painless. He earned a 4.0 grade-point average his first semester, and he said it was easy.

“It’s kind of like a vacation,” he said candidly of the U.S. educational system. “You don’t have to do anything. Our school level (in the Netherlands) is a lot higher.”

Athletics has definitely held Jager’s interest. Sports are not organized through the school system in the Netherlands but through sports clubs.

His club team, Kinheim, is in the Hoofdklasse, or Hat Class--the highest league in the Netherlands. Jager played shortstop last year on Kinheim’s highest-level team, composed mostly of players in their early 20s. Jager was 17.

“We never had sports at school so, usually, you can do only one or two sports,” he said.

He joined Littlerock’s cross-country team and told people of his baseball prowess, but no one knew where he really stood until he participated in a monthlong fall baseball league at Antelope Valley College. He batted about .650.

“He could play at the JC level tomorrow,” said Antelope Valley College assistant Perry Husband, who coached Jager in the fall league.

But before baseball season, there was Littlerock soccer. Though Jager quit soccer three years ago to concentrate on baseball, he didn’t forget about the sport.

“For every Dutchman, there is always the soccer dream,” he said. “I hoped there was soccer over here. I was looking forward to playing again. I even brought my dad’s soccer cleats.”

But he said he didn’t pack a strong work ethic, which didn’t sit well with his teammates.

“I don’t like to practice, just play games,” he said.

“I’m a little bit lazy. And at first, I didn’t pass the ball a lot and (my teammates) got mad at me.”

Then came the scoring explosion. In one four-game stretch in January, Jager scored 11 goals.

“I started scoring and then they didn’t yell (at me),” he said. “As long as you score, they don’t say anything. ‘It’s great if you pass once to me,’ they’d say. ‘But just keep the ball and score.’ ”

He finished with 27 goals and made the All-Golden League team.

Unrelated but equally important for him, Jager got his driver’s license last month, passing the test after paying $12.

“In Netherlands, you pay $30 per hour to practice learning to drive, for an average of 20 lessons,” he said.

“It costs $150 for the test and the test is harder there. Most people fail the first time.”

Baseball, on the other hand, is more rigorous in the United States.

“Our practices (in the Netherlands) are more relaxing, only two hours, twice a week,” he said.

“After the game, we go to a coffeehouse and all sit around. . . . The coach is one of us. Here there are more strict rules, they make it like a professional thing. We don’t have so many rules, we just go out and play baseball.”

Despite the greater rigidity, this fish out of North Sea water is in his element now. But as the season progresses and Jager’s scheduled return to the Netherlands after his Littlerock graduation in June draws nearer, he is not sure he wants to go back.

Jager said his father wants him to attend a law school in the Netherlands next year, but Jager prefers to remain here on a college scholarship. “I hope to stay. My dad wants me to go. If I got a chance, I might as well stay,” he said.

His family will visit him in April, and Jager said he is waiting until then to broach the subject. “It’s easier to talk about it when he’s here,” he said of his father.

Jager’s future is of interest to more than his family.

“I’ve already been asked about him by a couple of scouts and colleges,” Toledo said.

The fascination is mutual.

“It’s great,” he said. “It’s like California dreaming.”