Gators are in good hands with Hiatt, Benne

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BY RYLY JANE HAMBLETON / Lincoln Journal Star

It’s a high pop fly in the infield.

Lincoln North Star pitcher Jacob Hiatt swivels his head to locate the infielders and see how they’re reacting. Then he looks up to locate the ball.

“When the ball goes up, everybody hears, ‘Ball, ball, ball.’ Half the time, I don’t hear it, whether it’s windy or not,” Hiatt said. “When I go to camps, coaches tell me to look at the ball. But I have to find my surroundings before I find the ball.”

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The Lincoln North Star duo of Jacob Hiatt (foreground) and Jake Benne. (William Lauer)

The Lincoln North Star duo of Jacob Hiatt (foreground) and Jake Benne. (William Lauer)

That’s because Hiatt, a senior pitcher and center fielder, was born deaf. He is completely deaf in his left ear and has just 10 percent hearing in his left ear.

“When I was younger, they didn’t know as much about my hearing,” he said. “I didn’t wear hearing aids, so nothing happened between me and other people.”

All that has changed. Hiatt was elected a co-captain of the North Star baseball team this year. There is a swagger to his step. At 5-2 with a 1.79 earned-run average, he has every right to be confident.

“He’s one of our older pitchers, so I feel more confident with him, like when he’s throwing inside,” said Gator catcher Jake Benne. “He’s not going to walk people as often or bean people. There are days I know he’s not completely on, but I can still call his curveball, his knuckle-curve or his changeup for a strike.

“He can blow it by people or he can slow it down and trick them.”

In 39 innings pitched this year, Hiatt has struck out 38 and walked just five.

Hiatt has learned the boundaries of his inability to hear.

“When I was younger, I used to test it out with teachers. If they’d ask me where my assignment was, I’d said I didn’t hear it was assigned,” he admitted with a grin. “But as life goes on, you find you can’t use that. It helps when you’re doing homework and you have a noisy surrounding. You can just turn off your hearing aid and nothing bothers you.

“I’ve done it on the pitching mound a couple of times when a team got raunchy. It did help, but then you hear yourself think too much.”

And that can be a bad thing for Hiatt.

“When you don’t hear anything around you, you start talking to yourself and you pretty much can hear what you think,” he said. “I can hear myself think what I have to do with my release point or what I have to do with different pitches.

“You get ahead of yourself and have to tell yourself to calm down.”

His contributions are not lost on North Star coach Lanny Bolles. Hiatt plays center field when he’s not on the mound and is hitting .270 this season.

“Jacob is a little streaky at the plate, but when he’s hot, he can drive the ball as well as anyone,”  Bolles said. “He’s second on our team in RBIs, so he is getting timely hits.”

Benne, a four-year starter behind the plate for the Gators, is hitting .328 this year. He has 19 hits, has been walked 14 times and been hit by a pitch eight more times for a .512 on-base percentage.

“I have some pretty nasty bruises right now. It’s not like I’m intentionally trying to get in the way of the ball,” Benne said. “My defense is, by far, my strength. It’s my ability to block and throw people out and my ability to control the game.

“My focus at the plate is to get on base any way I can. This year, I’m not pulling the trigger and I’m watching too many pitches.”

Bolles is plenty happy to have the pair in his program.

“Those two are about as fine of young men as you’d want to meet,” he said. “I’m amazed at Jacob. To be able to do the things he’s done, to carry on with his hearing loss, is remarkable.

“I try to make sure to have eye contact with him. He’s gotten used to what I ask of him, and eye contact and hand gestures is the way we’ve communicated.”

Hiatt reads lips. In fact, if you don’t know he’s deaf, you might be hard-pressed to reach that conclusion.

“Reading lips is the only way I can communicate. I could have my hearing aid off and you could be 20 feet away, and I could still understand what you were saying,” he said. “I learned it over the years. Whenever I talk to people, I always look at their lips. They always say you need to look at people’s eyes, but I can’t.”

Hiatt started playing baseball when he was 3 years old. He played in the Dominators program while Benne was in the Rebels select program.

“We’ve been playing against each other since we were 10 years old,” Hiatt said. “We were basically rivals in select ball. And now we are best partners on a team. It’s kind of cool.”

Hiatt is headed to the University of Nebraska at Kearney and plans to play baseball for the Lopers, while Benne will play for the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

As difficult as it is being deaf and playing baseball, the challenges are that much greater in the classroom, according to Hiatt.

“The hardest thing for me is to take notes. When a teacher puts something on the board, you have to write that down. And then they explain at the same time, and it’s so hard for me to do both,” he said. “At UNK, I’ll have a transcriber in every class. Every word the teacher says will be typed and then will go by satellite to my laptop. So if I miss a word of what they said, I can read it. It’s almost like close-captioning for TV.”

Hiatt has responded to challenges all his life. But there is one thing he admits still scares him.

“At least you try to get hit by a pitch,” he said to Benne. “I don’t. I bail out every time. When I was 13, I got hit in the head and lost my hearing completely for three minutes. And when I was really young, I got hit in the head and my hearing was lost for a week and a half.

“That’s why I don’t take any chances.”

Ryly Jane Hambleton at 473-7314 or rhambleton@journalstar.com.