The journeyman is settling down, or at least he thinks he finally is.

Even in an era when baseball players weren't known to leap from club to club like frogs on lily pads, Jack Aker seemed to spend as much time packing as he did pitching. Home games were sort of road games, and his greatest rivals one year often became his most amiable teammates the next. After getting his first taste of major league ball with the Kansas City Athletics from 1964 to 1968, Aker was shipped to five more teams, including the legendary New York Yankees, before his playing days ended on the other side of town with the New York Mets in 1974.

As it turns out, Aker's nomadic lifestyle would be great training for his post-managerial existence. After leaving the Cleveland Indians' Waterbury affiliate in 1985, Aker launched a career that took him all across the country, teaching children baseball fundamentals from America's largest cities to the country's wide-open spaces and far-out places.

But whether he made his home under the dry desert sun or on the metropolitan East Coast, the baseball diamond was always a constant. And since his latest move with his wife Jane, 6-year-old son Adam, and 9-year-old son Joshua, he hopes that his Syosset lifestyle bears some semblance of permanence as well.

It is in Syosset that Aker will be teaching a new clinic run by Multisport Academy, located at 330 South Oyster Bay Road, which will teach kids from grades K-2 and 3-5 both the rudimentary and advanced skills of the American pastime.

Jack, 58, and wife Jane Charnin-Aker, explained that the eight-week clinic which begins January 5 and 6 provides kids with the unique opportunity to train one-on-one with a former major leaguer. According to the couple, many other clinics boasting the names of former players as coaches are not actually led by those players. They merely supervise or make brief appearances while college or high school coaches provide the actual instruction.

Jane said that Jack "will determine who he is working with on the first day and set up a program fine-tuned for the kids."

One of the keys to her husband's teaching process is setting up a pressure-free environment for children in which to learn. "Confidence is the number one thing," said Jane. Therefore, when the children play, the games are noncompetitive, and Jack will actually stop the action of play to gently explain what was done well, or incorrectly."

Aker's clinics aren't just about playing games. Much of the time he will concentrate on improving individual skills. Jane said that her husband, in observing the play of both children and adults, is particularly acute in picking up mechanics flaws which he quickly remedies.

The ultimate purpose of improving his students' baseball skills, said Jack, is not to mold kids into model major leaguers. Regarding their "future in baseball, we never [say] if you can do this, you'll be a professional baseball player," said Jack. "We want children to stay in school and if baseball can help achieve that, then that's terrific...Maybe they can get a scholarship off of it."

It may not be the goal, but that doesn't mean that none of his past pupils is knocking on the door to stardom. An upstate New York native, Ryan Balfe, was only 12 years old when he first sought instruction from Aker. He is now in the San Diego Padres' minor league system as a shortstop. And since Aker only began training kids 10 years ago, many of Aker's other top students are only now reaching the age at which scouts will begin to take notice of them.

Such success stories shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Consider that Aker, as a manager in the Mets' system from 1975 to 1982, and a pitching coach for the Indians and Braves after that, successfully boosted the careers of such accomplished players as Bruce Bochy, Jay Bell, Joe Carter, Ron Darling, Brian Giles, Darryl Strawberry and pitching mainstay Jeff Reardon.

When a young Reardon was stumbling badly as a starting pitcher, he was sent to Aker, who saved his career. "Jack saw his potential in relieving instead," said Jane." With a lifetime of experience in that very role, Aker taught Reardon the mental approach to being a closer, and gave him another pitch for his arsenal - the circle change-up. "Now he has more saves than Jack has," prodded Jane.

There was a distinctive perk in working with these minor league up-and-comers, said Aker, that exists today as he works with younger children - the enthusiasm his protégés exude in playing the game.

"I love baseball and I enjoy it," said Jack. "I like talking about baseball, and I even like it when [the kids] ask me if I knew Babe Ruth...I'll ask if they've heard of Reggie Jackson. And they'll say, 'Yeah, I've heard of him.' And I'll say, 'That's one of the guys I played with.' I've enjoyed the conversations I've had with kids."

In fact, Aker enjoys working with youngsters more than he did providing leadership to older, established players on the major league level, as a pitching coach for the Cleveland Indians from 1985 to 1987. Many of those players, Jack explained, were no longer eager to learn or listen.

Some players just weren't interested in making changes to their deliveries, he recalled. They already were assured of million-dollar contracts, and had little interest in improvement. It was a drastic change from Aker's days, when players bloodied, dirtied and bruised themselves daily to earn their meager contracts. Aker's top salary was $40,000, and like many other major leaguers born too soon, there is some bitterness over the inordinate wealth that exists among players today.

And while he'd happily accept the millions available to this generation of players, Jack isn't sure if he'd be content pitching in this age of specialization and arm preservation.

Aker was a closer when a closer wasn't a glamorized, coddled hurler who rarely was assigned anything more than the final three outs of a game. In a season, Aker and his fellow firemen, to which relievers were commonly referred, had pitch counts that would be considered ludicrous to the modern day Mariano Rivera and John Franco (the New York ball clubs' current closers).

"If we were pitching with the lead, every time the sixth inning came, it was my ballgame," said Aker. I'd pitch four innings today, two innings tomorrow, one inning the next day. I pitch in 40 to 50 games and get 80 innings." Even on teams with a weak bullpen, modern managers would rather use set-up men or middle relievers than risk overworking a closer's valuable arm.

Aker sees the logic in preserving younger pitchers' futures, but "it agitates me when you see a manager save a 33-year-old pitcher for next year."

"If I were a closer today, I'd probably have a problem with that because I'd want to pitch in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings with the lead."

Before making the mound his home, Aker was actually an outfielder entering the minor leagues, but coaches wanted to take advantage of his powerful arm and made him a pitcher. Then Aker, a sinkerball specialist, converted from starter to reliever.

"I was one of the 10 or 12 guys who began to define what a closer was," said Aker, who collaborated with such legendary catchers as Jerry Grote, Thurman Munson and Randy Hundley.

In 1966 Aker broke the record for saves, a category which was still in its early phase of implementation, with 32, a number which has since been surpassed many times. For that accomplishment he was awarded American League Fireman of the Year.

Despite his numerous uniforms, it is with the Yankees that Akers most often identifies himself. At his clinics he always wears a Yankee cap, and he'll talk to his students about playing with Reggie Jackson and chatting with Joe DiMaggio. He has played at several of the organization's Old Timers games. He set the Yankee record for consecutive scoreless innings pitched, which remains intact.

The Bronx Bombers shipped Aker to the Chicago Cubs in 1972, where he remained until being swapped to Atlanta in 1974. It would be his final season, which he would split between the Braves and the Mets.

Though his travels as a pitcher in his era were many, Aker believes that being traded to new places has its advantages - seeing new things, playing with many of baseball's heroes. He tells his students, "If I didn't play with him, I struck him out."

He pitched against greats like Mantle and Maris. He watched teammate Hank Aaron blast historic home run 715 eight feet from where he stood in the bullpen. He roomed with fellow pitcher Catfish Hunter. And he witnessed the one-day comeback of Satchel Paige, who in his 60s pitched three innings for the A's.

After retiring, Aker managed at the single and double-A minor league levels of the Mets before being promoted to the Tidewater AAA affiliate, where he won the Governor's Cup, the International League Championship, by sweeping two playoff rounds with many of the players who were a part of the 1986 champion Mets.

After coaching with the Indians for two-and-a-half years and the Braves for one, Aker retired from professional ball in 1988, but the traveling--and teaching--continued.

His journeys took him to desolate Navajo Indian reservations where, through a grant, Aker taught Native Americans who were entirely unfamiliar with the sport how to play, as a way to relieve their hardships.

The concept, developed by one of Jack's acquaintances, was appealing to him because Jack's grandfather was a descendant of the Potawatomi tribe.

It was because of this ancestry that as a ballplayer, Aker was referred to as Chief. In this politically correct age, this may have been viewed as derogatory, but, explained Jane, "It was a respectful term."

"People had no problem taking someone's most characteristic feature and giving them a nickname, and when Jack was called Chief, he didn't mind because he was proud of his Indian heritage."

Indeed, Aker was so respected that he was named the AL player representative at a time when the players' union did not nearly command the power it does today.

"I was one of the people instrumental in getting players pensions and health plans," said Aker, who was ostracized by several owners for his union efforts.

The labor strife, the job displacement, the firing of managers. Aker has experienced what can be the unpleasant side of an otherwise beautiful game. But now, dealing with kids, it's all beautiful, and back to the simple basics - pitching, swinging, bunting, running.

Jack Aker is by no means one of those universal baseball names. It may not ring a bell to many fans, young or old. But to a generation of kids learning the game, what he's done for them is quite Ruthian.

To contact Jack Aker Baseball, call 921-2144 or e-mail: playball@netmonger.net. For more information visit the web site: www.jackakerbaseball.com.