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Sag Harbor Whaler Jack Gold was presented with a commemorative bat by HCBL President Sandi Kruel after hit for the triple crown this regular season, just the second time in league history it's been done. He also overtook the league's all-time batting average. COURTESY SANDI KRUEL
At the beginning of the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League season, first-year Sag Harbor Whalers manager Nate Fish told his players that someone’s life was going to be affected in a big way this summer. The question was, who was going to seize the opportunity?
It turned out to be Jack Gold.
The 5-foot-7-inch, 175-pound product of Rolling Hills Estates, California, where he plays for Division III Pomona-Pitzer College, put together a season for the record books, literally, by capturing the HCBL’s Triple Crown, leading the league in all three major offensive statistical categories. He batted .450, which is also a new league record. The previous official batting average record with a minimum of 100 at-bats of .425 was shared by both Conor Kiely of Shelter Island from 2023 and Louis Antos of Riverhead from 2018. . And he also led the league in home runs with nine and RBIs with 34.
Gold joins 2009 Riverhead Tomcat Peter Greskoff as the only other HCBL player to achieve the rare feat.
“If you told me at the beginning of the season I would have gotten this, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Gold said. “But halfway through the season, I was leading in all categories. I saw that and it got to my head a little bit. But every day I went out there not thinking about the results. I was just trying to grind … because you can’t control where the ball goes after you hit it. So I was just trying to control what you can — put a good swing on it, hit the ball hard, make the routine plays, all that.”
Fish recalled reaching out to Gold’s college coach, Frank Pericolosi, at Pomona-Pitzer, who let him know he’s got a little bit of pop, having come off a spring in which he hit 10 home runs. Gold said that he wasn’t much of a power hitter in high school, it kind of just came to him this past spring and then rolled into the summer.
“Earlier in the year, he led off both games of a doubleheader with pull-side home runs, and I think they were his third and fourth home runs of the summer already,” Fish said. “I was like, ‘This dude’s got a little bit of power, he can really play.’”
What adds to Gold’s impressive season at the plate was that he was playing out of position for most of it. He started playing games in left field for the Whalers, but when Matt Dieguez (Fordham) went down with an injury, Sag Harbor needed a shortstop.
“We did not expect to start him at shortstop every day,” Fish admitted. “So it’s amazing that we plugged him at a position he doesn’t normally play, and he was really good on defense. We rode him hard. We put him in the lineup almost every single day, and he just kept producing. Any time he hit a little skid, where he started to slow down, he got out of it really quickly. He never had a really bad stretch.”
Although he’s coming off two seasons in which he’s hit a combined 19 home runs, Gold still doesn’t consider himself a power hitter. Because of that, he said the batting average, along with his on-base percentage (.444), were both numbers he was most proud of.
The play on the field was icing on the cake for Gold, who said he really enjoyed his first season in the Hamptons. Having come all the way from the West Coast, Gold didn’t have a car or much in the way of transportation, so he relied a lot on his host family, J.B. and June Ziglar, to help him along the way. Eventually, his Sag Harbor teammates would help to get him around town to games and wherever else he needed to go.
“Coming here, a new start, meeting new people, it was very different. It took a while to adjust to everything,” he said. “I’d have to ask my host family for a lot — shout out to J.B. and June Ziglar, they’re awesome — but then eventually I became close friends with some of the guys on the team.
“I didn’t have a bad summer, I had a great summer here,” Gold added. “It was a lot of fun, on the field and off the field with the guys. It’s tough to leave this out here in this beautiful place with a bunch of great guys.”
The Whalers season ended last week after being eliminated from the playoffs by the Southampton Breakers. Surprisingly, Gold wasn’t one of the dozen or so players who moved on to other summer leagues that are still playing. However, that could very well change.
“At the beginning of the summer, I said, ‘Look, for someone here, this is going to change your life,’” Fish told his players early on this summer. “I don’t know who it is, someone’s going to have a big summer. This happens every year in summer ball. Somebody goes off and it changes the whole trajectory of their baseball career, and [Gold] was sort of that guy this summer. He worked hard, he had a big summer. I’m sure people are noticing and it could potentially change his whole future.
“The only thing holding him back from getting an opportunity at the Cape or someplace like that is that he’s a 5-foot-7 Division III college baseball player. But the truth is, who cares? He’s got the power, he’s got the speed, he’s got the defensive ability. That’s all that really matters.”
