The Other Jack Ohman

He may be...better.

I know, I know.

Just what the world needs. Another Jack Ohman.

I mean, I’m not a bad Jack Ohman. I have a great family, a lot of nice friends, and I’ve done well in my career. All good. I can also fly fish pretty well, and my golf game is improving, except when it isn’t. Ask Bruce, Rocco, and his buddy Cruz from last week. Everything went wrong. What’s an A wedge again? Oh.

Anyway, maybe we start the story.

As a teeny tiny media figure, I have to admit that I have a Google News Search set with the name “Jack Ohman”. Every day, I see what that wacky Jack Ohman, the cartoonist, has done to penetrate the International World Wide Web Tubes. Usually, it’s a cartoon in the Billings Gazette, Syracuse.com, my column in the San Francisco Chronicle, or reprints in Daily Kos, The Week, and other digital entities.

A few years ago, I noticed another Jack Ohman turn up very occasionally.

The particular Other Jack Ohman first came to my attention on my Facebook page a number of years ago. He was a kid from Arizona or Mississippi. I can’t recall. I looked at his page to see what another Jack Ohman would look like.

Nice looking guy, dark hair. And that’s all I recall.

Having the name “Jack Ohman” was pretty much acreage only “Jack Ohman, The Editorial Cartoonist and Exalted 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winner” occupied. Until I noticed a few months ago a rapid rise in the frequency in The Other Jack Ohman popped up in my Google search.

You see, The Other Jack Ohman is a starting pitcher for Yale University, an east coast school you may have heard of.

I knew that The Other Jack Ohman was a high school standout in Arizona, and that he was coming to the fore more and more frequently. The Other Jack is apparently a real baseball talent, way better than The Old Jack, who did just fine on the 1970 Springfield Lions and the Ravensworth Jays (I think it was the Jays).

I was actually a pitcher as well in 4th Grade, and was really pretty good. Jack Ohman was no Jack Ohman, of course, but I didn’t embarrass myself. My old Mounds View High School buddy and classmate Jim Rasmussen also pitched on the Johanna Junior High 8th grade team, and I am proud and delighted to say Jim is a prince, former Navy, and a paid subscriber, as well as a kind friend. I hit a double off him once in 1974 and I have never let him forget it, ever.

By 8th Grade, however, my pitching skills started to fade as boys grew faster than Old Jack (I was maybe 5’2” in 8th Grade, a late late bloomer). (Editor’s note: See also: Jack’s acne and lack of a discernible beard in the PM Magazine piece).

I’m sure The Other Jack Ohman in 8th Grade was 6’2” and threw a 95 MPH breaking ball.

In my inbox, the past few months have featured more and more Other Jack and less Old Jack. Sometimes Other Jack will have four or five stories, and I might have two. Sometimes we tie, sometimes I have more, but Other Jack clearly has a better ERA than I do.

When I went to find a photograph of myself online in a newsroom setting to participate in the Facebook fad, “post a picture of you as a journalist”, I saw a lot of new Other Jack Ohman content.

Apparently Jack is very, very good. He’s a real all-star. Ivy League pitcher of the year, and all that. His father, in my defense, is Will Ohman, a former MLB pitcher. I was certainly lightly aware of his dad, given the name and my waxing-waning interest in baseball (I find Giants games really lulling, and so do the Giants, apparently).

The thing is, Ohman is a very unusual name. I have met exactly one person with that last name, who delightedly told me we MUST be related. I delightedly told her, in response, that I was not, in fact, an “Ohman” but actually “Jeldeane” or “Gjeldeane”—no one can quite figure out what the Swedish spelling was. My great grandfather changed it in the Swedish Army, dad said. I know my dad did the spelling, but he’s gone.

Maybe he’s working on his pitching gene.

“Ohman” is constantly mispronounced, as in “OMONN”. I constantly have to spell it; sometimes I feel like my last name is “Jack Ohman O-H-M-A-N”. It’s pronounced “omen”, as I say to suss it out for inquiring people, “like Damien Omen”.

My guess is that Other Jack and I share some unpleasant nicknames that I will not share in this space, but they were, um, intuitive, shall we say. I am also sure that Other Jack has to spell his goddamned last name every 8 minutes. He will experience and has experienced the light burden of minor, semi-celebrity, good and bad. Good: “I love your work!” Bad: “YOU SUCK!!!”

Now, I wish Other Jack nothing but the best. I hope he gets to the MLB if that’s his dream, wins the Cy Young, and calls it good. God, maybe he can draw, too.

Me? I’ll just be hammering away out here in balmy Sactown.

Not pitching.

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Hey, YBs! : Gonna hang it up now. Have a great evening. Signed, The Real Jack Ohman