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Ryan McGee
Multiple Authors
ATHENS, Ga. — Woe be to the silly soul who chooses to park their vehicle down the left-field line at Foley Field. For all that is there to protect their personal vehicles from a series of dents is a line of tall trees that, honestly, look a little worn out. And they are. Every single day they are subject to a bombardment of baseballs. Seamed rawhide mortar shells launched from 400 feet away, home plate and home base for Georgia’s big-swinging Diamond Dogs, who enter this week packed with conference tournaments as the nation’s leader in long balls. A race that is not close. When they begin play today against Mississippi State (4 p.m., SEC Network) as the top seed of the SEC tourney in Hoover, Alabama, they will do so with a count of 147 dingers, 10 more than second-place Oklahoma State and 33 more than their closest conference rival, third-seeded Texas A&M.
“Did you really park your truck over there?” asks catcher/parking spot marksman Daniel Jackson, with a smirk of disbelief. The 6-foot-2, 200-pound junior is told that yes, some dumb ESPN sportswriter has indeed parked there, but a kind UGA staffer asked for the keys so they could move it. “Good thing,” Jackson says. “BP starts soon. It can get a little violent out. If Safelite opened a store out there, they could make a fortune replacing windshields. Like, daily.”
Only 10 times in SEC baseball history has a team tallied 140 or more homers in a single season. Georgia accounts for three of those, all accomplished over the past three seasons. The Dawgs’ spring spent atop the nation’s homer rankings began with their spring-loaded batting practices in Athens.
“Having guys who can hit home runs gives you a little comfort knowing that you’re probably never out of a game,” says Wes Johnson, in his third season as UGA head coach. “You look out there, and obviously we’ve got trees that line the fence. And they’re hungry, too. We’ve just got to keep feeding these trees.”
Chief tree feeder is Jackson, a catcher who adores that nature-based theme, because he himself has become obsessed with nature documentaries. So much so that he has assigned animal nicknames to multiple teammates. During games and those batting practice bash sessions, he has taken to narrating the action in his best Nat Geo-whispering, semi-Australian voiceover tone. Think Sir Richard Attenborough or Peter Coyote, but if they had been born in Sandy Springs, Georgia.
He calls infielder Kolby Branch the Orca, “because he plays with his food before he kills it, like some poor seal just sitting on the iceberg.” He anointed righty pitcher Paul Farley the Bald Eagle, because of his “talons.”
But one year ago, when he attempted to bestow the title of Rhino upon third baseman Slate Alford, Alford instead boomeranged the nickname in Jackson’s direction. “I was just trying to be funny, you know. And it kind of bounced back,” Jackson recalls, “then I became the sole Rhino.”
Jackson doesn’t just fit the name. He shares all the skills that make a rhinoceros such a fearsome creature. Rhinos are built like tanks, weighing as much as four tons, all set low to the ground. Jackson is built the same.
Says Branch: “His thighs are popping out of his shorts.”
Rhinos can reach speeds of up to 40 mph, nearly twice the speed of Olympic sprinters. In April, after a three-steal game at Ole Miss, Jackson became the first catcher in SEC history to record 20 homers and 20 steals in a single season. Last weekend, he wrapped up the regular season by extending the mark to 27 knocks and 25 swipes, the first catcher and just the sixth player in NCAA baseball history to have a 25/25 year.
“When he’s locked in, he’s the best player in the country and it’s not even close,” teammate Tre Phelps says. “Rhinos are powerful. Rhinos are fast. I think that’s just the epitome of how you would explain Daniel Jackson. And he runs with it like he had that name since he was born.”
So does the man who has been there since Jackson’s birth. If you happen to be on internet auction sites late at night and find yourself battling with someone bidding on rhino hats, rhino toys, stuffed rhinos, rhino masks, anything and everything rhino … that’s probably Jackson’s father, Daniel Senior.
“I have a ton of rhino stuff,” confesses the Rhino himself. “My dad is like all-in on the rhino. He’s gotten me shirts, slippers. One of my best friends from last year, Nolan McCarthy, actually bought me a rhino onesie. I wear all of it. So definitely fully embodying it.”
There’s a rubber dog mask that UGA players have taken to wearing after jacking another home run. Jackson says he’d rather use that because he’s a team player. But the team is quick to say they would be bummed if their Rhino didn’t don all the rhino gear, and that includes his fist-on-the-forehead-pinky-up-like-a-horn trot around the bases after once again feeding the trees.
“It’s all in good fun,” Jackson is quick to explain. “It’s celebrating that feeling. There’s not a better feeling in the world than when you hit one out. The weightlessness of the ball off the barrel. You can almost feel the energy go through the bat, and you just know you got it. It’s unreal.”
It’s also a relatively new feeling for Jackson. A self-described late bloomer, he didn’t hit his first homer until halfway through his senior year of high school. Not in Little League. Not in travel ball. Never. That perceived lack of pop led to little attention from college programs and zero from the Power 4. He landed at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on a partial scholarship and spent the months before joining the Terriers pumping iron. He hit 12 homers as a Wofford freshman, earned All-Southern Conference honors and a trip to the NCAA tourney — and those big schools that had ignored him one year earlier were now making calls.
His new frame started turning more line drives into drives over the fence. He hit 14 homers as a Georgia sophomore and then dismantled the outfield fences of the Cape Cod League. Now the catcher no one wanted is touted as a potential early-round pick in July’s MLB draft.
But first, he wants to focus on anchoring Georgia, the nation’s fourth-ranked team, and the first Dawgs squad to earn an SEC regular-season title since 2008. They want to earn the program’s first SEC tournament championship and their first trip to Omaha since that same ’08 season ended with an excruciating runner-up effort behind the Wonderdogs of Fresno State. And they really want to earn their second Men’s College World Series title, the first and only coming way back in 1990.
A reminder: Omaha is located in the Great Plains. Where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play. Grass covered flatlands that go on for hours in every direction.
Sounds like Rhino territory, doesn’t it?
“It does,” the Rhino himself says as he shifts back into his Nat Geo narrator voice. “I think I’d feel at home there.”
