Laws takes baseball into his own hands
South Shore pitcher on his way to junior college in Montana
Jack Laws, one of Nova Scotia’s brightest baseball prospects, didn’t begin playing the game until he was 13 years old.
Now just 17, the towering right-handed pitcher from Mahone Bay has earned a scholarship to play junior college baseball in Montana.
Laws, a senior at Park View high school in Bridgewater, has committed to the Miles Community College Pioneers for a two-year stint that he hopes is his stepping-stone to NCAA Division 1 baseball.
While he has played multiple other sports, from badminton to soccer, volleyball, football and hockey, Laws is considered a relative latecomer to baseball. But he has been a quick study, progressing from the Bridgewater Bulldogs close to home to Baseball Nova Scotia provincial teams.
This summer, he’s poised to be an ace with Nova Scotia’s entry at the Canada Games in the Niagara region of Ontario.
“I’m always trying to think one step ahead of the batter,” said Laws, six-foot-five and 195 pounds. “I’m trying to outpitch as well as outplay the batter and just be in their head 24-7, trying to use everything I have to get them out.
“It’s a big mental game.”
He developed that analytical and measured approach to baseball while training with his father John, who died in 2020.
“He would always push me to be the best,” Laws said. “It just helped my mental toughness. He always told me not to show my emotions on the field and just let it all out.
“My father was one of my coaches growing up. He’d take me out and throw the ball with me every single day. He was one of the biggest factors in my baseball career. Every single day, I still think about everything he did for me. I wouldn’t be where I am without him.”
Laws also credits Bridgewater Baseball Association president Chris Zinck for being an influential coach in his early years.
“He was my pitching coach,
he was my fielding coach, he was everything,” Laws said of Zinck. “He developed me from being someone who didn’t know a thing about baseball into a kid who’s driven and loves baseball. He was always pushing me and trying to get me to be what I could be. Even when I didn’t believe myself, he would always tell me that I could do better.”
For the past three summers, Laws refined his skills as part of Nova Scotia’s top youth representative teams, the U17 Selects and U15 Selects.
He and Lane George are the two overage players selected to play with the Canada Games team for this summer.
“I feel like I’ve got to be a leader,” said Laws, who visited with two of his Canada Games teammates during the March school break. “I’ve got to help these kids develop into what they can be. I’m sort of looked up upon by them, because I’m basically where they want to be at, and I want to try to help them get to where I am as a baseball player.
“I love pitching, I love everything to do with baseball and I’m quite knowledgeable, so I feel like I can always help out people who want to get better.”
As he got better, Laws was invited this past fall to play with a select group of Atlantic Canadian prospects that toured Kansas and Missouri. Prep Baseball Report (PBR) Atlantic organized the collegiate scouting showcase, which included games against junior colleges, high school prospects and travel teams.
“It was a big eye-opener,” Laws said. “It really showed me what the level of competition is when you’re playing at the D1 level for a junior college. It helped me be motivated to try to get to that level.”
He believes the stateside exposure played “a big part” in him being recruited to play at Miles junior college in Miles City, Mont.
“I’m really excited about that,” Laws said. “It’s definitely something I’ve been dreaming of doing since I was little kid.
“I think (junior college) is great preparation to give you a good idea of what the top-tier competition is like. As well, it gives you a lot of playing time and overall more time to mature as a player. The goal, of course, is to eventually play NCAA Division 1.”
Miles plays at the Division 2 level in the National Junior College Athletic Association.
Laws considers himself “very superstitious” in his routine on and off the field, from wearing the same baseball pants and long, white socks for each game to his mental preparation the day before games.
“Whatever works, I stick with it,” he said. “I’ve got to have my lucky socks on. That’s a big one. I’ve got to have my lucky pants on, too.
“It’s sort of a comfortability thing. There’s a saying — look good, feel good, play good — and if you feel good and you look good, then you’re going to play well because you’ve got the confidence and you’ve got the comfortability.”
His game readiness begins with mental training at home the previous day.
“There’s these (exercises) called focus relaxation, where you tense all your muscles and then you focus on the relaxation,” he said. “I always do it because it helps your mental as well as your physical awareness, and it’s just a great thing to do.
“I’ve been doing that since I was about 14. It just helps me focus and feel ready.”
Laws relies on a mixed bag of pitches to try to foil batters.
“Baseball is a game of mixing speeds,” he said. “Because you can throw as hard as you can to someone three times, eventually they’re going to end up hitting it. But if you can change speeds and locate (the ball) and do everything you can to get the batter out, then you’re going to be a lot better than if you’re just throwing as hard as you can every single time in the same spot.
“I think I’ve done a very good job with my off-speed and changing speeds. Now, I need to develop getting my (velocity) up and trying to blow away batters and not just put them away with my off-speed stuff.”