(Photo Credit: Baseball Lifestyle 101)
You’ve probably come across plenty of pages scrolling through the trenches of the explore page on Instagram. Plenty of baseball-related accounts use content that you’ve seen across various platforms of the internet.
The account simply titled “coachferber”, while similar in content, is much different in terms of depth, knowledge and passion for the game.
Every one of his 88K followers are treated to videos with insightful posts and captions that he estimated take him over 30 minutes to construct. Just don’t expect your timeline to be spammed with non-stop content, as the real man behind the account lives a normal life with his wife in Brooklyn after playing independent ball following his career at Cañada Community College in California.
The story behind the account is equal parts anti-climatic and intriguing in how it became one of the most followed baseball accounts on the most popular social media in the world.
Jason Ferber is currently in his fourth season coaching U.S. Elite. They are a tournament team that is composed of top-tier players from all over the nation–ranging from New York to as far as Arizona. Due to the long-distance, the team is unable to practice but Ferber would rely on sending videos and messages in the group chat to the team.
“How we practice is on dry erase boards–situational stuff in the hotels,” said the Coney Island-native. “Most of these guys at this level already know their assignments and they practice on their own. You need self-motivated guys to do that. They play during the week in legion ball during the season to get the reps in but I would take a video of one of my guys doing a front toss or something and send it in the group chat and ask for suggestions–What do you like? What do you not like? This is who he is. This is what position he plays. This way, they at least got to know each other,” he said.
Then on the suggestion of his shortstop, the idea of the social media account that everyone loves was birthed.
“Why don’t you just make an Instagram page? It’s much easier than this group chat stuff,” he said.
“I said ‘nah dude I don’t have time for that, I have a wife and I have things to do,” he said.
Couple months later, according to Ferber, he was throwing BP to the team and the shortstop was waiting to take his swings. He left his phone outside the cage.
“He grabbed my phone, made an account and wrote “coachferber” just the way it is and then he goes ‘hey look I just made you one’ so I said ‘alright, cool.’ Now he could post videos of his players that he believed “were exemplary individuals that performed on the field and in the classroom.”
Next came the music.
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“I said that’s kinda cool but that music..is not. Let me put some REAL music on there,” he said.
Then the nicknames of all the players. He put an emphasis on the latter one–noting that it promotes the individualism of player.
“When you step out on the field, you have to have an alter-ego–something else that you get into. You come to the field and you can be ‘Frankie Eyelashes’ or ‘Jimmy Coffeecakes’, he said jokingly.
As time went on and each post garnered more engagements (comments, reposts, likes), Instagram’s algorithms went to work for his page and began suggesting it to other baseball fans. Each post earned more followers, and more likes and more reposts and the cycle continued.
“I wasn’t saying to myself ‘I’m going to post this and get this many views and post this and get this many likes,” he said. That came naturally through his passion for the game which is evident when he talks about hitting. His biggest pet-peeve is when hitting coaches are focused not on the player but their theory.
“Are you really promoting the player? Or are you promoting your theory?”
For example, a hot topic in Major League Baseball is whether to preach a swing conducive to launch angle and popular debates are ‘rotational vs linear’ and ‘leg kick vs no kick’.
“What if both of those are correct?” he said. He went on to add that a hitting coaches resume is the hitters that he has developed and helped continue their career.
He noted that while many people will post videos of Major League swings in slow motion, he prefers to post his guys because they are more relateable to the current high school athlete. Not many 15-year-olds can hit like Mike Trout or Jose Altuve, but they might be able to learn something from a player their age and see the way they work behind closed doors.
Ferber spoke passionately about the ugly side of social media as well.
“Sometimes I’ll post a video and the first comment will say ‘trash’, and I think to myself ‘why?’ And it’s really just stemming from that person’s insecurity.” Whenever hateful comments appear on his photos he immediately deletes the comment and blocks the user to prevent any bashing in the future.
That positivity has allowed him to foster a community of only passionate baseball fans eager to learn his philosophies on hitting, leadership and how to conduct yourself during the recruiting process.
My biggest takeaway from our conversation is how deeply he cares about his players on his team, those he works with and his zest for passing his knowledge to a younger generation of ballplayers while having fun throughout the process.
Make sure to follow him on Instagram @coachferber !
