When you’re born in a small town, you don’t leave. You stay, you build your family there. In Wymore, Nebraska, a town too small for a varsity baseball team, you farmed or you worked in the factory. Jake Diekman knew he had to escape, and when the Phillies offered him a line, just six months after the sudden loss of his mother, he grabbed it and rode out of his fate.
On the surface, he looks like a regular Joe — or Jake, you might say. Diekman turned 32 in the offseason. He’s a smiley, lanky, 6’4” pitcher with a slight midwestern drawl.