JACK AKER

With the help of baseball reference.com, I was able to go through the rosters and statistics of all Braves players who played from the years 1970-1979 and  have come up with fifty players (a nice round number) that I didn't include on my original top 100 favorite list. Might as well list them all!

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ALPHABETIC LIST OF THE

50 BRAVES PLAYERS OF THE 1970'S

WHO DIDN'T MAKE MY ORIGINAL 

100 FAVORITE PLAYER LIST

#1 JACK AKER

ATLANTA BRAVES 1974

Jack Aker is a good example of someone I would have found a way to include on the 100 favorite player list if I were to do it over again mostly because I believe he is the only Brave player to be of Indian ancestry (Potowatamie). He played on six different major league teams during his career (including two that do not exist anymore, The Kansas City A's and the Seattle Pilots) and led the American League in saves with the A's in 1966. In fact, he saved games for all of the teams he played for except one that you may be able to guess the identity of. In fact, his Brave career lasted for only 17 games. His only decision for the team was a loss against the Cubs when he gave up a home run to Billy Williams and cost Phil Niekro  a win on April 28, 1974. His short Braves career ended with a sale to the Mets in June of 1974 leaving Chief Noc-A-Homa as the only Native American on the Braves for the next decade.

Jack also gets points for being mentioned in
Bouton's Ball Four.

He's also not to be confused with Braves 1987 closer Jim Acker. I bring this up because my memories of "Aker" seem to be stronger than my memories of "Acker" even though the latter pitched more games for the team and more recently. Maybe I'm just trying to blot out the 1987 season from my mind. Yeah, that's probably it.

That's "Acker" not "Aker"