Yokley, who goes by the nickname "Yoke," got to prove his baseball acumen this summer by playing as a relief pitcher for the Johnson City Cardinals in Tennessee. Now Yokley is headed back to the academy on Saturday, where he will work with the academy baseball team until his pilot training begins in April.During his four years as a pitcher at the Air Force Academy, 2nd Lt. Ben Yokley did not allow a single home run.
It is unknown whether Yokley will return to the Cardinals. He signed a seven-year contract with the team so there is a spot for him in case he gets out of the Air Force before then.
As an academy graduate, he has committed to five years in the Air Force. If he completes pilot training, he will incur a 10-year active-duty service commitment starting on the day he gets his wings.
Yokley talked to Air Force Times about his twin passions of serving his country and playing baseball, and how being good at one makes him better at the other.
Q: What is the difference between playing for the academy and playing in the minors?
Just a different environment, I guess. Everyone here, this is their career. This is how they are putting food on the table for their families. A lot of the guys have young children.
Everyone else — the college guys that just got picked up — it's what they plan on doing for the rest of their lives. It's a profession.
The academy: We focus on making leaders. Even on the baseball field, everything we do is in order to prepare ourselves for our Air Force career, not for our baseball careers.
Q: Has your training at the academy helped you in your time in the minors?
Oh yeah. When you're at the academy, whether it's academics or the military side of it or the athletics side of it, you wake up and know, 'I have to bring my A game today.'
That has definitely transferred over to playing minor league ball because we play the game every single day compared to in college when you only play on the weekends. So every day when you wake up, you need to be ready to go and say, 'Hey, I need to perform at my highest ability today.' That mental ability, that physical ability to wake up and go and do that has been huge.
Q: Has the Air Force been helpful allowing you to play baseball, or did they say you have to choose between serving in the Air Force or playing baseball?
They didn't have much interaction with me about it. If anything, it just came down to my head coach and he fully supported me being able to play while I can.
But what it comes down to is: I went to the academy not to be a baseball player but to be an officer, and I know that's going to be my career for at minimum the next five years. So, I'm fully committed to serving our country and I'm going to do what I was asked to do and what I need to do.
The Air Force knows that it's my job to serve. They weren't too concerned about it.
Q: How does failure make you a better baseball player?
You only learn how to be the best if you play against them. You're not going to be able to reach the highest level of competition in anything you do if you don't put yourself against that competition.
If you're succeeding over and over and over again, then how do you know you're getting better? How do you know you're being tested?
I think it's a cliché to say: We learn from our mistakes. You can see failure as a mistake. So as long as you're pushing yourself and you say, 'Hey, I need to focus; I'm getting better at this because that's what made me lose last time,' then that's the way you're going to be able to progress.
Q: Are there any lessons from playing baseball that you feel can apply to your Air Force career?
Yeah, absolutely, especially at this level. Some of the players have young kids and young families and they're very far away from each other — especially the guys from Latin America. They haven't seen their families in months.
I feel like being able to interact with them and being able to understand where they are coming from can correlate to working with your airmen. If you're stationed or deployed away from family, you'd be able to help those people out, understand what they're going through.
So being able to talk with these guys and see what they need to do to support their families, I feel like it's been a good practice to be able to connect with airmen in the same way.
