Unfinished Business: Returning For Degrees Important To Former Husker Baseball Players

Dear Dan Johnson,
 
Welcome to the University of Nebraska, and best of luck as you transfer here to continue your collegiate baseball career. We hope you find your experience here enjoyable and rewarding, not only on the field, but especially in the classroom, where you will earn a valuable degree.
 
Oh, by the way, you won't finish that degree for another 20 years. And when you do, you will be helping your four children log into their Zoom meetings and Google hangouts to participate in school from home while you, too, will be taking collegiate online courses several hundred miles away from our campus.
 
Did we mention this is occurring because of a global pandemic?
 
Best wishes, and Go Big Red!
 
This (obvious) fake letter reads like something that would cause anyone to awake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
 
Some might label it a nightmare. For Johnson, despite the many oddities nobody could have possibly predicted, it's a dream, and one come true.
 
Johnson, who helped the Nebraska baseball team to its first College World Series appearance in 2001, was selected in the seventh-round of the Major League Baseball Draft that summer, but without his college degree. In the spring of 2019, he returned to the classroom, while also joining the Nebraska baseball team as a student assistant, which means, at long last, he will receive his degree, in management.
 
"Oh, man, it's pretty special," said Johnson, who transferred to Nebraska after two previous years in school, one in junior college. "I believe it was 22 years ago I started this journey, and then finally to come full circle, putting in all the work and coming back and finishing it, seeing it through, it's something I can hang my hat on."
 
Johnson, who made his Major League debut in 2004, spent his first six years of professional baseball with Oakland and Tampa Bay before playing for the Chicago White Sox, Baltimore, Toronto and St. Louis. During his professional career that spanned 18 seasons, Johnson compiled 1,934 hits, 368 home runs, 1,343 RBIs, 1,132 runs scored, 368 doubles and 21 triples.
 
Johnson also played in Japan and Mexico and, finally, with the Lincoln Saltdogs. That's where another former Husker baseball player and former MLB player, then-Nebraska coach Darin Erstad, told Johnson how he could still finish his degree.
 
"I didn't know about the opportunity," Johnson said. "Then we talked about doing the volunteer assistant coaching, so that brought it up again."
 
Erstad added Johnson as a student assistant, and when Will Bolt succeeded Erstad as coach, Bolt "was gracious enough to extend the offer to me so that I was able to finish up my degree and get some coaching in," Johnson said.
 
Naturally, it makes sense that Erstad would tell Johnson he could still finish his Nebraska degree years later. Erstad, picked No. 1 in the 1995 MLB Draft, also left Nebraska without his degree. He, too, returned to finish.
 
On Saturday, when Nebraska holds virtual commencement ceremonies, Johnson and Erstad will graduate and join a long list of Husker baseball players who returned to school to receive their degrees.
 
"What a great opportunity," Johnson said. "It's something I'll carry with me for the rest of my life. It also sets an example for my kids to show them that persistence pays off. See it through. Finish something you started.
 
"It's something I'm proud of."
 
So is Erstad, who took a much longer route to complete his degree. He actually began the process in his final year of playing professionally, in 2009.
 
"So you just chip away, chip away, chip away," Erstad said. "And here we are."


 
Erstad, whose professional career included a World Series championship with the Anaheim Angels in 2002, said he "didn't even want to know" how many credits he had remaining.
 
He never asked. He just did what he had to do.
 
"I made a promise to my mom when I left after my junior year in '95, and it took how many years? I guess I was persistent enough to finish it, and keep my promise to her," Erstad said.
 
"The big part for me, though, is I can't tell you how many guys came back after they were done playing and finished their degree. I was very aggressive in encouraging them to do that, and they followed through with it. I just feel like it wouldn't be the right thing to do if I didn't do it myself."
 
Johnson and Erstad join a long list of former Nebraska baseball players who've returned after playing professionally, or even sometimes while still playing. Jesse Wilkening, for example, finished his degree last December while pursuing professional baseball. Currently, Cody Asche is working to complete his degree while the baseball season is suspended; depending on when baseball resumes, he could potentially graduate in December.
 
Other former Nebraska baseball players who've recently returned to complete their degrees include Charlie Shirek (2017), Max Knutson (2017), Richard Stock (2018), Aaron Bummer (2016), Ken Harvey (2015), Adam Bailey (2015), Pat Kelly (2017) and Kyle Kubat (2015). Going back further, Todd Sears, R.D. Spiehs, Shane Komine and Jason Burch all returned to finish their degrees, according to Katie Jewell, Nebraska Associate Director of Academic Programs.
 
"That's just awesome, this university supporting these kids coming back," Erstad said. "Katie Jewell being on top of it, Dennis Leblanc. I can't tell you how many thank yous I've gotten from guys who came back. And I never did anything. It was Katie and Dennis. It's just cool to see."
 
Johnson wasn't certain he'd ever have a degree after leaving Nebraska following his senior season in 2001. He still had roughly 40 credits to complete, and more work than he initially expected when he did return.
 
"I had to do so many classes over again because the curriculum changes and everything else," Johnson said. "I basically had to take all of my 300 and 400 level classes again."
 
The current pandemic made the route more challenging. When the baseball season was cancelled in March, Johnson vacated his Lincoln apartment and returned to his home in Minnesota with his wife and four children – boys ages 15 and 12, and girls ages 8 and 6. They've been studying from home, too, because of stay-at-home orders, and Johnson's hectic mornings recently have involved helping them with their directions, while also taking his classes at home.
 
"Many professors, I think, felt they had to add a whole bunch of stuff, because there was no lecture time," Johnson said. "Instead of it being a lighter class load, there ended up being more and more of the busy work type of stuff. It's not really stressful, but it takes time to do."
 
Johnson has learned this much from his most recent experience at Nebraska: He wants to be a coach.
 
"I've taken enjoyment out of it. It's great to see when you're out there helping and you can see a kid gets something, and it's something that you've helped him with and better themselves in their baseball play, or something off the field," Johnson said.
 
"Learning also as a collegiate coach rather than the professional side … it's been a long time since I've been on that collegiate side. Being able to watch these guys and learn from them and help out as much as I could was a great opportunity."
 
Baseball, football and men's basketball are the most popular sports in which Nebraska student-athletes have returned to complete their degrees after pursuing some sort of professional career.
 
Nebraska has worked diligently as an athletic academics department to increase its overall GSR (Graduation Success Rate) over the last decade, with baseball seeing a major increase. The most recent NCAA report, in 2019, had Nebraska at 97 percent in baseball. (It should be noted that neither Johnson nor Erstad will have any impact on that number).
 
Student-athletes who leave Nebraska before exhausting their eligibility and meet academic eligibility requirements are factored out of the GSR calculation, whether they transfer, go pro, or leave the institution for other reasons. Student-athletes have a six-year window from the time they enroll as freshmen to be factored into graduation rates. 
 
Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.