NorthJersey.com

Jake Capra directed the Leonia baseball team to a wonderful week.

His last name and that particular adjective often get lumped together. Blame late film director Frank Capra, best known for the 1946 Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life.

“I get it all the time,” Jake said with a laugh. “I’m not related, but my family loves the movie. He may be a distant relative, who knows?”

The topic might not have come up in conversation with the Leonia senior, but for the fact that his mother, Alexis, once worked in HR for a film company. Just prior to COVID, Alexis’ job led the Capra family to live in Beverly Hills, California for a year.

“It was an experience… a culture shock, to be honest,” Jake said. “I grew up in Kenilworth. And then in third grade, I moved to Edgewater, and I’ve pretty much lived there my whole life since.”

Leonia’s April 14 home game against Park Ridge followed a fairly dramatic script, too. The 5-foot-11 right-hander pitched eight scoreless innings, allowed three hits and struck out 10 before reaching the NJSIAA-mandated pitch limit.

The performance pushed Capra past 100 career strikeouts. But he didn’t officially get the win because the game stayed scoreless until the bottom of the 13th, thanks to five shutout innings by junior reliever Josef Kim.

Capra got on base in the home 13th, and the Lions walked it off without recording a hit.

“It was a hit-by-pitch that got me on,” he recalled. “I stole second, and then I went to steal third, but the catcher made an overthrow. So, I stole home off that.”

That culminated the second true pitchers’ duel in Capra’s first three starts. Leonia was on the opposite end of things in the season opener, when Midland Park’s Anthony Carrea pitched a shutout and scored the game’s lone run.

“This has been a rollercoaster of a season, for sure,” Capra said. “We’ve lost four or five games by one. We’ve been ‘walked off’ twice already. … All of our games usually go to the distance, and it’s really close.”

The Lions’ ace gets the lion’s share of the credit in multiple instances.

“Jake continues to be stellar on the mound this season,” Leonia coach Joe Prenenski said. “In his first three starts, he gave up zero earned runs and had 30 strikeouts.”

Although Capra has narrowed his focus to one sport, he was able to hone his leadership skills playing football for Palisades Park/Leonia until his junior year. He was the starting quarterback and a team captain for the co-op’s 2023 season.

“We were 1-5, but we were a pretty competitive team,” he said. “I stopped playing football so I could concentrate on baseball. We usually have football in the summer, but I decided to stick with club baseball year-round.”

His father, Mark, has coached most of his teams outside of high school, starting with T-ball. Moving forward, he is strongly considering Caldwell University to continue his education.

“I definitely am going to play baseball at the next level,” Capra said. “That’s been one of my aspirations since I was young.”

He may have a Hollywood surname, but Jake Capra’s “show business” happens on the diamond, rather than the silver screen.