There’s more — plenty more — to being clubhouse manager for the Ogden Raptors, but in some ways it all happens in increments measured by when one load is ready to dry and another can get in the washers.

As Ogden’s “clubbie” going on 10 years, Ackerman has done tens of thousands of laundry loads inside the equipment room he calls his office, which is stationed between Lindquist Field’s front office and the Raptors’ team clubhouse.

It’s no fewer than 16 loads a day, he says, once the season gets going. That’s Raptors uniforms, visiting team uniforms, umpire uniforms, towels — so many towels — and other miscellaneous items needing to be cleaned before baseball’s daily grind begins anew with the next sunrise.

“You want everything to look like they’re all coaches when the day begins,” Ackerman said, “but the pride I have in doing the uniforms shows at the end of the night when the uniforms are just filthy with dirt, grass stains, everything else, because you know they were making plays … and were playing their hearts out.”

BRETT HEIN, Standard-Examiner

In some ways, the thumping dryers sound as the clubhouse heartbeat, but it’s Ackerman making the ticker tick.

“You’ve got to find somebody who loves baseball, find somebody who loves people and you have to find somebody who loves putting in the hours. Dave checks all those boxes and then some,” team president Dave Baggott said. “They don’t grow on trees, clubhouse managers, but Dave is a branch all to himself. We couldn’t function properly without him. … He’s a remarkable individual.”

Now, Ackerman is from Utah as much as anywhere else, but he was born at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota and to say the U.S. Air Force is significant in Ackerman’s life would be an understatement.

“My grandfather started out as Army Air Corps, “Ackerman explained. “He had a line number 00047, which means he was the 47th officer in the United States Air Force when they became their own branch of service.”

His grandfather served for 30 years and his father at least 15 after that, taking his family to stations in Texas, New Mexico, the Phillipines, Germany, Massachussetts and, most frequently Colorado, which is where Ackerman long considered himself “from.”

ISAAC FISHER, Special to the Standard-Examiner

Ackerman joined the service when he was 23 and served a bit more than 20 years in munitions, which took him to Turkey, South Korea, New York and Nevada. He landed at Hill Air Force Base in the mid-90s, helping prep drug interdiction flight missions through Central and South America before 9/11, after which he deployed to Saudi Arabia a few times, which included serving “temporary duty” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He retired from Hill in 2007 and has been around ever since, especially since meeting Candi, his wife now of more than 21 years, who “saved my life, my mental health,” Ackerman says. Candi will be at Lindquist Field this summer, running the souvenir stand by the main entrance.

After Air Force retirement, Ackerman worked as a car mechanic for a few years, as a grandfather watching his grandkids for a few more, and as a teacher at Utah Military Academy for a few after that; he was a permanent substitute at the Riverdale charter high school, meaning he taught something different every day.

His career and subsequent retirement jobs illustrate just what Ackerman is.

“He is my ‘MacGyver,'” Baggott said. “He can take anything and make it work for the ballpark. He can fix anything, build anything, clean anything. He’s a multi-talented man with lots of skills and talents. And on top of all that, he takes care of 26 players and five coaches, so he’s a multi-tasker and he does all of it well.”

BRETT HEIN, Standard-Examiner

With the Raptors opening this season in Oakland — a rare road-trip opener for the Ogden club that allowed Dave and Candi to celebrate their anniversary together for the first time in a while — Ackerman was at Lindquist Field on Friday organizing paperwork, helping hang shades for the west-side upper concourse, vacuuming and sweeping the clubhouse and other items to prepare for the team’s return Monday from the six-game road series.

Much before that, Ackerman and the crew spent time hanging signs and advertising banners, walking the ballpark looking for things in the grandstand that might need to be fixed, making sure concession stand equipment is working properly, and more.

It’s all part of the script.

“To me, baseball is theater,” Ackerman says.

The field is the stage of baseball’s theater and his role — and that of many others, from general manager Trever Wilson, to operations and field manager Frank Patrick and his family, overseen by emeritus heads groundskeeper Kenny Kopinski, and more — is that of a stagehand, setting the stage for the actors.

Once the season begins, days are planned each hour from the start: when players arrive, when meals happen, when warmups and batting practice take place, when the music starts, when the gates open, when announcements are made.

In some ways, each person’s role bleeds into another’s as a fairly small group of stagehands makes each season happen. But Ackerman is in the middle of most things; aside from laundry and repairs, he has his hand in making sure meals are happening for players, for one.

Another of his key, official duties is baseball inventory: 3,600 baseballs per season, he says. Each game starts with about 120, and that includes “mudding” the balls, which is a preparation that reduces the sheen and slickness of a new leather baseball.

Some are lost forever to home runs and foul balls, hopefully snagged by fans as souvenirs, while others make their way back into bags for batting practice, infield-outfield and warmups. It’s a dance Ackerman says they attempt carefully.

“You’re trying to maintain the stock of balls, trying to make sure they don’t use them all up. Some nights we’ll go through about seven dozen balls that we never see back from a game,” he said.

His duties also include direct supervision of the bat boys, usually high-school-aged young men. Between Ackerman and the bat boys, they make sure anything inside each dugout is handled. That’s water jugs and cups, bats and balls, and quickly getting to the clubhouse for more on the nights when foul balls are flying, broken bats are cracking or the heat has water going fast.

“The bat boys do more than just retrieve balls and bats. I mean, it’s a full effort,” Ackerman said. “They do whatever the coaches and manager need from them. … I’ve never had a bad group of bad boys. They’ve all stepped up to doing what we ask.”

But with water filled and dugouts prepped, it’s curtains up.

“Once the national anthem hits, the script is over with,” Ackerman smiled. “And whatever happens out in the field, that’s when it’s fun to see our guys playing their hearts out, to represent the community.”

In the beginning, he would spend time inside his office/laundry room during games but found himself itching to watch the action. So now you can find Ackerman parked in the deep left-field corner near the gate to the clubhouse, watching — and waiting to be called into action.

He says his job is best done when nobody notices he’s there, but sometimes the spotlight unavoidably finds him. Like the time a microburst windstorm battered Lindquist Field from the east and yanked down advertising banners on the right-field fence; all Ackerman could do is retrieve them in a bundle and run off the field — to the cheers of UTOG’s patrons watching from the patio beyond the fence, whose view had just been widened.

Baggott’s style, in his role as public address announcer, is sometimes to make people notice — to Ackerman’s chagrin. Like the time a centerfielder crashed into the gate that’s blended into the batters’ eye, which hides groundskeeping equipment behind the fence. Ackerman hustled from his corner to the gate as quickly as he could.

“I was like, I gotta fix this before they get hurt because you don’t want the players getting hurt doing something stupid, as far as trying to fix something, or have it be in the way,” he recounted. “I start digging in the ground to find where the locking plate is, where the fence post goes into it. And Bags starts playing the ‘Jeopardy’ song, and I knew he was going to do something like that …

“I finally get it back into position and you want to get off the field so the game can start again, so I’m trying to run off the field with rebuilt knees and everything, and Bags goes, ‘Man, he’s moving today!'”

Listening to Ackerman speak, it’s clear the Raptors are as much a duty and a lifestyle as his former service. Every part of the team he considers his own when it comes to what he can do to make the place better for players and fans.

Baggott recalled a postseason walkthrough of the ballpark a few years back when he, Ackerman and Wilson bemoaned the “rickety, old aluminum bleachers” that sat on the first-base end of the grandstand. For years, it combined with a grassy knoll, then replaced by a similar set of bleachers, on the third-base side as the park’s general admission sections. But it had been years since the grandstand was extended from its original sections all the way to the left-field corner, with the last three new sections then serving as general admission.

“(The first-base bleachers) were only used when there was overflow general admission a handful of games each year, and those people get burns sitting on hot metal in the sun, Baggott said.

“‘Wouldn’t it be great if we turned this space into a bar?'” Baggott said Ackerman proposed. Initially laughing at the thought, Baggott said he spent the rest of the night in visions of what that could look like, dreaming of “an outdoor cantina like somewhere on the beaches of Mexico — and I just smiled and thought about Ackerman; ‘that’s the most brilliant idea I’ve ever heard.'”

The O-Town Beach Club was born. Plans were sent in to all necessary parties for the city-owned ballpark, Ackerman and Wilson started digging footings for the giant pergola that as to come, and Baggott began pursuing licenses and clearances to serve a specialized alcohol menu, along with finer dining options like steak, salmon and fajitas.

“As far as I know, we’re the only outside full-service bar in all of Utah,” Ackerman said. “It was fun to watch everybody else get on board with the idea. … And it’s held its own ever since we opened it up and it makes you feel like, well, hey, that was my idea.”

Overall, Ackerman says he couldn’t be happier he showed up to Lindquist Field in 2016 to ask about an opening to manage the locker room.

“We are a professional baseball team, they are called clubhouses,” Ackerman chuckled, recalling how Baggott’s first lesson made him realize he was stepping into something people cared about greatly.

From cheering on the team to occasionally throwing on a glove and helping a player warm up, Ackerman said it’s a “shot of youth” to be part of the operation.

“It’s a contagious feeling, the crowds coming in, the excitement of the games. I mean, that’s the biggest rush that you can have and still be safe,” he said.