"In wintry New Jersey, there weren't many options for playing baseball when Jack Cust and his two brothers were growing up. So his father, also named Jack, asked his accounting clients for empty spaces where they could set up a batting machine.

"We'd mooch space, set up in any kind of weather," the elder Cust said. "Warehouses, empty retail stores, anywhere."

That's how the younger Jack Cust, now an outfielder/designated hitter with the A's, wound up hitting in a beauty parlor on Main Street in Flemington, N.J., one year. The equipment was gone and the windows were taped over, but still, it wasn't your usual batting cage.

"I didn't get a haircut or anything," Cust said with a grin. "It was just wide enough so we could crank up the pitching machine and hit. It was pretty funny."

Another year, the elder Cust, who played on a College World Series team at Seton Hall, found room in an abandoned warehouse. It was so cold, the Custs brought along a heater to warm their bats in an effort to keep their hands from stinging.

There was no flooring, however. It was all rocks.

"You'd hit a grounder, it would hit a rock and come back and smash you in the face," Cust said. "That's how I got a little uppercut in my swing. No groundballs. I didn't want to get hit in the face."

Considering these experiences, perhaps it isn't surprising that when Cust was drafted in 1997, the family decided to open a baseball facility with indoor cages. The enterprise has grown in extraordinary fashion: The Jack Cust Academy boasts the largest amateur sports dome in the country, and at 65 acres, it's the largest turf baseball complex in the nation. Six new fields are about to go in, including two softball fields. The Custs realized girls in the region didn't have a place to work out in the winter, either, and they have arranged for U.S. Olympic softball star Jennie Finch to provide instruction on a regular basis.

The academy has made the family a household name in New Jersey. The A's have had several young players from the state in recent years, and most have attended the Cust academy (starter Dan Meyer and Vin Mazzaro) or played in games there (reliever Andrew Bailey). According to Cust, 40 Division I baseball players last year had gone through the academy.

"Everyone knows Jack and his family," Bailey said. "They're one of the big names in the state."

Cust's father recalls taking Jack to many Yankees games starting at about the age of 5. That's when the younger Cust (Jack Cust III) decided that Don Mattingly was his favorite player and that he, too, wanted to be a great hitter. The elder Cust served as Jack's hitting coach, but efforts to mimic Mattingly sometimes drove him to distraction.

"Every time Mattingly changed his stance, and it was a lot, I'd do the same thing the next day," Cust said. "Dad would say, 'Stop changing your stance, you can't do that!' And I'd say, 'But Mattingly did.' Then he'd get mad if