RENSSELAERVILLE — Jost Nickelsberg, a former Rensselaerville supervisor with a passion for baseball and a résumé that included major stops on Wall Street, died peacefully on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022, at his home in Medusa after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 80 years old. 

Mr. Nickelsberg was born in Berlin, Germany during World War II, his family wrote in a tribute, and moved to America in 1948, at age 6, with his mother, Jenny Meyer, and his adopted father, Harold Nickelsberg, who was an American officer. 

He was raised in New Jersey, where he fell in love with baseball and graduated from Midland Park High School as senior class president and a three-sport athlete before going on to Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He graduated in 1965 and had been a varsity baseball player for three years.

Before eventually making his way to Medusa in 1996 with his wife, Ellen Worcester Nickelsberg, to work for First Albany Corp., Mr. Nickelsberg spent many years working in institutional finance on Wall Street for JP Morgan Chase, Smith Barney, and Martin Simpson & Company. 

Mr. Nickelsberg had lived in Bedford in Westchester County while he worked on Wall Street, and, in 1979, he founded The Baseball Academy — originally the Bedford Academy — with the late Frank Bartolotta. The two would source talent (including Pedro Alvarez, who would go on to play for the Pittsburgh Pirates) and get “the most out of what God gave them,” as Mr. Nickelsberg phrased it to The Enterprise in 2015.

The academy became popular as the only baseball facility that stayed open during the winter, getting around 250 kids that season each year. 

In 2005, Mr. Nickelsberg, a Republican, was elected to be Rensselaerville’s supervisor, a position he held for four years.

After winning his first-ever race for public office, Mr. Nickelsberg said on Election Night in 2005, “I feel exhilarated because it was a long hard pull.” 

He estimated that he visited 80 percent of the homes in town during his campaign, promising transparency along with lower taxes and increased services. “It was a lot of fun,” he said. “It’s not nearly as tiring an activity as it might be if you’re not having fun.”

With a bipartisan town board, some of the fun turned contentious during his tenure.

Nevertheless, Mr Nickelsberg continued to channel his fondness for baseball and dedication to serving others, which is something he said was knit tightly into German culture.

“I come from a service-service place,” Mr. Nickelsberg told The Enterprise, recounting how his father  was a member of the German Army during World War II and was captured by the Russian Army. “You help your neighbor if you have to. That whole part of Germany is like that. My mother and my Grandpa volunteered to do this and do that. They wanted to be part of the solution and solve a problem.”

One fall, Mr. Nickelsberg coordinated a full-day baseball clinic for local youngsters from grade school through high school, who were treated to lessons from professional ball players such as then-Yankee pitcher Humberto Sanchez, and some farm-system players.

“Jost used to be my summer coach at the Baseball Academy all through high school,” Mr. Sanchez told The Enterprise at the time. “He is a father figure to me.” He said of himself and the other players who volunteered for the clinic, “He took us under his wing.”

“It’s cool to have your town supervisor be a scout,” one of the attendees, Little Leaguer Conor Drosseo, said at the time. “It’s really fun. Meeting a major leaguer, especially with the younger kids; it makes them in awe.”

In a 2015 meditation on what many perceive as baseball’s numbing pace, former Enterprise sportswriter Jordan J. Michael wrote that he had slowly become disinterested in the game, but that meeting Mr. Nickelsberg was “an inspiration,” with his “great heart” and greater brain for baseball. 

“If you’re ever at a baseball game, Nickelsberg says to close your eyes,” he wrote, “and listen closely because that’s the sound of a classic American culture that does not care how fast the rest of the world is moving.”

“My love of baseball never grew cold,” Mr. Nickelsberg told The Enterprise years earlier. “It’s like a religion. When you’re young, it’s something that sticks with you. The Dodgers come and go, but the game has always stayed.”

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Jost Nickelsberg is survived by his wife, Ellen Worcester Nickelsberg, of Medusa; his brother, Robert Nickelsberg of Brooklyn; his cousin Anka Meyer of San Francisco; and his half-sister, Jutta Shenkl, in Germany.

Calling hours were held at the A.J. Cunningham Funeral Home in Greenville on Nov. 12. He will be laid to rest at Valleau Cemetery in Ridgewood, New Jersey at a later date.

Memorial contributions may be made to The Parkinson’s Foundation or to a charity of choice.

— Noah Zweifel