“Actually that was probably one of my biggest fears, making the adjustment,” Wilson says, “and judging from the first weekend when we went out to Minnesota, it was a little…difficult.”
His quick contribution was hardly a surprise to fellow big bat and captain Schuyler Mann, who had seen what the freshman could do.
“[After] just watching him take some swings in the fall,” Mann says, “[you know] he’s going to have a great Ivy career. You can tell that at this early stage. He had a tough first weekend and he overcame that over two days. He’s mentally strong, and he’s going to do a lot of good things for the Crimson.”
Nor did Harvard coach Joe Walsh expect anything less from the 6’1, 210-lb. kid that he snatched from the jaws of Wake Forest University. Though Wilson might look pretty comfortable in Crimson, it was by no means a foregone conclusion. Shopping around for schools his senior year, Wilson focused most of his attention southward. Winthrop University, where his brother pitches, was one option, but Wake Forest courted him heavily. Then, the weekend before he was to sign on as a Demon Deacon, Walsh called up.
“I’d been talking to Coach Walsh a little bit but I pretty much told him that I wasn’t interested,” Wilson says, “and he was like, ‘why don’t you come up here, it’s your last weekend, you have visits left.’ So I came up, spent the weekend with the team, and just had a great time.”
Although a self-described despiser of cold weather, the prospect of frosty springs and months of indoor practices couldn’t put a damper on the team vibe that Wilson witnessed on his visit.
“The other teams I had visited weren’t nearly as accepting, didn’t have the same kind of team—I guess chemistry that I felt was here,” Wilson admits. “Not to mention it’s the best school in the world. Both of those things together really changed my mind.”
He called up the Wake Forest to say thanks but no thanks, and, having burned his bridges, spent the next four months sweating out the acceptance letter. Fortunately for Wilson—and fortunately for the Crimson’s future Ivy title campaign—he was accepted. For someone who admittedly wasn’t all that interested in Harvard until the last possible moment, it had become the only foreseeable outcome.
“Once I had my heart set on Harvard,” he says, “I don’t think anyone, anything really could have supplanted that.”
With Harvard now four games into the Ivy season, Wilson has made the adjustment to college ball look easy. His powerful bat and ability to learn quickly will undoubtedly be crucial to the Crimson’s run at the league title. In keeping with his un-rookie-like demeanor, Wilson has already grasped the importance of striving towards that perennial goal.
“Even in the fall, coach would come back to us having gotten feedback from the older guys, saying...that we had one of the better teams that they’d seen in a while,” Wilson says, “and that they were really looking forward to getting out and trying to take that Ivy title this year. That mentality quickly passed on to us, and we want nothing less than an Ivy league championship.”
Focused, composed, goal-oriented—does this freshman exhibit any signs of innocence?
Nope. The closest you’ll get is youthful optimism.
“You know,” he says earnestly, “I think that we can [win the title], from what they say, and from the hard work that I’ve seen out of all the guys, and the games we’ve already played.”
From what he’s shown so far, Wilson isn’t about to behave—or hit—like he’s inexperienced, which is fine with his teammates.
“He knew he was good, and he played like it, and his play backed him up,” Wheeler said after the Florida weekend. “And I think that’s one of the things that a lot of kids on the team respected about him and wished that they could have had coming into college.”
Opponents, however, are left wishing Wilson would just act his age.
—Staff writer Lisa J. Kennelly can be reached at kennell@fas.harvard.edu.