Day 25 of 2023 baseball books: The cautionary tale, and the tail between the legs

“Bonus Baby: A Long Walk Off The Mound”

The author:
Josh Wilson

The publishing info:
Self published
112 pages, $13.99
Released December 3, 2022

The links:
At Alibris.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Amazon.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Just one more story about draft picks, scouts and players who don’t necessarily pan out.

The 2005 MLB Draft. Second Round. No. 70 overall choice.

The St. Louis Cardinals take Josh Wilson. The right-handed pitcher out of Whitehouse High School in Whitehouse, Texas, just south of Tyler and between Dallas and Shreveport, had this write up on MLB.com:

On the Wikipedia.com post about what happened in that draft, it notes eight of the first 12 picks became MLB All Stars — No. 1 Justin Upton, and including Alex Gordon, Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun, Ricky Romero, Troy Tulowitzki, Andrew McCutchen and Jay Bruce. There’s even two NL MVPs in that list. The first round also included Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz and Jed Lowrie.

Among the “other notable players,” there was Tim Lincecum, a 42^nd round pick by Cleveland (No. 1,261 overall) and Buster Posey, a 50^th round pick by the Angels (No. 1,496 overall). Neither signed, obviously, as they became All-Star teammates with the San Francisco Giants not long after. Those who signed and advanced: Chase Headley, Micah Owings, Brett Gardner, Jeremy Hellickson, Lance Lynn, Will Venable, Peter Bourjos, Matt Joyce, Sergio Romo and Jaime Garcia.

Josh Wilson isn’t mentioned in any more of the “notable players” from that draft.

The majority of Wilson’s career as a pro lasted from 2005 to 2009 in Rookie, high-A or low-A ball, with the Johnson City Cardinals, the Batavia Muckdogs and the Quad Cities Bandits, between the ages of 18 to 22.

He had shoulder issues, maturity issues, and cash-flow issues.

Less than three years later, Wilson blew through his $515,000 signing bonus. In 2009, when CardinalNation.com looked back to size up St. Louis’ draft history going back to 2005, it listed for Josh Wilson: “Bust / Retire.”

After his shoulder stopped hurting at age 25, he tried to come back in 2012 with the Cardinals’ Gulf League Rookie team on a rehab assignment. He pitched one inning, gave up three hits and two runs, facing six batters, and somehow got the victory in that game.

He still has a page on Baseball-Reference.com. His post on BaseballAmerica.com, player No. 69919, is blank.

As his current LinkedIn account mentions his time as a pro baseball player under “experience,” there is also documentation of him becoming a district general agent for Colonial Life for five years, leading into a current role as director of sales and business development for Ana-Lab Corporation in Kilgore, Tex., after he got a BA of Business Administration.

So what’s the story in between?

In this self-published assessment, we’re not really sure.

In his intro, he writes:

“This story is about my personal journey through life as a kid dreaming of playing big league baseball, to getting drafted, and eventually falling flat on my fucking face. I cuss a lot. Drink a lot of beer. Don’t go to church as often as I should. And have made plenty (and I mean, plenty) of bad decisions.”

The purpose of the book, he says, is to share things he did wrong so “hopefully, they don’t make the same mistakes that I made. Oh hell, maybe some people just enjoy the story of an arrogant baseball player getting kicked in the nuts by life.”

We’d prefer the former and try not to dwell on the later. But Wilson apparently enjoys that part.

It is about trying to navigate a big-boy situation with perhaps small-minded immaturity. Like when he “friends” start hitting up for plane tickets to they can visit him in the minor leagues. At least he just let that die.

“I guess everyone in Whitehouse, Texas always thought I was an asshole,” he write (we would give you a page reference, but the pages aren’t numbered). “But now I was an asshole with a half million dollars.” That’s when his lost his high-school girlfriend, who “was tired of being the girl that dated the asshole baseball player.”

He wears it well. Maybe it helped him become the best player he could be. But in life, it isn’t a good optics.

Wilson finds out he’s labeled a bonus baby when he lands at his first minor-league assignment. Pitching coach Al Holland, the former MLB All-Star reliever who once had a stop with the Angels, tagged him with that designation as “the high school kid that got all that money … that makes you a bonus baby,” he said sarcastically.

That immediately meant Wilson paid for everyone’s meals when they went out, a “passive aggressive form of hazing” as he realizes.

Before he even signed his contract with the Cardinals, he brought a new Corvette. By 19, in his second year of the minors, he bought a house in Tyler, Tex., in a new project.

In spring training with the Cardinals in Florida in ’06, he feels a pop in his shoulder. By June, surgery for a torn labrum and bicep tendon. A year later, more reconstructive shoulder surgery. Now he’s 20, paying for plane flights back and forth from Florida to Texas to see his girlfriend, buying her a $10,000 engagement ring and a new car … A $15,000 trip to Vegas with friends … He realized he hadn’t listened to a thing his dad said about saving and investing his money, and now he was moving back into his parents’ house.

Back to playing, meets a waitress in a Buffalo Wild Wings in Appleton, Wisc., marries her in 2009, has a son with her … shoulder still hurts, back in the low-A league for the third time in four seasons … living on a blow-up mattress in an insurance office …

Should we go on? Let’s just stop here.

How it goes in the scorebook

E1. It needs an editor, someone who can also add all that research done above to explain better what happened, and then more photos. But you get what you get here.

It is “real,” as he says, but far from redeeming.

It is “embarrassing,” as he says, but far from giving lessons learned.

It is “brutally honest,” as he says, but we’re not sure where that really leaves us.

There are plenty of Josh Wilson stories. That includes the Josh Wilson who played eight years in the big leagues as a shortstop (drafted in ’99) as this book’s author was trying to find his way. There’s are several Josh Wilsons in the baseball pipeline, playing in college, having their stats tracked. Where will they end up.

In 2006, Bowman company put out a Josh Wilson card in the Chrome Prospects X-Fractors. Its dazzling and reflective on the front, almost to a point you can’t see Wilson. On the back it said Wilson “has an electrifying arm for his age.”

We just hope, as he turns 37 this September, he has more an electrifying story to tell down the road. At least this is a starting point.

You can look it up: More to ponder

== One more for the road that could be a better example of a self-published project: “The Pizza Guy Delivers,” by Jim Rushford (123 pages, $20, released Nov. 12, 2022), with his baseball card on the cover. It follows all one needs to know about a left-handed hitting right fielder with a career WAR of minus-1.1 who got into 181 innings and 23 games with the 2002 Milwaukee Brewers, going 11 for 77 (.143) with one homer and six RBIs at age 28.

He made his major league debut at Wrigley Field on Sept. 3, going 0-for-7 in back-to-back games. His greatest game: Sept. 13, ’02 against Arizona, when he went 3-for-4 with a home run and two RBIs. His seventh inning solo homer off Rick Helling gave the Brewers a 5-4 lead and his eight-inning single increased the lead to 8-4. His journey has gone from the Independent League (1996), a team from Mission Viejo in the Western League (1997), finally landing in the Milwaukee organization (2001), then tagging Texas (’03), back to Milwaukee (’03) and Philadelphia (’04-to-’06). Then the Mexican League, Venezuela League, and trying to stick with the Golden Baseball League’s Tuscon franchise at age 36 in 2010. He even helped out by pitching in 21 games in the Independent League in ’96 and made spot appearances at Triple-A Ottawa (Phillies) in ’07. Oh, the stories he could tell.