I have had a lot of encounters with Gary Wilson because he is my uncle. I would say it was very great knowing him growing up because he taught me a lot about baseball when I was younger, which I would say gave me a ton of knowledge and interest towards baseball.
Gary Wilson is a hall of famer at Arcata High School from the class of 2017. He graduated from Arcata High School in the class of 1988. In his senior year of high school, he got the Times Standard athlete of the year for playing Baseball, Basketball, and Football. In which he also got the AHS athlete of the year.
After high school, Wilson attended Sacramento State University to play baseball, from which he graduated with a degree in Business Administration and Marketing. Wilson was then selected in the 18th round of the MLB draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1994. He was in the minor leagues for the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he won the Minor League Pitcher of the Year award.
He was so good in the minor league that he was selected for the Southern League All-Star team. After his performance in the minors for a year, he was called up to the Pirates, where he pitched in 1995 for 10 games. He struck out 8 players in that time as a relief pitcher. He then played in other leagues for baseball teams in different states, such as Pennsylvania, where he would retire from playing baseball.
After retiring from baseball, he got hired by the Colorado Rockies to come back to the MLB as a scouting supervisor in 2002. He was there for 13 years until he got offered a job as a West Coast head scout for the Kansas City Royals in 2015, where he has worked ever since.
After talking to the man himself, Gary Wilson, he talked to me about what it took to get where he is right now. Wilson expressed his knowledge of baseball, saying, “When looking at prospects, we really look for the personality of the player we are scouting to see if they are a right fit.”
Wilson went over how he and his scouting crew review how they are gonna scout certain players, that the scouts look at their consistency and their in-game techniques, and they ask their coaches and teachers about how they are as a person, because even if they are a good player, they don’t want a bad person in their facility.
Gary Wilson was a tremendous baseball player who originated from Arcata High School and was an even better scout.
