BASEBALL 2005: No Adjustment, Period

Steffan wilson is a rookie. Really.

He just doesn’t seem like one, already batting in the heart of the Crimson’s potent lineup in his first year with the team. He doesn’t act like one, easily handling the pressure of filling the void left by last season’s Ivy batting champ, Trey Hendricks ’04.And he sure doesn’t hit like one. Wilson is batting .362, second-best on the team, and leads the squad with a whopping .710 slugging percentage. He’s tied for the team lead in hits (25) and paces Harvard in RBI (21), total bases (49), and home runs (5). He can pitch a little, too: two saves in three appearances, and a 2.25 ERA, say so.

Wilson’s numbers, composure, and comfort with Division I collegiate play belie the fact that he’s spent barely a month in a Crimson uniform. But just after Wilson’s breakout weekend March 20-21—during which he batted .588 through four games, going 10-for-17 and swatting his first two collegiate home runs—a flash of inexperience reveals itself.

“The back of my neck is the worst,” Wilson says with a grimace. “Check out that farmer’s tan.”

The freshman from State College, Pa., shows off a pair of muscular, tomato-red forearms, a little souvenir from Harvard’s Florida road trip.

Finally, proof that he’s actually a rookie. A veteran would have known to bring sunscreen.

Wilson may have come back from Florida with a nasty sunburn, but it was opposing pitchers who got scorched. In the team’s four games in the Sunshine State, Wilson finished with 10 RBI and 20 total bases. He had two triples, four runs scored, and a weekend slugging percentage of 1.176 as the Crimson split the series with Bethune-Cookman.

“I’m just amazed,” says senior Rob Wheeler of Wilson’s performance. “We were facing some pretty decent pitching, and he went out there and just crushed the ball.”

For his efforts, Wilson was honored as both Ivy Player of the Week and Rookie of the Week. His slugging show was not just impressive for his quick adjustment to the college game; it was also well-timed. With junior Zak Farkes—the 2004 league leader in home runs and Harvard’s single-season record-holder in the category—out with a strained right shoulder, the Crimson needed to be able to rely on other sources of run support.

It was a lot of pressure to put on a freshman, especially early in the season, especially one already trying to prove that he deserved that spot in the starting lineup. But it was nothing compared to the demands coming from Wilson himself.

“I put a lot of pressure on myself,” he says. “And it just started happening.”

* * *

The Florida trip was where Wilson caught everyone’s attention. But it really only took him the first two games of the season to figure out how to make an impact. In the season opener, he went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. The second game he reached base twice on walks, but still remained hitless.

On the third day, the freshman caught fire. Wilson slammed a two-RBI triple and a double in the Crimson’s 9-1 win over Minnesota on March 13, and he hasn’t stopped hitting since.

So much for needing time to adjust.

“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.