{"id":4344,"date":"2011-07-25T09:45:51","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T14:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/?p=4344"},"modified":"2011-07-25T01:26:17","modified_gmt":"2011-07-25T06:26:17","slug":"where-are-they-now-vance-wilson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/archives\/4344","title":{"rendered":"Where are they now? Vance Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"

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That's me - amazed in the summer of 2006 that I had just netted the autograph of my all-time favorite backup catcher: Vance Wilson. <\/p><\/div>\n

Backup Catcher Edition<\/strong><\/p>\n

What has Vance Wilson been up to in his post playing days?<\/p>\n

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Vance Wilson now manages the Kane County Cougars. <\/p><\/div>\n

Even for baseball fans of the hardest core,\u00a0 that’s a seldom-asked question. Why would anyone ask about the former Met and Tiger catcher, forever a backup, who never played in more than 96 games in any of his eight years as a player?<\/p>\n

But I had to smile today when I discovered <\/a>that Wilson has stayed in baseball, now as manager of the Kane County Cougars (Low-A, Kansas City Royals).\u00a0 (Though I was disappointed in myself for failing to realize I was in his midst at a Cougars game in May.<\/a>) Because for reasons I still don’t completely understand, Wilson was my all-time favorite player.<\/p>\n

Maybe it was because he was the true unsung hero on his teams. Not just a under-appreciated catcher, but an unheralded backup<\/em> catcher. He could come into games late and produce results – a hard-to-do task after a full day sitting on the bench.<\/p>\n

Though his sporadic playing time rarely allowed him to get into a rhythm, he had a solid .250 career batting average, and he threw out a whopping 40 percent <\/a>of would-be base-stealers. That’s awesome.<\/p>\n

But even better, the guy I inexplicably called “Vance the Pants,” provided me with one of my all-time favorite baseball memories.<\/p>\n

On a sunny summer day before a Tigers-White Sox game in 2006, Wilson was signing autographs down the left field line. I ventured down a few rows at Comerica Park to see if Wilson would sign the Paul Konerko foul ball I had gloved during batting practice.<\/p>\n

There wasn’t much of a crowd around Wilson, so the task was easy. I handed him the ball and, emboldened by what seemed like a once in a lifetime chance to chat, said: “Vance, this is going to sound really weird, but you’re my favorite player.”<\/p>\n

“Kid, you’ve got problems,” Wilson said, handing me back a newly-inked baseball that had just become a prized possession.
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Backup Catcher Edition What has Vance Wilson been up to in his post playing days? Even for baseball fans of the hardest core,\u00a0 that’s a seldom-asked question. Why would anyone ask about the former Met and Tiger catcher, forever a backup, who never played in more than 96 games in any of his eight years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1300,2197,6,13,14,2469],"tags":[264,638,2468,370,1984,302,2470,580,2467,3467],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4344"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4344"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4365,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4344\/revisions\/4365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}