The 25-year-old prospect has impressed pitching coach Bob McClure
By DAVID DORSEY
Alex Wilson has a stake to claim.
The 25-year-old right-handed pitching prospect for the Boston Red Sox, however, said he cared little about becoming the first pitcher born in Saudi Arabia to reach the big leagues.
“I just want to get there,” Wilson said of the majors. “It doesn’t matter where I was born.”
Wilson has been wowing big-league pitching coach Bob McClure in the early going of spring training at Fenway South.
At 1 p.m. today at the Lee County Sports Complex, Wilson is slated to be a middle-innings replacement for starter Daniel Bard in an exhibition game against the Minnesota Twins that will feature many of Boston’s top prospects on a back minor league field.
“From what I’ve seen so far, he has thrown as far as accuracy and stuff-wise as good as anybody,” McClure said. “I look at guys who follow the glove. They can put it here, they can put it here, they can put it there.”
Asked what Wilson must do to become a big-league pitcher, McClure smiled. “Be in the big leagues,” he said.
McClure already has discussed the spring training scenario with Wilson. With Jon Lester, Josh Beckett and Clay Buchholz inked into the rotation and Daniel Bard and a handful of others competing for the final two spots, Wilson would have a tough time making the team in April.
“If something drastic happened, I wouldn’t feel remiss at all about starting him in a big-league game from what I’ve seen,” McClure said. “I wouldn’t feel like he’d be overmatched.”
Wilson has overmatched many opponents from an early age, said his father Jim Wilson, who helped pass an athletic pedigree on to his son.
Jim Wilson played football at Hanover College, an NAIA program in Indiana, and tried out for the Cincinnati Bengals in 1979.
“I got cut the last week,” Jim Wilson said. “I had the chance to go to Green Bay, but instead of making $26,000 a year, I decided to go back and get my master’s degree and study physics instead. I loved football, and I was good at it, but I didn’t want to be on a practice squad. When I signed with Texaco, I got a bigger contract than $26,000 a year.”
In the mid-1980s, Texaco loaned Jim Wilson, a geologist, to the oil company Aramco in Dharhan, Saudi Arabia.
“Aramco had a great hospital and very good doctors,” he said. And so, on Nov. 3, 1986, Alex Wilson entered the world in Saudi Arabia. In 2007, infielder Craig Stansberry of the San Diego Padres became the first Saudi Arabian-born position player in the big leagues.
“When he was two years old, he could hit a ball,” Jim Wilson said of his son. “And he could throw a ball. He came out of the womb swinging. The kid started walking when he was seven months old. He was just one of those physically adept kids. He was already starting to play when he was four. It just went on from there.”
When Alex was 2 years old, the family relocated to New Orleans. They later moved to Kingsport, Tenn., where Alex Wilson spent most of his youth, even winning a Little League state title. He spent his high school years in Hurricane, W.Va., where he fell under the guidance of coach Billy Joe Hicks at Hurricane High School.
“I thought he’d be a starting third baseman because he had such a good bat,” Hicks said. “As a pitcher, he threw 83, 84 miles per hour. His senior year, he’d hit 90 once in a while. When I saw him in college throwing 94, I just about came out of my seat.
“He’s just a special kid. He’s not going to change all of a sudden. He’s just an old country boy. He likes to hunt and fish.”
More accolades followed Wilson, who became the NCAA freshman pitcher of the year at Winthrop (S.C.) University in 2006. But his father wasn’t pleased with how the Winthrop coach deployed his son, using him for 150 innings his freshman season.
“He had a horse, and he was riding him,” Jim Wilson said. “At the end of Alex’s sophomore year, his arm was basically shot.”
Alex Wilson had Tommy John, reconstructive surgery on his elbow after the 2007 season and transferred to Texas A&M, where he met his future wife Kristin. He said he learned valuable lessons while recovering from the surgery.
“I learned that all of this can be taken away from you in an instant,” he said.
Last season, Alex Wilson struck out 123 batters in 133 innings, splitting time between Double-A Portland and Triple-A Pawtucket. He had a combined record of 10-4 with a 3.11 ERA in 25 starts.
A return trip to Pawtucket could be in store for Alex Wilson in April. The father and his coach Hicks hope they can book flights for Boston sometime later this summer.