I just wanna give props to Johnny Wilson. I played with him at Penn State Altoona from 2004-2006 and he just got a nice write up in the USA Today which I've posted below..USA Today-
Still, the outfielder says he gets along with his Penn State-Altoona teammates, some of whom are nearly a third of his age. They joke around and even go out on the town together.
"Sometimes I forget," Wilson says. "I think I'm one of them."
His attitude about age is just one reason he feels like a twenty-something at times. Another is because choices earlier in life nearly kept him from making it to today.
He calls playing for the Division III team at this point in his life magical — "almost like living in the Field of Dreams."
As a boy, Wilson attended baseball games at Forbes Field in his hometown of Pittsburgh and fell in love with the sport. He wanted to be a ballplayer but, he said, his desire to be a part of the crowd in his neighborhood led him down a path of legal trouble, alcoholism and drug abuse.
"At that point, baseball was on the back burner," Wilson says. "Getting high was the thing to do to fit in."
Finally, Wilson, then 32, says he checked himself into Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Aliquippa, Pa., and began his road to recovery. He soon moved from the center to a transitional home and began helping the counseling staff, eventually gaining state certification as an addictions counselor in 2001.
After completing a 28-day program, he was referred to a halfway house in Williamsburg, Pa. Wilson's next move, to another transitional facility, brought him to Altoona.
While holding various counseling jobs, Wilson was reunited with the game he loves. He joined a summer league in 1987 and played alongside Joe Piotti, now baseball coach at Penn State-Altoona. They won a league championship together and remained friends, even after Piotti joined another team.
When Wilson decided to enroll at Penn State-Altoona in 2004 to pursue a degree in human development and family studies, younger players in the summer league encouraged him to try out for the college team.
"I knew I was capable of competing, but I thought that my age would be held against me," Wilson says, adding he initially asked to be an assistant coach. "I didn't want to be taking up a spot for someone that would be better than me, and I didn't want to be like a mascot."
It was a close call when it came time to finalize the roster, Piotti says, but Wilson earned a spot on the team that first year. The next couple of years, however, Wilson wouldn't have made the cut, Piotti says. But the coach spoke with the athletics director and was granted an extra roster spot to keep Wilson on the team.
Wilson has played in 10 games with the Lions and serves as a first-base coach, but his greatest contribution comes off of the field.
Piotti says the players look up to Wilson. "His biggest asset is his experience," he says, "being able to share his experiences, both good and bad."
Wilson said he tries to warn the younger players of the potential consequences of their actions and telling them about his past.
"Sometimes coming from him, because he's still a student — although he's up in age — it comes across a little different coming from him than it would from me," Piotti says.
Wilson's final season with the Lions begins March 8. Wilson expects to complete his degree in the fall and return to the counseling field. He still plays in the Altoona summer league against Piotti and coaches youth baseball and says he doesn't foresee hanging up his cleats anytime soon.
He's not even the oldest player in NCAA competition this school year. Mike Flynt, a linebacker in 2007 at Division III Sul Ross State (Texas), has him by six years.
"As long as I stay around this youthful environment, it makes me feel younger," Wilson says.
He still remembers when he wasn't good enough to play in Little League games.
"Now," Wilson says, "it's like I'm in my prime."
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