WHEN YOU'RE A boy growing up you don't fantasize about being an accountant.
Well, do you?No, you see yourself in pinstripes, glaring at the pitcher and then sending a rocket way over the fence at Yankee Stadium like the Mick used to. (Or, if you're a pitcher you see yourself in pinstripes glaring at the hitter before breaking off a wicked curve to strike him out for the final out of the game.)
The fantasy ends pretty soon for most - like when you can't make your high school team. There's a logic that sets in: "Let's see, if I can't get a hit off of LaMar Christensen in tryouts, chances are I probably can't get one off of Roger Clemens or Greg Maddux either."
People then follow real professions - accounting, teaching, plumbing, etc.
Which is why what Marce Wilson has decided is not only intriguing but downright astonishing.
The former West High standout said "No" to the New York Yankees.
They drafted him following a stellar year in which Wilson, with a lot of help from another Utahn, Taylorsville's Nic DeLuca, led his team, Bellevue University, to the NAIA national championship.
His numbers were very impressive: 11 wins, 2 losses. A 1.63 ERA. One hundred twenty-eight strikeouts in 120 innings. Limiting opponents to a .199 batting average.
The Yankees tried to change his mind. His coach tried to change his mind. Hey, here's a kid with a 91 mile-per-hour fastball who completed his college years with a 22-2 record (he was 11-0 his junior year). Give it a shot, they said.
Wilson's reply was basically, "I already have, my whole life. It's time to move on.
"I want to find stability in my life," he says simply.
And five or six years of riding buses in the minors is not his idea of stability.
"I didn't want to come back at 28 years old and have to start all over in another direction."
That kind of decision is not easily made.
There was major disappointment last summer when Wilson didn't get drafted. The numbers were there: A flawless 11-0 record. A nice 2.10 ERA. Surely, if you pitch like that, he reasoned, they'll (offers) come. They didn't.
The scouts, he assumed, weren't aware of him. Nonetheless, not getting drafted was such a blow that for awhile he contemplated not returning for his senior year.
But with encouragement from his girlfriend, who's now his fiancee, he decided to return and prove the scouts wrong. This time, he determined, he would get noticed and drafted.
However, while Wilson and the team thrived, Wilson was not enjoying it as much as one would think.
The burden of living up to expectations was getting to him. Maybe it was like the pressure Roger Maris felt when he was pursuing Babe Ruth's single season home run record. Maris got the record but lost some of his hair because of the ordeal.
"It's a hidden pressure to win. It was stressful. After getting a victory against a good team I couldn't rest. Four or five days later I was being counted on to go out and beat another good team," Wilson said.
"I started getting burned out."
What he really enjoyed about the season was the coaching, a field he has always been interested in.
"I learned so much at Bellevue. I plan on passing it on and helping other people out," he said.
He's a candidate for a coaching position at his junior college alma mater, Snow College.
Still, when the Yankee scout called saying that the team that produced Lefty Gomez, Allie Reynolds and Whitey Ford wanted Wilson to join the club's Class A League affiliate in Oneonta, N.Y., it wasn't easy saying "No."
The scout told him to wait a day before making a final decision.
Wilson waited an hour before calling the scout back.
An hour of no regrets.
He's leaving the game on his terms, not somebody else's. He's going out on top - as a member of a national championship team.
He leaves as a man not afraid to say "No."