Desi Wilson

Desi Bernard Wilson

• Bats Left, Throws Left
• Height 6' 7", Weight 230 lb.
• School Fairleigh Dickinson University
• High School Glen Cove High School
• Debut August 7, 1996
• Final Game September 29, 1996
• Born May 9, 1969 in Glen Cove, NY USA

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Biographical Information

Desi Wilson is one of two major league players to come out of small Fairleigh Dickinson University (Mike Laga was the other). He played in the major leagues for the 1996 San Francisco Giants, making his debut on August 7th, and hitting .271 in 118 at-bats while playing first base. The next year J.T. Snow took over first base and kept it for years.

He got his shot at the majors in 1996 when he hit .339 in the Pacific Coast League for the Phoenix Firebirds. The following year he hit .344 for them.

He was in Japan in 1998. Coming back to the U.S., he played in Triple A from 1999 to 2001, hitting .323, .269, and .328.

Although Wilson played only one year in the major leagues, he played 17 seasons in professional baseball. After 2002, he primarily played independent baseball. He tended to have high batting averages but did not have a lot of power.

In independent ball in 2005, he hit .411 for the Surprise Fightin' Falcons of the Golden Baseball League. At age 37 in 2006, he played in the same league for Chico, hitting .333. He retired after the season to became manager of the Anderson Joes of the newly-formed South Coast League. The team did badly in the first half, going 13-32, and 8 games into the second half, he gave up the manager's job to resume playing, hitting .366 in 22 games. He was later traded to the South Georgia Peanuts and was a member of their championship-winning team.

In 2008, Wilson was a coach for the Peoria Chiefs, followed by the Iowa Cubs in 2009 (after Von Joshua was called up to the majors). He was a coach for the AZL Cubs in 2010, Boise Hawks in 2011, Daytona Cubs in 2012, and Tennessee Smokies in 2013-2016. He was then co-hitting coach of the Iowa Cubs in 2017 and hitting coach of Iowa in 2018-2019. He was scheduled to return to Iowa in 2020 before the season was cancelled due to Covid-19 then did coach for Iowa in 2021-2022.

Year-By-Year Managerial Record

Year	Team	League	Record	Finish	Organization	Playoffs	Notes
2007	Anderson Joes	South Coast League	15-38	--	Independent Leagues		replaced by Kash Beauchamp on July 20

Related Sites

• An article about Wilson re-activating himself as a player