SEATTLE – Dan Wilson doesn’t want to walk into the next stage of his life without saying thanks.
He wants to play one more inning, catch one last pitch and tip his cap a final time to the Seattle Mariners fans who have cheered him since 1994.
Wilson, the Mariners’ last link to their first division championship team in 1995, said Monday that he would retire at the end of this season, a year shortened by a torn right knee ligament on May 4. In making his tearful announcement, Wilson said it’s time to leave the game and spend more time with his wife Annie and their four children.
But before he goes, he wants to get healthy enough to play one more inning. It won’t be easy, because he’s in he fifth month of recovery from an injury that usually takes seven to eight months for a player to regain full strength.
“It has been a tough decision, but I feel this is the right time,” Wilson said. “I am doing my darndest to take the field at least one more time.”
It would be his way of saying thanks.
“He probably feels like he owes it to the fans. He doesn’t,” said Lee Pelekoudas, the Mariners’ assistant general manager. “Everything he’s given this organization and this community over the years, everybody should be thanking him.”
Wilson, 36, has played 14 major league seasons, the past 12 with the Mariners after they obtained him from the Cincinnati Reds before the 1994 season.
He became the quiet but highly respected backbone of a team that won American League West Division titles in 1995, 1997 and 2001.
Wilson says the 1995 and 2001 seasons were his favorites, purely because of the success the team enjoyed. Making the All-Star team in 1996 was his best personal accomplishment, although he has never been focused on himself.
“In 1995, the one-game playoff, the stretch drive, the volume of the crowd in the Kingdome, those were things I’ll never forget,” Wilson said. “What we did in 2001 was amazing as well. The 116-win season, and clinching it at home when we walked around the stadium with the American flag at a time when America was very different, it was almost a spiritual experience.
“But the most satisfaction I got out of playing was the relationships with the other guys. It’s been a life-changing, city-changing experience. To be part of that, I consider myself very fortunate.”
Wilson credited his teammates with teaching him how to prepare himself, how to play the game right and how to behave like a professional.
Pelekoudas disputes that.
“I think it’s vice-versa,” Pelekoudas said. “The guys he played with learned how to be professionals from him. They may not have realized it because Dan has a quiet way about him. The guy is full of integrity and a will and a desire to win.”
Mike Hargrove learned that long before he became the Mariners’ manager this season. He faced Wilson many times while managing the Cleveland Indians and Baltimore Orioles.
“He was never flashy, but Danny was one of those players who made people around him better,” Hargrove said. “There are great players who didn’t do that. He was terribly prepared physically and mentally to do his job. When he caught, you knew that whatever the pitcher had that day, Dan would get it out of him. That wasn’t always a comforting thought sitting on the other side.”
No part of Wilson’s career defined him like the Mariners’ stretch drive in 1995, when they came from 13 games behind the Anaheim Angels and won the AL West, then beat the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs.
Wilson caught 67 of the Mariners’ 76 games after the All-Star break, 28 of 29 in September and all 11 postseason games.
“He didn’t necessarily carry the club in a statistical standpoint or a performance standpoint,” Pelekoudas said. “But at the end of the year he took the club on his back and caught all those games and was a leader. That’s the kind of guy Dan is.”
Wilson and his wife had decided before this season that it would be his last, but the knee injury in only his 10th game changed their thinking. He considered coming back for one more year, but time at home with his family this summer made him realize what life after baseball would be like.
In retirement, Wilson plans to complete the college education that was interrupted by pro baseball when the Reds drafted him in the first round in 1990. He also would like to work for the Mariners in some capacity.
“Our relationship is not over, it’s just changing,” Wilson said. “I want to stay involved in some shape or form in the years to come.”
His first duty, however, is to work his right leg into shape so he can catch one more inning.
“I think he’ll get it done,” trainer Rick Griffin said.
Wilson will travel with the Mariners on their next road trip and work on the elements of catching that he must master before he’ll be allowed to play again – catching the ball, blocking the ball in the dirt, coming out of his crouch to throw to second base and backing up first base on a ground ball.
“He’s been working his butt off to put himself into a position to be able to catch an inning,” Griffin said. “His leg is strong and the site of the actual surgical procedure has healed.
“I think it would be a tremendous thing for him to be able to catch one inning and tip his hat and walk off the field.”
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