Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:31 pm
Tom Wilhelmsen appears in Lucas Mann's really wonderful book, Class A, about the 2010 Clinton Lumberkings. The book is a year in the life of a minor league club in a town that is really hurting. But it is a very candid look at baseball and life, ultimately coming to the conclusion that both involve a great deal of failure. Highly recommended.
In any event, here's the passage about Wilhelmsen:
When the field dries and Erasmo (Ramirez) finally stops sprinting and the game starts, a new guy is on the mound for the LumberKings. Tom Wilhelmsen is instantly adopted as a favorite, a twenty-six-year-old with the kind of story that runs for two and a half minutes during televised major league rain delays. He used to love weed, and he still loves Steely Dan, still wears a Fu Manchu mustache and has hungover eyes. He quit baseball when he lost his love for the game, and now he loves it again and he's married, newly focused, and his father is so proud. He made mistakes and speaks about them in interviews with a tired humor born from lessons learned. We, all of us in the stands, see ourselves in him if ourselves were six feet six inches and could throw a ninety-four-mile-per-hour fastball after seven years away from the game working at a bar in Arizona. He is the gifted and redeemed man who we want to be. And he's pitching a no-hitter.
