Royal Rebel

Soon, he recalls, Mayberry and Otis heckled him, saying he was a "right-field-punching Judy."

The gibes continued in the locker room, with Hal McRae joining in. Wilson dressed among the wood-framed and mesh-wired lockers. His name wasn't yet on the white-and-blue nameplates of the regular starters. Still, he began what would stretch into nearly two decades' worth of trash talking.

"I'm coming to take your job," he told Otis.

Otis first considered it a joke. But soon, Wilson got bolder. "He once told me he was making enough money, he could buy me and bury me," Otis tells the Pitch.

Wilson had an ego, but he had the game to back it up.

In high school in Summit, New Jersey, he had been a baseball and football hero. He turned down a full scholarship to play football at the University of Maryland after he was drafted by the Royals in the first round in 1974. The Royals gave him a $90,000 signing bonus and brought him up to the majors two years later.

To Otis, Wilson represented a new era of so-called "bonus babies," guys who got paid for their potential, not their work on the field. "When you come up highly touted, something in your mind is not in the right place," Otis says.

Still, Wilson revolutionized the Royals' defense, recalls pitcher Marty "Duck" Pattin, who played with him during Wilson's first four years as a pro. Rather than focus on getting strikeouts, Pattin says he could give up fly balls because he knew his outfielders, especially Wilson, were fast enough to chase them. Pattin remembers manager Whitey Herzog coming to the mound just to rest his outfielders. "He'd say, 'Duck, I just came out here because you've been running my outfielders to death.'"

In 1979, Wilson broke the American League stolen-base record with 83, one of four times he'd steal more than 50 bases in a season. Wilson scored 13 of his 41 career home runs inside the park. He still holds a Royals team record for steals, with 668. In 1980, he hit for a .326 average, belted a team-record 230 hits and won the Golden Glove Award. Buck O'Neil reportedly said one of his greatest joys was watching Wilson run.

Wilson was known for wearing his cap low across his brow. The style, he says now, served two purposes. Like a horse's blinders, it allowed him to zero in on the action in front of him. It also blocked out the only part of the game that flustered him: the crowd. Fans flocked to Wilson because of his sheer talent, but he had no interest in courting them.

"The only thing I mind, really, is signing the autographs," he told the Town Squire, a now-defunct Johnson County magazine, in April 1980. "It comes along with the job, but sometimes you sign so many, you just get tired."

The press often criticized Wilson's attitude. "Wilson is prone to get mouthy from the bench," The Kansas City Times complained in July 1983. "And, he is moody. Often full of laughter and affable, Wilson becomes volatile at the slightest provocation."

Today, he acknowledges that his attitude eroded team spirit. "My first three years, I didn't say nothing to nobody," Wilson says. "I was just mad, and if you made a mistake, I'd yell at you because I wasn't making it."

But Wilson's behavior became increasingly outrageous. Wilson remembers parties at which he and other players would throw beer bottles at hotel exit signs. He says today that he had a habit of rushing rookies on the team and shouting, "Shit, man, this ain't college. You got to show us things before you open your mouth!"

In June 1983, Wilson and three other Royals called Mark Liebl, a former liquor salesman, looking for cocaine. Liebl was under wiretap surveillance by the FBI. After his arrest, Wilson pleaded guilty to attempting to possess at least a gram of coke. He served 81 days at a minimum-security prison. He was also suspended 32 games but was the only player not traded after the incident. Wilson returned to the plate in May 1984 at Chicago's Comiskey Park and drew a walk. He stole second base, then third and scored on a ground out to help lift the Royals to a 7-6 win against the White Sox. Still, he had a chip on his shoulder. He'd later lament that he had been "sent to the lions," to give the league more leverage in establishing a formal drug policy that was more lenient for players.

In 1984, Wilson was trying to buy a home in an exclusive Blue Springs subdivision where Royals catcher John Wathan lived. Wilson says Wathan's wife signed a petition circulated by neighbors to keep Wilson out of the community because of his erratic behavior. The housing spat led to a fistfight between Wilson and Wathan during a private team flight.

He says he had a lingering feeling that, as a black player, his job was secure only as long as he delivered perfect performances. "If you were black, you were not going to be utility. You either started or you were in the minor leagues."

Wilson's speed slowed, and the team unloaded him. He played two years for the Oakland A's and two more for the Chicago Cubs before retiring in 1994.