Bill Wilkinson

Bill Wilkinson’s arm talent was easy to spot, even when he was throwing snowballs.

“In the winter time, before the spring (season) started, this kid came into the gym and said, ‘Coach J, you’ve got to get outside,” said legendary Cherry Creek High School baseball coach Marc Johnson. “They’ve got a snowball fight going and Billy Wilkinson’s going to kill somebody because he’s throwing snowballs so hard and guys are pinned on the brick wall.”1

The incident began innocently but served as the introduction of Wilkinson’s left arm to the baseball program at Cherry Creek in suburban Denver. “I actually hit a guy in the head and knocked him out,” Wilkinson recalled. “I was just standing there, standing around, and all of a sudden these guys started throwing snowballs. Nobody knew who I was, so I pick up a snowball and start rifling at people, and it went dead silent because I was throwing so hard.”2

Wilkinson’s success in the ensuing months arrived as startlingly as that snowball. The move-in from Montana led his school to an undefeated state championship season, Cherry Creek’s first title, and that dominant campaign vaulted him into the fourth round of the 1983 major-league draft. He punctuated a nine-year professional career with parts of three seasons with the Seattle Mariners, linked with his great-grandfather Jim Bluejacket as the first great-grandson of a big-leaguer to pitch in the majors.3 

William Carl Wilkinson was born on August 10, 1964, in Greybull, Wyoming, the third of Jim and Patti (Bluejacket) Wilkinson’s five children. The family’s roots in north-central Wyoming ran deep, and in baseball ran deeper. Patti Wilkinson’s grandfather, Jim Bluejacket, a native Oklahoman and member of the Cherokee Nation, played for the Brooklyn Tip-Tops of the Federal League in 1914-15, then for Cincinnati a year later, one of an early wave of talented Native Americans to play in the major leagues.4

In 1920 Bluejacket traveled to Wyoming to play with Greybull of the Midwest League (organized by the Midwest Refinery rather than a nod to geography) while awaiting an opportunity with Columbus of the International League. While he was “[n]ot much impressed with the possibilities at Greybull” upon arrival, a visit to the town’s ballpark changed his mind. Upon seeing several players he recognized from his time as a professional, he thought, “Somebody is paying for this and they must have money to land these players.”5

After a memorable summer in Greybull6 and the conclusion of his career, Bluejacket worked for Standard Oil, eventually living in and spreading the gospel of baseball in Aruba. After he retired, he and his family moved back to Greybull for two years after World War II before returning to his hometown of Pekin, Illinois. He died in 1947, but his son Jimmy remained in Wyoming to operate a dude ranch.7

Bill Wilkinson briefly discussed his family background: “I am a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. As far as my native heritage, I really didn’t think much about it until the last 15 years or so. My mother did mention it from time to time but we never really were involved in it. I am not sure what to include about my heritage other than the fact that my great-grandfather was one of the first natives to play major-league baseball.”8

While Jim Bluejacket found athletic success across the nation, the Wilkinson clan became a sporting dynamo in Wyoming. Bill Wilkinson’s father, Jim, was a fine athlete in Greybull, and Jim’s brother, Tom, gained fame on a larger scale. “The Greybull Rifle” earned All-Western Athletic Conference honors during each of his three seasons as Wyoming’s quarterback and also pitched and played shortstop for the baseball team. After his college career he took his talents to Canada, eventually earning induction into both the Wyoming Athletics and CFL Halls of Fame.9

“Tom was a Wyoming native from Greybull known as ‘The Greybull Rifle’ and he was true to his nickname,” according to Kevin McKinney, longtime University of Wyoming Athletics official who watched Wilkinson’s Cowboy teams while growing up. “To that point in Cowboy football history, nobody had come along who possessed his arm strength and accuracy. A star on the baseball team as well, he was a very special Cowboy who was an excellent leader. He will always be considered one of the all-time Cowboy greats at quarterback.”10

Jim Wilkinson worked in marketing for Amoco for a quarter-century, moving the family from Greybull to Billings, Montana, in 1965 when Bill was one year old, then north to Glasgow in 1968 and finally to Great Falls in 1970.11 “That’s what I consider my hometown,” Bill said of Great Falls, where Jim was an important figure in the town’s youth baseball scene and coached the Great Falls Electrics American Legion club for two years. But in 1982 the family moved on to Denver.12

Jim Wilkinson served as the family’s advance party, arriving in Denver early “looking for a place to live, trying to decide where we were going to live (and) looking at schools,” with the baseball program an important factor. Marc Johnson’s reputation was catching up to his coaching acumen at that moment in time, and Jim Wilkinson’s baseball knowledge served him and his sons well. He decided on the district that included Cherry Creek High School, with Pomona High also receiving strong consideration, and it was Pomona that Cherry Creek topped for the state title the next spring.13

Wilkinson’s presence became known immediately to Johnson, Cherry Creek’s baseball coach. “I remember him coming into my physical education class and I’m talking to him, obviously a new student, and I said, ‘Are you a pretty good athlete?’ He said, ‘I’d like to think that I am,’ and then he took a basketball and dunked it backhand. He was like 5-9, and myself and my coaches just marveled.”14

A self-described loner who mostly kept to himself during his early weeks at Cherry Creek, Wilkinson made the basketball team in November and that process helped him “feel like I started fitting in.” While basketball was his first love, and he didn’t recall any tide-changing events that pushed him toward baseball, small signs that his left arm was something special emerged along the way.

When he was 10 or 11, he innocently threw a snowball at a car and moments later the driver was on the front porch of the family house with the news that it had cracked her windshield. “My dad didn’t tell me this at the time, but later he said that he thought, ‘How in the hell did he do that with a snowball?’” He was the only boy his age who could throw a rock or a baseball over the local water tower.15

And then there was his first indoor bullpen session in the winter of 1982-83, when Marc Johnson lined him up with a sophomore catcher. “I turned to (Johnson) and said, ‘Are you sure he can catch me?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ And I threw it right by him and put a big hole in the wall. He didn’t even get a glove on it, and it went right by him.”

To that point early in his senior season, Bill Wilkinson’s left arm hinted occasionally at what was to come. “It was just a bunch of weird little things.” But the ensuing months set him on the path that framed the rest of his life.

“I feel very blessed that he chose to come to our particular school,” Johnson said. “We had a lot of good years, won 10 state titles, but that was one of our very best. That team went unbeaten and I’ve coached a lot of very good teams but only two went completely unbeaten through the year, and his was one of them. We’ve had some very, very good players, pitchers and players that have gone to the big leagues, but I can honestly say that in my mind, to this day, that he was the best pitcher in high school that I have ever seen. Not what he did later, but in high school, he was the best.”16

Wilkinson’s new teammates noticed his presence, as well. “He could jump out of the gym, and basically whatever he wanted to do in any sport he could do,” said Reed Peters, a junior in 1983 who eventually enjoyed a long and successful college coaching career. “[Before him] we couldn’t get over the hump and win big games,” but Peters said that Wilkinson’s arrival and the presence of a group of kids he’d grown up with helped generate the mentality of toughness needed to “finally get us over the hump.”17

During the spring of 1983, Cherry Creek High made the hump a distant memory. The Bruins put the rest of the state on notice early, with Wilkinson throwing a no-hitter and striking out 14 in seven innings. That set the stage for a streak of 40 scoreless innings to open the season for Wilkinson.18 He gave up just one earned run during the season19 and was known within the Cherry Creek program as an intense competitor and tremendous teammate.20

A moment from that season’s state championship game defined Wilkinson’s competitive spirit for his teammates. Early in the game, a star player from Pomona High, a future University of Colorado football player named Don DeLuzio, hit a fly ball deep for an out. As he passed by the mound, he said to Wilkinson, “I like it, I like it a lot.” After a short rain delay Wilkinson returned to the mound and “dominated the rest of the day,” Peters recalled. “And (late in the game) Billy said the same thing to him, ‘I like it, I like it a lot.’ Billy won that day, and we ended up winning the state championship game. He was a fierce competitor.”21

With his amazing senior season in the books, highlighted by state tournament and state MVP awards, all that was left for Wilkinson was the major-league baseball draft. He had signed to play at Nebraska, part of a star-studded class that included Brian Holman of Wichita, Kansas. When draft day rolled around, Holman was chosen by the Expos in the first round, and Wilkinson in the fourth round by Seattle. Holman informed Wilkinson during a phone call that he planned to sign, and Wilkinson’s sentiments were the same “if the money was right.”22

The money was right, and after the standard wrangling over the signing bonus, he was headed for Bellingham, Washington, to join the Mariners’ short-season rookie league team. As the only prep draftee on the team, Wilkinson was the player whose arm was the most stretched out so he drew the Opening Day start. With his head spinning much of the season, one of the youngest players in the Northwest League23 finished fourth in the loop with 87 strikeouts in 13 games, all starts, while posting a 3.39 ERA. His 54 walks led to a 1.696 WHIP, but the performance earned him a promotion to Wausau in the Midwest League.24

His first season as a professional, when he described himself as “wild as all hell just trying to throw the ball over the plate,” included “a lot of ups and downs” and “doing some things I shouldn’t have.” The theme of the summer was adapting to the lifestyle of a professional athlete in his first time away from home while learning how to read, manage, and care for his body.25

It also set the stage for a strong 1984 campaign in the Midwest League. He logged a 3.31 ERA for Wausau, with 117 strikeouts in 103⅓ innings. While continuing the process of learning about life and baseball, Wilkinson posted a 6-4 record with Wausau, raising his strikeout-to-walk ratio to 2.25 and dropping his WHIP to 1.268. He allowed just 79 hits after he “realized I’m going to (have to) buckle down (and) understand how it works away from the field, how to prepare myself on the field for a start, what to do in between starts.”26

After a 6-1 start in Salinas in the Class-A California League in 1985 and one game in which he struck out 17, Wilkinson was visited by Mariners minor-league field coordinator Bill Haywood with a simple question. “He said, ‘Is this too easy for you?’” Wilkinson said. “I didn’t know how to answer that at first, but then I said, ‘I feel like I’m in high school again.’ He started laughing, and the next day I got sent to Triple A.”

That promotion came in early May, and after winning two of his first three starts for Calgary, he was called into manager Bobby Floyd’s office for a meeting with him and pitching coach Bobby Cuellar. “(Floyd) says, ‘We’re making some moves.’ I looked at him and said, ‘Oh, am I going to Double A, or back to A ball?’ He smiled and said, ‘No, you’re going to Seattle to pitch against the Royals.’”

The ascent was breathtaking to Wilkinson, and was compared to something out of a FedEx commercial by a national baseball writer.27 “I went from A ball to the majors in a month,” he said. “And I was just two years out of high school.” He called his father, who, upon learning of the promotion, “just went nuts.” The promotion from Salinas to Calgary and then from Triple A to the majors in quick succession came due to a rash of injuries to the big-league staff. Jim Beattie, Mark Langston, Salomé Barojas, Mike Moore, and Mike Morgan each hit the disabled list for some period of time in this stretch.28

Wilkinson’s major-league debut came against the eventual World Series champion Kansas City Royals in the Kingdome on June 13, 1985. The opening inning was a rough one. After he struck out Willie Wilson and Lonnie Smith, Frank White singled and Wilkinson walked Steve Balboni. One of that fall’s World Series heroes, Darryl Motley, followed with a three-run homer. Wilkinson then retired Hal McRae, and cruised until he surrendered a homer to Jim Sundberg in the fifth. He made it into the sixth before departing with a final line of 5⅔ innings pitched, four runs and five hits allowed, with five strikeouts and four walks.

While the opening-inning barrage by the Royals was momentarily unnerving, the young southpaw fared much worse five days later when he was knocked out of the game in the first inning for the first time in his career.29 After retiring the Texas Rangers’ Oddibe McDowell on a fly out to lead off the bottom of the first, he walked Toby Harrah and Buddy Bell and allowed a double to Pete O’Brien and back-to-back singles to Gary Ward and Larry Parrish. “I got the shit kicked out of me,” Wilkinson said.

That start earned Wilkinson a ticket back to Calgary, where he pitched well for about a month before a bizarre incident ended his season. On July 12,30 with the team caught shorthanded, Wilkinson was forced to hit for himself. After one swing, “I felt a twinge in my back and thought, ‘That doesn’t feel right.’ So I went out after that half-inning and couldn’t even throw the ball to the plate. I’d tweaked my back so bad that I actually pulled muscle away from the rib cage.” His first season with a taste of big-league baseball was ended by his only plate appearance as a professional. That injury was also the first in what would become a cascade of physical setbacks that would eventually end his career and alter his life.

Wilkinson spent the 1986 season in the rotation at Calgary, posting an 8-8 record with a 4.78 ERA. Pitching at altitude (Calgary’s elevation is just over 3,400 feet) in an offensive environment, he struck out 86 batters while walking 51 in 143 innings with a 1.38 WHIP. While the statistical portfolio was in line with the rest of his career, Wilkinson said his focus wasn’t.

“For whatever reason I didn’t take 1986 seriously,” he said. “I don’t know why. I look back on my career and try to pinpoint certain things as to why I did this and why I did that, but 1986 was a huge learning experience for me in that I [figured out that I] still have to work to get to Seattle. They’re not just going to give me an opportunity, I have to prove that I deserve it. In ’86 I was just kind of nonchalantly half-assing it, and sure enough I spent the whole year [in the minor leagues].”

For the second straight year, Wilkinson’s season ended on the operating table. After throwing a pitch late in the season he felt numbness in two fingers and his elbow, precipitating surgery to move the nerve back into its proper canal. The injury healed over the winter, and he entered spring training in 1987 with a healthy arm and rejuvenated attitude.31

While 1986 proved stagnant for Wilkinson, it was one of turmoil for the Mariners. Seattle opened the season with Chuck Cottier at the helm, but after 29 games handed the reins to eventual Hall of Fame manager Dick Williams. The team finished last in the AL West for the first time since 1983 but assembled a solid roster heading into 1987. The lineup featured Harold Reynolds, Alvin Davis, and Phil Bradley, while a talented group of young starters featuring Mark Langston, Mike Moore, Mike Morgan, and Scott Bankhead anchored the rotation.

Wilkinson cruised through spring training “getting everyone out,” but late in the spring faced the reality of a role change. “We get into late March and I’m still [with the big-league club], so Dick Williams, the manager, said, ‘If you’re going to be on this team you’re going to pitch out of the bullpen.’ ‘I want to start,’ that’s what I told him. And he said, ‘If you’re going to be here, you’re going to be in the bullpen.’”

With spring training nearly complete, Wilkinson found himself in the middle of a team scheme. Unknown to him, pitcher Mark Langston and a couple of other moundsmen approached Williams to ask about Wilkinson’s status on the team. Williams answered in the affirmative, and a prank was hatched.

“Dick Williams calls me in with Billy Connors, the pitching coach, and they said, ‘We decided we’re going to keep so and so and we’re going to send you back to Triple A,’” Wilkinson said. “And I said, ‘Are you kidding me? Will I at least get to start down there?” He says, ‘No, we want to keep you in the bullpen. But you’re going to pitch today so you’re going to pitch here today.’”

During the pitchers’ pregame routine, teammate Domingo Ramos “kept egging me on” about his demotion, and Wilkinson felt his aggravation rising. “I was pissed,” he said. Before the game, “Dick Williams calls a huddle and he goes, ‘Does anybody know what today is?’ He looks at me and says, ‘Wilkie, what’s today?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, what’s today?’ He goes, ‘Does April First mean anything to you?’ Everyone was laughing, the whole team knew about it, so I said, ‘April First is April Fool’s Day.’ He said, ‘April Fool’s, you made the team.’”32

It took Wilkinson “a couple of months” to figure out life in the bullpen. The vagaries of when and how much to warm up, how to stay tuned up during long stretches without action and how to care for his arm during busy stretches sorted themselves out eventually, and when they did he enjoyed his new role. During his only full season in the big leagues, he compiled a 3.66 ERA, second-best on the team among pitchers with at least 20 appearances. He posted an impressive 1.074 WHIP, allowing 61 hits and 21 walks in 76⅓ innings. He struck out 73, and his strikeouts-to-walks ratio of 3.48 was the best of his career. His rate of 8.6 strikeouts per nine innings was the best rate he posted above Class A.

A Mariners catcher from 1986-92, Scott Bradley remembered being impressed with Wilkinson’s arm action. “He was a little undersized but his arm was just so loose and his fastball really exploded,” said Bradley, who later became the longtime head baseball coach at Princeton. “He was deceptive, guys would see the delivery and didn’t think he was throwing that hard. We didn’t have TrackMan and Hawkeye and everything back then, but I’m sure, as a former catcher, his fastball had a very pure spin and a very high rate on it. The ball had life.”33

Bradley said Wilkinson relied on a “swing-and-miss” fastball and a “short little cutter,” a simple repertoire befitting a reliever. Bradley also liked Wilkinson’s aggression and said that in 1987 the rookie benefited from a smart usage plan.34

“When we first brought him up, he had a lot of success early on, really, really pitched well,” Bradley said. “We did a nice job when we first brought him up starting him out in nonleverage situations just to get his feet wet. He pitched in some situations where maybe we were behind quite a bit, pitched well, then pitched in some situations where we were ahead quite a bit. Then gradually we got to the point where we used him in some pretty leveraged situations as a setup guy, seventh-, eighth-inning type guy.”35

Mariners radio play-by-play broadcaster Rick Rizzs remembered a light moment during the season. During a game with his command faltering and pitch count elevated, Wilkinson received a mound visit from pitching coach Connors.

“Bill was struggling on the mound,” Rizzs recalled, “and Billy went out to make a visit. I’m watching the conversation and all of a sudden Bill started laughing. Here he is in the middle of a mess with runners on base and the game is really speeding up on him and he’s out there laughing.”36

“I was going full count on every hitter,” Wilkinson recalled with a chuckle, “so he walked out to the mound, he looked at me and smiled and blew me a kiss and said, ‘I love you.’ I started laughing, I actually had to put my glove up, and I said, ‘Billy, you’re a sick man.’ Then he turned around and went back to the dugout. I got the next two guys out and we won.”

Wilkinson had 10 saves.  He enjoyed playing for both Williams and Connors. He said Connors’ ability to keep things light was a good counter to Williams’s old-school toughness. “He was a hard-ass,” Wilkinson said of Williams. “A lot of the guys on the team didn’t like him. He was tough. I loved him.”

Williams’s ability to get to the heart of the matter showed itself during one mound visit in 1987. “He said, ‘Do you like pitching here?’ I said, ‘What, in Seattle?’ He goes, ‘No, in the big leagues.’ I said, ‘Yeah, why?’ And he goes, if you don’t get your shit together you’ll be in Triple A tomorrow.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but I’m here now.’ He told me later that no one had ever said anything like that to him before, and that I was the smallest guy on the team but I had the biggest balls.”

Wilkinson’s successful 1987 season set the stage for a 1988 campaign that would send his career spiraling toward its eventual end. “Once again, I took it for granted,” he said. His season began with a whimper in 1988: He allowed six hits and two walks in his first 2⅓ innings. After those four outings he didn’t allow a run through his next six, covering 4⅔ innings. He gave up four runs on four hits and a walk to the Blue Jays on May 3, and his ERA ballooned to 7.88. The early months of the season were one long yo-yo ride, and May 12 was his last major-league appearance until August 12.

Bradley saw a slight decrease in velocity during his time in the majors that season. “Because he was a little smaller when he lost that extra life on his fastball, he wasn’t throwing fastballs by people,” Bradley recalled.37

Wilkinson’s 21 games in Triple A led to a 9.13 ERA, but he returned to pitch fairly well in the season’s final two months in Seattle. He allowed five earned runs in 21⅓ innings. He allowed 12 hits and nine walks in that stretch. At some point in 1988, Wilkinson damaged his shoulder, and he pitched in 1989 with a partially torn rotator cuff. He opened that season with Calgary, but in late April was traded to Pittsburgh and spent most of the season with Buffalo in the Pirates chain.

By this point, a drinking problem that began “getting pretty bad in ’88 toward the end (of the season)” facilitated weight gain which in turn led to a breakdown in his muscles. He finished 1989 with a 3.69 ERA for Calgary and Buffalo in 102⅓ innings over 23 appearances, 20 of them starts. He struck out 52, walked 60, and at the end of the season he was chosen by Kansas City in the Rule 5 draft. His shoulder gave out the next spring, leading to shoulder surgery. “I missed the whole year, so I got paid just to sit at home in Seattle and drink.”

That led him to rehab for alcohol in 1991, and although Wilkinson returned to sobriety in 1992, a brief comeback in the Oakland A’s system lasted only to July 4. He was released and his career was finished at age 28.

After his playing days Wilkinson returned to the site that had truly launched his baseball career, Cherry Creek High and the watchful and caring eyes of Marc Johnson. He coached with his mentor until 1997 with an eye toward coaching in professional baseball, but “the real world got in the way.” While he was pursuing coaching he also taught himself accounting without the benefit of a formal education.

He worked as a staff accountant for a firm in Denver for seven years, then returned to Montana. He worked as an accountant for Helena Sand and Gravel until 2017, then took a position as a tax auditor for the State of Montana. He retired in 2024. He’s kept his hand in sports with occasional private pitching lessons, and in 2024 began exploring the possibility of working with Fellowship of Christian Athletes and as a speaker to educate young athletes to the perils of alcohol and drug abuse.38

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted baseballalmanac.com, Baseball-Reference.com, and Retrosheet.org.

Notes

1 Marc Johnson, telephone interview, June 5, 2025.

2 Bill Wilkinson, telephone interview, July 14, 2025. All direct quotations attributed to Bill Wilkinson come from this interview, unless otherwise indicated.

3 Bill Wilkinson interview; also Baseball Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/family/fam4.shtml. Wilkinson said he learned of that historical fact when ESPN used it as a trivia question and friends called to ask if he’d seen the telecast or knew of the information.

4 Bluejacket was a contemporary of American Indian players including Charles Bender, Jim Thorpe, and John Tortes Meyers.

5 “Beating Casper Was Job Given Greybull Hurler/Jim Bluejacket, Former Midwest League Star, Visits Here on Return from Aruba,” undated article from Casper Tribune-Herald cited on Genealogy Trails website, https://genealogytrails.com/wyo/bighorn/bios_bluejacket.html.

6 “Beating Casper Was Job Given Greybull Hurler/Jim Bluejacket, Former Midwest League Star, Visits Here on Return from Aruba.”

7 “Beating Casper Was Job Given Greybull Hurler/Jim Bluejacket, Former Midwest League Star, Visits Here on Return from Aruba.”

8 Bill Wilkinson, email correspondence, July 31, 2025.

9 “UW Intercollegiate Athletics Class to Induct Class of 2020-21,” gowyo.com, https://gowyo.com/news/2021/7/12/general-uw-intercollegiate-athletics-hall-of-fame-to-induct-class-of-2020-21.aspx.

10 Kevin McKinney, text interview, July 16, 2025.

11 Billings Gazette, May 12, 2002. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/billingsgazette/name/james-wilkinson-obituary?pid=198216394.

12 Wilkinson cited the help of his mother, Patti Wilkinson, in reconstructing his family’s timeline.

13 Wilkinson interview.

14 Marc Johnson interview. Wilkinson is listed as 5-feet-10, weighing 160 pounds. He threw left-handed, but batted right-handed.

15 Wilkinson interview.

16 Johnson interview.

17 Reed Peters, telephone interview, June 12, 2025.

18 Wilkinson interview.

19 Johnson interview.

20 Peters interview.

21 Peters interview.

22 Wilkinson interview.

23 Wilkinson interview.

24 1985 Seattle Mariners Media Guide, 96.

25 Wilkinson interview.

26 Wilkinson interview.

27 Bill Plaschke, “Wilkinson Makes Great Leap to M’s,” The Sporting News, July 1, 1985.

28 Plaschke.

29 Plaschke.

30 1988 Seattle Mariners Media Guide, 60.

31 Wilkinson interview.

32 The same incident is referenced in an unidentified news clipping from Wilkinson’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame library. See Jim Street, “There’s No Fool Like…” April 13, 1987. Some details in that account differ from Wilkinson’s account, but the story lines up. “It was a big-league deke,” Wilkinson told Street of the prank.

33 Scott Bradley, telephone interview, June 24, 2025.

34 Bradley interview.

35 Bradley interview.

36 Rick Rizzs, email interview, June 26, 2025.

37 Bradley interview.

38 Wilkinson interview.