James “Skip” Wilson, Temple’s legendary former baseball coach who led the Owls to 1,034 wins, 12 NCAA Tournament appearances and two College World Series berths in his 46 years at the helm of the program, died Tuesday morning at the age of 92.

Wilson, a Philadelphia native, was honored numerous times on a local and national level, having been inducted into Temple’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 1981, the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1987, and the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 1994.

A year after his retirement in 2006, Temple honored Wilson by naming the program’s new baseball field after him.

In one of his more memorable seasons toward the end of his career, Wilson helped the Owls out of a 0-14 start and piloted the team to a 24-14 regular season finish before they won the Atlantic 10 and advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

But it was in the 1970s when Wilson left much of his indelible mark on the program, as Temple advanced to the College World Series in 1972 and 1977 and finished the season ranked nationally in the Top 25 six times during that decade.

Wilson also coached his fair share of notable players at Temple, including former Major Leaguers Bobby Higginson, Jeff Manto and the late John Marzano. Former Boston Red Sox manager and Phillies pitching coach Joe Kerrigan played for Wilson, as did former Phillies and Astros general manager Ed Wade.

John Coyle, now a lawyer and partner at McEldrew Young Purtell & Merritt in Philadelphia, spent just one season with Wilson but took with him numerous memories of Wilson and a longstanding connection to the program. His first season with the Owls in 2005 was Wilson’s last, and the former Philadelphia Catholic League standout from Springfield’s Cardinal O’Hara High School redshirted in 2005, which meant he got to sit close by Wilson in Temple’s dugout and learn.

“I came from a very good high school program, played at a very good AAU program, and was around a lot of guys that knew a lot of baseball, and it was still eye-opening,” said Coyle, who went on to post a 1-1 record with a 3.95 ERA as a pitcher during his junior season after starting out as a catcher and first baseman. “The depth and understanding of the game that Skip had made my first year there a massive learning experience.”

Coyle said Wilson had a knack for being humorous and even prophetic at times. He recalled an early-season game from the 2005 campaign in which Wilson predicted exactly what would happen out on the diamond before the upcoming pitch, even if it wasn’t a positive development for the Owls.

In a tight, late-inning game with Temple keeping its eye on a runner on first base with no one out, Coyle remembers Wilson turning to his longtime late assistant John McArdle, who passed away last April at the age of 66, with a rather detailed prediction.

“He said, ‘John, this boy’s gonna bunt the ball down third base,’” before offering the unfortunate prognostication that Temple’s third baseman would charge the ball too hard and make an errant throw into right field.

And that’s precisely what happened on the next play.

“On one hand, you want to say it was prophetic,” Coyle said, “but he watched these guys, knew their tendencies, and he just understood baseball at a level that I don’t think I could ever even hope to understand. He saw things before anyone else would. He saw tendencies in players’ swings and in their defense that I think was just cultivated over a long, long career of being around really good baseball.

“And in practice, he would never say ‘You need to work on this.’ He would say, ‘Why don’t we think about working on this?’ You never felt like you were being hard coached or something. But yet, he seemed to get the best out of his players.”

Wilson had his own story of perseverance that accompanied his successful coaching career. After graduating in 1948 from St. John’s High School in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia, Wilson wound up at Georgetown on a baseball scholarship but signed with the Philadelphia Athletics, spending time in the organization’s farm system before he eventually enrolled at Temple in 1951.

A draft notice and two years in the United States Army pushed things farther down the line before Wilson graduated from Temple in 1958, 10 years after his high school graduation. He also logged 34 years as a teacher at Roxborough High School and even coached Temple’s freshman basketball team for 13 seasons.

And after one year as an assistant to Ernie Casale, Temple’s athletic director at the time, Wilson finally assumed the role of the Owls’ head baseball coach in 1960.

Coyle was asked if he ever got to compare notes on Wilson’s coaching style with former Owls who played under Wilson in previous decades.

“I heard he was a little bit nicer toward the end,” Coyle said with a laugh. “But Manto was around a good bit, and Marzano was around a good bit when I was there. And even outside of them, there’s sort of a brotherhood of people who played for Skip. I run into people through work or even at the beach who find out you played at Temple, and they say, ‘Oh, did you play for Skip?’ And you immediately start telling stories about Skip. There’s just this automatic connection, because I think everyone who played for him held him in such high regard.”

Front page photo courtesy of Temple Athletics.