He was riding thousands of miles in cramped, smelly buses, eating off per diems, and staying in motels next to Waffle House.Īfter being selected by the Colorado Rockies in the fourth round of the 2010 MLB draft, Wilson played a summer at the Low-A Tri-City Dust Devils in 2010 before landing with the Class A Tourists. Wilson and his singer/actress wife Ciara might have a $25 million house with a nine-car garage in the Denver suburbs, but 10 years ago, his life was much different. Simmering tension, a 'declining player' and a public breakup: Inside Seattle's trade of Russell Wilson.The Tourists headed back to the hotel to rest up for a doubleheader the following night. The team was given the all-clear after about an hour and a half of stories, banter and an unsuccessful game of telephone. The late-April outbreak of tornadoes would claim 324 lives across six states, but Rome avoided the brunt of it. "I just remember Russ being in there telling some stories and making people laugh in a crazy-serious time." "We opened the dugout door and you literally could hear the tornado a few miles away," former Tourists infielder Joey Wong said. But Russell Wilson, the Tourists' second baseman, was calm. But at the urging of the Braves, Asheville took refuge in a long, narrow space between the Braves' dugout and clubhouse. The Tourists had contemplated hunkering down at an Applebee's because their hotel lacked proper shelter. The forecast was so ominous on this day in 2011 the minor league baseball game against the Rome Braves had been canceled early, and tornado watches came with a designation of PDS - Particularly Dangerous Situation. The Asheville Tourists crouched together in a concrete underground tunnel as the sky turned dark over Rome, Georgia. Brady HendersonĬalm in the face of a literal storm Russell Wilson took a swing with the Asheville Tourists in 2011. ET, ABC/ESPN/ESPN+), here are stories about who he is and how he got here. With his Broncos set to open against the Seahawks on Monday Night Football ( 8:15 p.m. Wilson will begin the second act of his NFL career following his trade from Seattle to Denver. It was about owning a team some day, an NFL team. "I was fascinated that somebody that young could have so many ideas and have such a clear-path vision for who he wanted to be and what he wanted to be," Rodgers told ESPN in 2020 for a feature on how Wilson was shaped by his late father, Harrison. Their conversation was an early window into how much more there is to Wilson than his Hall of Fame talent and news conference clichés. With a dream of pursuing both sports professionally, Wilson wanted to hire a baseball agent who also had experience representing NFL players, as Rodgers had done years earlier.Įver the buttoned-up professional, the 21-year-old Wilson wore a suit when the two met for the first time at a restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina. This was before the 2010 MLB draft, when the new Denver Broncos quarterback was playing football and baseball at NC State. Instead, Russell Wilson and Mark Rodgers spent four hours together over lunch, the future Super Bowl champion and nine-time Pro Bowler presenting his life plans as his soon-to-be agent listened in amazement. The meeting was supposed to last only 90 minutes.
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