Sebastian “Sushi” Wilson has hit a lot of home runs this summer, but the one that stuck with him didn’t even feel like contact off the bat. Playing the Under Armour Next All-America Game at Camden Yards, he squared up a two-strike pitch while just trying to battle, and the ball came off looking like nothing more than a line drive. “At first I didn’t even feel it,” he said. “It looked like a line drive off the bat, so I was hustling out of the box, and then I saw it kept flying.” By the time he settled into his trot, it had cleared the wall in right-center — his first in-game home run at a big-league ballpark, and, by his count, the fifth different major-league stadium he’s played in if Field of Dreams counts alongside Miami, Wrigley, and Philadelphia. “I’ve been to a ton of stadiums,” he said. “I love the game, so I go to a lot of different ones.”

That’s been the theme of his final showcase summer before senior year: do as much of it as physically possible. He didn’t want to look back with regrets about an event he skipped when he had the chance to go, so the calendar stayed full. “I felt like it was a lot, but I love playing,” he said. “Especially since it’s my last summer, I wanted to do everything I could possibly do.” He frames the grind less as exhaustion and more as a preview: pro ball means 162 games a year, and he’d rather get comfortable with the volume now than be surprised by it later.

Wilson’s Tennessee commitment has outlasted a coaching change, and he’s quick to explain why it never wavered. When Tony Vitello left to take the San Francisco Giants job, the pitch to stay wasn’t about the program in the abstract — it was Josh Elander specifically, the assistant who’d recruited him and was elevated to head coach. “It was probably most definitely Coach Elander,” he said. “He’s been there since I committed. I love him as a coach, I love him as a person — he’s such a good guy and he’s a really good leader.” He’s candid that the loyalty runs to the man, not just the job title: had someone else gotten the position, he says he would have reopened his recruitment and talked to Tennessee again regardless of who was on the sideline. As for Vitello, the relationship has mostly given way to distance — Wilson checks in occasionally through a teammate whose father coaches on the Giants’ staff, but says the focus now is squarely Tennessee and IMG. “He’s got a lot of things to deal with,” Wilson said. “He’s focused on the big leagues now. Hopefully I can get up there so I can play with him.”

The move to IMG Academy itself was as much a lifestyle decision as a baseball one. He transferred the second semester of his sophomore year, and while he still calls Chicago his favorite city in the world, he says the geography of training back home made it a non-starter competitively. “We kind of had to pick between defense, hitting, and lifting — I had to choose one a day because everything’s so spread out back home,” he said. “Down in Florida, I’m able to do everything I need to do in a day to get better. This is the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.” The adjustment wasn’t instant — he’d just turned 15 when he relocated, and admits it was hard even for someone who doesn’t get homesick easily. Having friends already at IMG, and making more once he arrived, is what he credits with smoothing it over.

There’s a bigger stage ahead, too. Wilson made Team USA for the first time this cycle, a Pan Am roster spot that will send him overseas to represent the country he says he’s dreamed of representing since he started playing. He got emotional on the phone with his parents when the news came through. “It’s just the greatest honor you can have playing baseball,” he said, “representing your country, especially for the United States.” He’s particularly locked in on a matchup with the Dominican Republic, since the two countries share a pool.

Off the field, the Sushi nickname and the foundation that carries it forward are as much a part of his identity as any tool grade. The story goes back to a travel-ball doubleheader years ago: after going hitless in the opener, his dad asked between games if he wanted sushi, and Wilson came out and went 3-for-6 with two home runs. Teammates started shouting the name on the spot, and it never let go. “I feel like it kind of stuck as soon as it happened,” he said. “It wasn’t the kind of thing where it happened and then people started calling me that years later — it stuck immediately.” The Sushi Wilson Dream Big Foundation traces back to his time at Lane Tech in Chicago, where he volunteered at a local Challenger league that helps kids with disabilities play baseball — something he still does when he’s home. With his agency’s help navigating the paperwork, he set up his own 501(c)(3) and ran a camp last May for roughly 50 kids, built around a rotation of baseball stations. He’s planning a Thanksgiving turkey drive this year, on top of a Thanksgiving camp for Chicago kids, continuing something he first did a couple years back. “I love to give back to my city,” he said. “The older I get, the more people know who I am, I feel like I can make a really good impact on kids.”

That Chicago loyalty runs through his baseball fandom, too — he’s a lifelong Cubs fan who grew up roughly three and a half miles west of Wrigley Field, close enough to take the Addison Street bus straight there. His current on-field comps split between an admired swing and a personal connection: he cites Juan Soto’s efficiency as the swing every young hitter tries to copy, and Drew Gilbert, a Tennessee alum he knows personally, as someone he tracks closely at the next level. But the comp that’s actually shaped his summer is Pete Crow-Armstrong, the Cubs’ center fielder. After a slow start to the summer, Wilson made a swing adjustment — dropping his hands lower, the way Crow-Armstrong has — after his dad sent him a Mark DeRosa breakdown of the swing change on MLB Network. “I’ve been raking ever since,” he said, “and he has too.”

Defensively, Wilson sees himself as a true center fielder, built on plus speed and a strong enough arm to hold the position, and he credits a real jump this year to working with IMG outfield coach Roger Cedeño, a former big leaguer himself. The parts of his game he’s still sharpening are the ones that don’t show up in a highlight reel: he wants to turn his speed into more stolen bases this spring, and he’s leaned hard into bunting as a weapon against uncomfortable matchups — he dropped one down against a mid-90s side-arm lefty at Team USA’s second phase simply because it was the toughest at-bat available to him. “I had a coach tell me once that if you lay down ten bunts a year in a big-league season, your average goes up ten to fifteen points,” he said. “People think it’s uncool, but if you’re hitting bombs and they back off the third-base line, just lay one down — you’re two for two.” The speed itself traces to a training relationship that’s lasted since seventh grade, with a deliberate emphasis on sprint work the last year and a half. “Sometimes I just feel like if you try to run harder, you’ll run faster,” he said. “It sounds weird, but it’s true.”

He left for the Prep Baseball All-American Game just days after this conversation — and came home from it having won the event’s Home Run Derby, one more line for a summer that was never going to leave anything on the table.

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