PHILADELPHIA -- Temple baseball died the way a lot of college baseball programs die now — not with a ninth-inning rally, but with a spreadsheet.
On December 6, 2013, Temple University announced it would eliminate seven varsity sports. Baseball — a program that traced its roots back more than a century — was on the list, effective after the 2014 season. The explanation was modern and merciless: budget realities, scholarship balance, and the mounting cost of maintaining Division I facilities.
The Owls played their final home games that spring at Skip Wilson Field in Ambler, a place that already felt like exile for a North Philadelphia school that once played much closer to campus. By May, the box scores were still being printed, the uniforms still washed, but the ending had already been written.
Temple baseball didn’t disappear because it lacked history. It disappeared despite it.
The program dated to 1907, became a varsity sport in 1927, and for a long stretch, Temple was proof that serious baseball could grow north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The Owls reached the College World Series twice, most memorably in 1972, when they finished third in Omaha — a feat that still reads like fiction for a cold-weather program with no powerhouse conference behind it.
That era belonged to James “Skip” Wilson, Temple’s institutional backbone. Wilson coached the Owls for more than four decades, won over 1,000 games, and built something that felt permanent. So permanent that the field would later bear his name. So permanent that nobody imagined a Temple without baseball.
It also produced players who reached the highest level of the sport — not in waves, but in meaningful chapters.
Bobby Higginson became the face of the program’s modern legacy, starring at Temple before carving out a long major-league career with the Tigers. Jeff Manto followed a similar path, playing in the big leagues and later becoming a respected coach. John Marzano reached the majors as a catcher in the late 1980s. Pete Filson, a pitcher from Temple’s 1977 College World Series team, made it to the big leagues. And Joe Kerrigan, a Temple alum, went on to manage in the majors and shape pitching staffs across decades.
In total, 15 Temple players reached Major League Baseball, beginning with Ben Rochefort in 1914. That number doesn’t scream dynasty. But it whispers continuity — one roster after another linking North Philadelphia to the professional game for more than 100 years.
Which is what makes the ending feel so unfinished.
Temple’s administrators pointed to the rising cost of facilities and the impossibility of competing nationally without a modern ballpark. Estimates for a new complex hovered in the tens of millions. In an era when football and basketball drive revenue, baseball became a luxury item.
There was no villain. Just math.
And Temple is not alone.
It now stands as the fourth-largest university in the country without a varsity baseball program, trailing only Wisconsin, Colorado, and Iowa State — three schools that once played the sport, once mattered in it, and then watched it vanish for the same modern reasons Temple did. Budget lines replaced box scores. Facility plans replaced lineups. Another century-old program joined a quiet national list.
Temple’s loss was not just a baseball decision. It was a civic one. A public, urban university in one of America’s deepest baseball cities walked away from a sport that once belonged to its neighborhoods. For generations, Temple baseball represented access — a place where cold-weather players, city kids, and overlooked recruits could find a path forward. When the program vanished, it wasn’t only a team that disappeared. It was a door.
The irony is that Philadelphia remains one of America’s richest baseball cities. The Phillies draw millions. High school and college programs fill spring calendars. Youth leagues pulse across suburbs. And yet one of the city’s flagship universities no longer fields a team.
Temple baseball didn’t lose relevance on the field. It lost relevance in a boardroom.
Today, the program survives mostly in fragments: alumni memories, record books, and the names of big leaguers who can still say, truthfully, I played at Temple. Skip Wilson Field still exists. Today, Arcadia University plays its home games there — a quiet reminder that baseball never fully left the space, even if Temple did. The history still exists. The lineage still exists.
But the uniform does not.
College baseball keeps moving toward the Sun Belt and the SEC, toward stadiums with videoboards and budgets with commas. Programs like Temple’s live in a different climate — geographic and financial. Their stories now sound like relics from a time when tradition counted as currency.
Temple once sent a team to Omaha. It once sent players to the majors. It once believed baseball belonged in North Philadelphia.
Now it belongs to the past — another chapter closed not by a strikeout or a walk-off, but by a line item.
And that might be the hardest part: there was no final pitch. Just a final decision.
Loading Phillies schedule...
Loading NL East standings...
Support the Mission. Fuel the Movement.
You’re not just funding journalism — you’re backing the future of youth baseball in Philly.
👉 Join us on Patreon »