Former four-year New Jersey City University baseball student-athlete Wesley Batista, who completed his eligibility in 2004, was hired by head coach Ken Heaton as an assistant coach for the 2005 season. Batista, a left-handed hitting threat who started all 34 games played by NJCU his senior year, was a career .261 hitter (63-241), with 39 runs, 34 RBIs, 10 doubles, three triples, and four homeruns.
He took the field in 80 games for the Gothic Knights from 2001-04, with 62 starts, and only committed 15 errors his entire career. Batista, an aggressive and quick hitter, played 26 games in right field in 2004, and eight games at first base.
Batista only played in 19 games as a sophomore and junior while backing up Phil Lospalluto, the all-time leading hitter in school history, at first. However, he made the most of his action as a senior in 2004, when he tallied 31 hits (31-129, .240), 22 RBIs, and 17 runs, with six doubles and two homers. In the last pitch ever thrown to him in college, Batista cranked a two-run homer against William Paterson on May 4, 2004.
As a reserve, he was the hero of NJCU’s 6-1 win at Rutgers-Newark on April 29, 2003, when his mammoth two-run homer off a building in deep center at Alumni Field, gave the Knights a 4-1 lead in the top of the seventh. On April 7, 2002, he combined to score for runs in a doubleheader rout of Polytechnic University.
As a rookie in 2001, Batista earned the primary starting first baseman role, playing 27 games with 21 starts. Overall that year, he batted .299 (23-77) with three doubles, two doubles, and six RBIs with 30 total bases and 15 runs, and had a.964 fielding percentage at first. One of his best games was a 3-for-6, three-RBI effort in a 10-7, 12-inning win at Stevens Tech on April 23, 2001.
A June 2000 graduate of Passaic High School, he played four seasons of baseball, including two years of varsity with the Indians for coach Leonard Domino, earning the “Coach’s Award” as a senior captain in 2000. He played in three county and one state playoff game in his prep career, and despite breaking his right wrist in two places in 1997, recovered to regain playing form.
Born January 4, 1982 in Passaic, NJ, Batista is the son of Angela and Baron Batista. He is close to fulfilling requirements for a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration-Management at NJCU, and would like to start his own business upon graduation.
