Kurt Bevacqua: Is It Now Sundown for Sundance?

In another life or another time, Kurt Anthony Bevacqua would have lived in Dodge City or Tombstone or Cheyenne.

He would have been the guy who always sat with his back to the wall, one eye peering out from under the leather-brimmed hat at the front door. It would be a saloon, naturally, and Bevacqua would have had a hand of cards fanned in one fist and a bottle of straight whiskey in the other.

Deal, baby, but understand one thing. Bevacqua will always win. You play three jacks, and he counters with three queens. Your straight is nine-high and his is 10-high. You understand that he finds a way.

And don’t check this character’s sleeves. He has this forbidding and foreboding look about him.

A fellow named Steve Garvey once described it: “It’s kind of a far-off Jack Nicholson look. You know he’s there physically, but you know he’s someplace far away mentally.”

In his own time, Kurt Bevacqua has spent a lifetime with his back to the wall--or the floor. It only seems to harden his resolve and, incongruously perhaps, deepen his confidence and optimism.

Bevacqua was born in 1948, so he could only be the Sundance Kid in a time warp. He chose to find his electricity in the game of baseball.

However, this was a game which did not warmly embrace him, and he became a modern-day drifter. He once said he played in so many places he had been assigned his own zip code. His problem, as is so often the case with the young and the brash, is that he felt his name should be permanently engraved on the starting lineup card.

Once during his first stay with the Padres in 1980, he was grousing about the lack of playing time. He suggested he might be traded to a more appreciative team, ignoring that he had already played for and apparently been unappreciated by Cleveland, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Texas. After all, he knew he could hit.

A day or two later, called upon to pinch-hit against Bruce Sutter, Bevacqua naturally delivered the game-winner.

“Hummmm,” he pondered later, “I thought maybe they were saving me for Sutter.”

That is the essence of what Bevacqua was to become. Someone young and brash is restless and unsettled. Someone older and brash is confident and comfortable.

However, Bevacqua did not really accept his role until once again he been peddled, this time for another stay in Pittsburgh. He came back to the Padres in 1982, committed to being The Man off the bench.

The best relief pitchers want the ball in their hands and the best pinch-hitters want the bat in their hands. If Sutter had three kings, Bevacqua just knew he’d come up with three aces.

Kurt Bevacqua, pinch-hitting specialist, became a legend hereabouts. He became a role player with a star on the door and his name on the back of his chair.

In truth, his mouth got him attention before his bat did. His barbed exchanges with Tom Lasorda, tongue-in-cheek though they were, kindled the first sparks of what has finally become a rivalry with some heat.

Bevacqua’s star hit its peak in the 1984 World Series, when his three-run home run in Game 2 gave the Padres their only win. He danced and pranced his way around the bases, blowing kisses skyward, and generally celebrating the kind of moment which had always belonged to someone else.

“This is still a dream-like thing,” he said in the aftermath. “It’s probably the most jubilant moment of my career.”

Probably?

“Probably,” he repeated incredulously. “What a dumb statement.”

However, before the 1985 season was over, Bevacqua had his back to the wall again. It was time once again to suspiciously eye the door. In this case, it was not a matter of who might be coming in, but rather who might be going out.

Kurt Bevacqua.

Once again, he thought he was on his way out of San Diego. It would not have been out of the question. After all, the general manager, Jack McKeon, had already traded him twice and acquired him twice.

“Let’s be serious,” McKeon said at the time. “How many clubs call for Bevacqua? Let’s face it. But every squirrel finds an acorn sometimes, so someone may be desperate.”

Bevacqua, forever irrepressible, responded: “Well, I’ve been checking around, and no one’s interested in Jack.”

McKeon, of course, does not need to have anyone interested in him. He has a job.

Once again, Bevacqua doesn’t.

The Padres have invited him to spring training the way teen-agers invite their parents to a party. You know, you’re invited--but . . .

“Go to spring training,” McKeon told him. “Fine. But at the end of spring training, you go home.”

And so Bevacqua will go to spring training. Yuma may not be Dodge City or Tombstone or Cheyenne, but it may be as close as a city can get these days. Bevacqua will be there with a sleeve full of aces, just hoping someone will let him into a game.

However, these are days when Bevacqua is being chased by a posse as surely as Butch and Sundance were pursued. He squints back and wonders who those guys might be, and probably suspects they just might be a pack of general managers with contracts in their saddlebags.

Unlikely. This posse is time. This one catches everyone.

Obviously, Kurt Bevacqua does not think he is ready to be caught. He thinks he can still play, and I wouldn’t want to be the one to call his hand.