Farewell to the Arm : Release May Have Ended the Illustrious Career of Outfielder Dwight Evans

When Dwight Evans was called up from the minor leagues to play in his first major league game with the Boston Red Sox in 1972, Republicans were chanting “Four more years” and dancing in the streets with giant posters of President Richard M. Nixon.

Suffice it to say, Evans had a better career in the 1970s than did Nixon.

And it was just a warm-up.

Sunday, before the Baltimore Orioles released Evans and likely brought his remarkable career to a halt, he stood as the leading active major league player in games (2,606) and walks (1,301). He is 22nd on the all-time list of games played and 29th in homers with 385.

Evans, a 1969 graduate of Chatsworth High, had a brilliant run in the first decade of his major league career, becoming one of the best players in the American League and playing a crucial role in the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, a Series considered perhaps the best ever.

His career continued strongly through the 1980s too, and he helped the Red Sox reach the 1986 World Series, in which they lost--the Red Sox are supposed to lose in a World Series--to the New York Mets.

His release by the Orioles, who picked him up as a free agent in 1990 after the Red Sox refused to re-sign him, apparently ended his 20-year major league career.

“This game has been great to me, and maybe it’s not over yet,” Evans said. “We will make some calls and see. I still think there is something good in store for me. What? I don’t know. It might just be that I get to be with my family, and that’s not so bad.”

Evans’ remarkable career as a pro baseball player spanned four decades, something the 40-year-old struggles with these days. When he came out of Chatsworth High as a pitcher and third baseman, his goals were more modest.

“When I signed with the Red Sox, I was just 17, and a young 17 at that,” Evans said. “I honestly never thought I’d make it to the major leagues. I really didn’t. I decided I’d stay with it for four years, the same amount of time I would have spent in college, and then get on with my life.

“What I really wanted to be was a fireman or a police officer in Los Angeles. I’m not so sure I’d want to be a police officer in Los Angeles today, but back then it seemed like a pretty safe job. Things have changed.”

Oh, just a lot.

Example: In an era in which $2-million salaries for baseball players hardly get mentioned, in which $4-million and $5-million salaries are a common part of the game, Evans played on. The same Evans whose first major league contract paid him $12,500.

“Twelve thousand five hundred sounds funny now,” Evans said. “It wasn’t too funny at the time, though.”

Twenty seasons. Five presidents.

A long time. A good, long time.

This is the list of the players who led major league baseball in extra-base hits in each decade this century: Honus Wagner, Tris Speaker, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Stan Musial (twice), Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson and Dwight Evans.

This is the list of active major league players with more home runs than Evans: Dave Winfield (406), Eddie Murray (398) and Dale Murphy (396).

And these are the top four outfielders in baseball history, determined by number of Gold Glove awards: Roberto Clemente (10), Willie Mays (9), Al Kaline (9) and Dwight Evans (8).

It’s all a little difficult for Evans to believe.

“When I made it to the majors after three minor league seasons, I thought, ‘Wow. If I can just stay around for four years I’ll qualify for the pension,’ ” Evans said. “Then I could go on to my fireman or police officer’s job with a little extra cash.”

But four years went by in a hurry, and then four more in a blur and Evans qualified for the next level of baseball’s pension program. “I couldn’t believe I survived eight years in the major leagues,” he said.

It was just a warm-up.

“After 10 years I was shocked,” he said. “And now it’s been 20 years and I find it all so hard to believe. It has all happened so fast.”

If Evans has been surprised, those who played with him and coached him early in his career are not. Bob Lofrano, now the baseball coach at Pierce College, played with Evans at Chatsworth.

“I remember Dwight as a big, strong kid with a great arm,” Lofrano said. “When he was drafted, it was all because of that gun.”

Lofrano’s father Carmen watched Evans for years in local youth leagues and coached Evans on an American Legion team. He recalled that it was much more than Evans’ arm that got him noticed.

“Dwight had all the tools, even as a 17-year-old kid,” Carmen Lofrano said. “He was a good hitter and good fielder, and when you put that great arm into the package, he really stood out. And he had such power at the plate, unusual power. Even as a kid. He was one of those 12-year-old kids who you see once in a great while that looks like he’s 17 or 18. That was Dwight Evans.”

After being selected by the Red Sox in the fifth round of the 1969 draft, Evans rose quickly. He played three seasons in Class-A and double-A leagues, moved to the triple-A level in his fourth year but never finished that season, being called up to the major leagues to help the Red Sox in their pennant drive against the Detroit Tigers.

His career highlights must be led by the 1975 World Series, in which Evans became a footnote in baseball history by saving the sixth game--thought by many to be the greatest game played--with a stunning, running catch of a Joe Morgan line drive in the 11th inning, a catch that sent Evans and the ball tumbling over the right-field wall and into the seats. He gathered himself, then threw to first to complete a double play.

The Red Sox won in the 12th on Carlton Fisk’s dramatic home run off the left-field foul pole.

“Not the best catch I ever made,” Evans said. “Just the most important.”

And if he couldn’t catch a ball in the outfield, he made sure that few batters got an extra base from it. A howitzer-type arm that Evans showed off even in high school made sure of that. As his legend grew, so dwindled the number of times he got to show off the arm.

Fear. And respect.

“Too bad they don’t keep stats on key plays like keeping runners at third,” veteran manager Sparky Anderson said. “Evans would lead the world.”

The Red Sox lost that 1975 World Series in the seventh game. They lost to the Mets in heartbreaking fashion too, also in the seventh game, keeping alive a Red Sox tradition (no World Series championship since 1918) and handing Evans--who hit a homer and a two-run double in that seventh game against the Mets--his only regrets about his career.

“That’s been the only negative thing,” he said. “Not to win a world championship when we had some chances. I’ve tasted the World Series twice, and defeat in the seventh game hurts. When you go and don’t win, it’s depressing.”

The cards that Evans were dealt, however, have always kept baseball in perspective. Two of the three children of Evans and his wife Sue--Tim, 19, and Justin, 14--have survived life-threatening illnesses. Tim has elephantiasis and has undergone more than a dozen operations to alleviate the resultant swelling of tissue. Justin has a form of the disease and also has undergone several operations.

“I think about it a lot,” Evans said, “and I think how strange it was that I landed in Boston. When the Red Sox drafted me, I didn’t know anything about them. I remember the 1967 World Series between them and the St. Louis Cardinals (Red Sox lost. Seventh game), but I didn’t know anything else about the team or the city.”

What the city offered Evans, in addition to thousands of crazed fans whose hearts beat to the tune of their Sox, was some of the world’s foremost medical centers.

“When the medical problems began with my kids, being in the Boston area we were able to work with what are the finest medical facilities,” he said. “Things worked out well. I believe now that I went to Boston for a reason bigger than baseball.”

His own medical history had always been a short one. Working hard to keep himself in shape, Evans was an iron man. He played all 162 games of the season in 1982 and 1984. He averaged 150 games a season through the 1980s.

But those days, 19 years with the Red Sox, ended on a gloomy day in October, 1990, when the Sox--the same team that traded Babe Ruth early in his career--gave up on Evans, refusing to re-sign him as a free agent when his contract expired. Evans, one of the most popular players to roam Fenway, was gone.

He signed with the Orioles almost immediately, and despite a nagging back injury and a painful Achilles’ tendon injury, batted .270 in 101 games and became Baltimore’s best pinch-hitter. He led the team with a .354 average with runners in scoring position.

This season, he had signed a contract that would have paid him $900,000 plus incentives that could have pushed that figure to $1.2 million. But he had to make the team. The contract now pays him a $150,000 severance fee.

And now, the anxiety begins.

“I want to stay in this game so badly,” he said. “It’s my 24th year of pro ball and it’s really all I’ve ever known. . . . I’d like to stay in the game in some capacity, likely as an administrator.”

And while Evans said the loss of the game will sadden him, he is quick to remind that he still will be a young man.

“My wife and I want to be able to travel and I also want to be able to enjoy my children,” he said. “My children have grown up right by me. I want to correct some of that.

“But there will be a lot of memories. My career and my life have been just a terrific ride.”