Rest of Stevens’ Life Began on Corner in Texas

Five years after he was expected to replace Wally Joyner as the Angels’ first baseman, Lee Stevens is playing a pivotal role for the Texas Rangers as the replacement for injured Will Clark.

It has been a circuitous odyssey in which Stevens failed in his 1992 bid to replace Joyner and subsequently was released from the Montreal and Toronto minor league systems. He spent two successful years in Japan and returned in the spring of 1996 only to be released by the Cincinnati Reds one day before the season opened--at which point, as the result of an informal conversation between Stevens’ agent and Ranger General Manager Doug Melvin, Stevens agreed to a triple-A contract and left Florida for Oklahoma City.

“I figure I was one day away from getting on with the rest of my life,” Stevens, 29, said by phone.

“If that season had started and I hadn’t been signed, I figured that would be it.”

And how would he have spent the rest of his life?

“Well, I was one day away from finding that out myself,” he said.

Instead, he hit 32 home runs and drove in 94 runs for Oklahoma City, was the American Assn.’s most valuable player and the Rangers’ minor league player of the year, and spent 27 games with the Rangers, his first major league stint since batting a disappointing .221 as Joyner’s heir in ’92.

It didn’t guarantee that Stevens would open the ’97 season with the Rangers, but injuries provided an opportunity he has made the most of, batting .286 and hitting four of the club’s 13 homers through Friday to help keep the defending Western Division titlists alive while Clark, Juan Gonzalez, Warren Newson, Domingo Cedeno and Mickey Tettleton are sidelined by injuries.

Clark was taken off the disabled list Friday, but is not expected to be able to play regularly for at least a week.

“He’s probably been our best RBI guy,” Melvin said. “He’s filled in so nicely that he’s undoubtedly earned more playing time when our injured guys come back. He might be our Kevin Elster of this year.

“You always need one or two of those guys to come through if you’re going to win a championship.”

In a major reclamation, shortstop Elster hit 24 homers and drove in 99 runs for the Rangers last year, replacing injured Benji Gil.

“I know my role and am prepared for it,” Stevens said. “Getting the opportunity to contribute here is the sweetest thing I could ever imagine, even sweeter than when I was first called up by the Angels in 1990 because I really feel I had to earn this. I was out of the major leagues for four years but kept fighting. I didn’t give up.”

Stevens was up with the Angels for parts of the 1990 and ’91 seasons but had only that one real opportunity in ‘92, when the pressure to replace Joyner made it seem as if he had to deliver every night.

Some in the organization believed he lacked the mental toughness to deal with it.

“I learned from everything bad that happened with the Angels,” Stevens said. “I wouldn’t be here today without that experience. I mean, there were times that year I didn’t even know who I was, but I put a lot of the pressure on myself. The Angels gave me the chance. I’m the only one to blame for my lack of performance.”

The Angels traded Stevens to Montreal for a pitcher named Jeff Tuss, who never reported because he already had decided to give up baseball and play quarterback at Fresno State.

Stevens eventually would head to Japan, where in two years with the Kintetsu Buffaloes he hit 43 homers, drove in 136 runs and “basically turned my career around. I mean, it wasn’t only the chance to play regularly, it was the opportunity to gain a lot more respect for the game and the work ethic it required. I became a better, more determined person.”

He returned to that spring trial with the Reds, which ended 24 hours before Stevens figured he would have to begin improvising on the rest of his life.

REVIVAL FUND

Florida Marlin slugger Gary Sheffield was one of several African American players--past and present--quoted in stories in Tuesday’s editions of The Times as saying that racism remains a problem in baseball 50 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

Sheffield also is trying to contribute to a cure at the grass-roots level, where the lower number of African American youths playing baseball is reflected in lower numbers at the major league level.

Since 1994, he has contributed almost $23,000--$200 for each double and triple and $300 for each home run--to baseball’s expanding youth program known as Reviving Baseball in the Inner City.

Initiated by former Chicago Cub scout John Young in Los Angeles in 1989, the program has been activated in almost 70 cities, giving some 300,000 boys and girls between 13 and 18 a chance to play baseball and softball.

The death of similar youth programs because of a lack of funds, interest and instructors has compounded the competition from football and basketball in the inner cities, where problems of sport and society are intertwined. Once fertile baseball areas have turned fallow, and reseeding is not easy.

In Los Angeles, for instance, veteran inner-city scout and coach Phil Pote has been trying for some time to develop funding for a new diamond at L.A Southwest College.

Agent Dennis Gilbert has committed $300,000, and the project may be close to reality. The Dodgers, Angels and baseball itself need to be involved with time and money--here and elsewhere. Baseball needs to provide a beacon for the inner city--continuing to restore the game there, better marketing of the African American stars and providing more than lip service to the ongoing need for minority hiring.

Almost 35% of major league players are African American or foreign born. Racism may linger, as it does in most institutions of society, but the real concern for baseball is at the roots--the empty playgrounds of the inner cities and the perception that baseball hasn’t cared.