August 2, 2010
'Dewey' relishing role with young players
by Douglas Flynn/
Dwight Evans (right) and Bill Buckner on April 8, 2008 at Fenway Park. (photo: Getty Images)
Dwight Evans spent 19 seasons as a player in Boston, but it was one year in Chicago that changed his baseball life.
“When I worked with the White Sox for my first year [coaching],” said Evans, who served as a roving minor league instructor with Chicago in 1993, “and Buddy Bell, who was a great player and a great front-office guy and coach, he said to me, ‘Dewey, we’ve both had great careers. We’ve both had time to be ourselves. Now it’s time to give ourselves to these young kids.’ And it was well said.
“You move on,” added Evans, who was back in Boston earlier this summer to accept the Baseball Legacy Award at The Tradition, the New England Sports Museum’s annual gala at the Garden. “You don’t go, ‘Well I could have done this. If I was playing today I’d be making this kind of money.’ I don’t feel that way. I’m in player development, so I work with the minor leaguers and I love it. I still come in to Fenway Park and work with the kids there. I’m very happy with where my life is now.”
Evans returned to the Red Sox in 2001 as a player development consultant, and after a stint as a major league hitting coach with the club in 2002, he returned to his player-development job and never looked back. Instead, he relishes the role he plays in mentoring the club’s young prospects.
“To see where we were in 2003, we were 29th in all of baseball in player development with our minor league system,” said Evans. “And to see a couple years ago they said we were in the top 10 and I’ve got to think we’re in the top five now.”
Evans takes special pride in helping along some of the less heralded prospects in the system, such as independent league castoff Daniel Nava, who became an unlikely hero with his historic debut in June.
“To see a guy like Dan Nava hit a grand slam on the first pitch he ever saw in the major leagues,” said Evans. “This kid came out of independent leagues. That to me is like a diamond in the rough. It’s just a thrill to see that.
“Or you look at Kevin Youkilis,” added Evans. “When I first saw Youk, I wasn’t impressed, but this kid just grew on me every year and you love to see people make it like that. He didn’t sign for much money, but he just wanted to play baseball. Youk to me has that heart, that never-quit attitude. And Nava is just a great kid. I couldn’t be happier for him. It’s a dream come true. It’s exciting. I enjoy that.”
Evans had plenty of his own dreams come true as a player. He won eight Gold Gloves in right field and was known for his cannon arm.
“The thing that I always had, people always said, ‘What a great arm. You’re a great defensive player,’ ” said Evans. “I always said, ‘I can hit too. I can hit.’ ”
Evans could hit. He batted .272 with 385 homers among his 2,446 hits. He drove in 1,384 runs and scored 1,470 in 2,606 career games. Some 2,505 of those games came in a Boston uniform, second only to Carl Yastrzemski’s 3,308 in Sox history.
“He’s one of the all-time great right fielders in Red Sox history,” said former teammate Jerry Remy, a second baseman whose second career as a broadcaster earned him the Media Legacy Award at this year’s Tradition. “And he was a guy that continued to get better and better as his career went on. He should be very proud of his career. It was a pleasure for me to play with guys like that.”
Evans accomplished just about everything possible as a player, but his most important goal remained unfulfilled. He, like all Red Sox over an 86-year span from 1918 until 2004, never won a championship, though he did come ever so close on a pair of occasions.
“I’m always asked, what was my favorite moment in baseball?” said Evans. “For me it’s always playoff baseball. If you’ve made the playoffs – and I played in four playoffs and made it to two World Series – that’s what you play for. That’s what it’s all about. Being so close so many times. When you’re winning and you’re playing together as a team, those are the most exciting times for me.”
Evans and the Sox lost in heartbreaking fashion in both 1975 and 1986, but at least he was able to be part of the end of that title drought in his new role in player development when the Sox finally won in 2004.
“Being in two World Series, twice being the bridesmaid and never being the bride, so to see them do it in ’04 and ’07, I loved it,” said Evans.
Those wins will always be special, but the near-misses as a player remain fresh in his memory as well – for both good and bad reasons. There was more of the former in 1975, when everything seemed to come together for a magical run that ended one game short against Cincinnati.
“At the end of ’74 you saw [Jim] Rice and [Fred] Lynn come up, and they were the missing pieces of the puzzle that made us a complete ballclub,” said Evans. “That’s what sticks out for me. The way we ended 1974 and going into ’75.
“ [Carlton] Fisk coming back from a tough, tough injury. He blew his knee out in ’74. All that coming together and just everyone playing so well. We had great pitching, great hitting, everything.”
Fisk provided the most memorable image of the season when he seemingly willed his 12th-inning game-winning homer to stay fair in Game 6. But Fisk never would have gotten that chance if not for Evans, who made a spectacular running catch in the right-field corner to rob Joe Morgan in the 11th, and even managed to fire the ball back to the infield to double off Ken Griffey at first.
There should have been more memories like that from those late-’70s Sox squads, but Boston didn’t get back to the Fall Classic for over a decade.
“I guess the sad thing about the whole thing was just the great team that we had for six-seven years, that we were only in one World Series,” said Evans. “In 1975 I said this team has to go to the World Series another three or four times in the next five years and we didn’t, I didn’t see another World Series for 11 years. It’s hard to get there.”
And even harder to get over what happens there sometimes. The 1986 season started on a perfect note, as Evans opened the season with a bang as he homered to lead off the opener in Detroit.
“First at-bat of the season,” said Evans. “First pitch. I was hoping it would be the start of something special. I remember we faced Jack Morris that game and we had five home runs that game. And we lost 6-5. Five solo home runs. Morris was a great pitcher and he pitched a complete game, I believe. But hey, that was something special and it was a special year for us. It was a combination of some great players and a great team coming together. It really was a lot of fun.”
The fun ended in another fateful Game 6, this time with the Red Sox suffering a dramatic defeat as Bob Stanley’s wild pitch and Mookie Wilson’s grounder through Bill Buckner’s legs fueled an improbable Mets’ rally in the bottom of the 10th.
Evans still hasn’t watched the films from that Series, but at least he has come to understand its importance in the game’s history.
“I’ve never looked at the highlight films,” said Evans. “I call them lowlight films because of what happened that World Series. As I have been able to travel around people come up to me and say, ‘That was a great World Series.’ And I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ They weren’t necessarily Red Sox’ fans or Mets’ fans, but they were baseball fans. And once I could hear that and understand how they looked at it, I could appreciate that it was a great World Series for baseball. I couldn’t imagine if the Red Sox had been able to come back and win it like that how dramatic it would have been. For the Mets to do that to us, it hurt and still hurts, but it was great for baseball.
“When you get in the World Series anything can happen,” added Evans. “It was a long time ago, but the way we got there, the way we played against Anaheim and won that fifth game in Anaheim… It’s hard. It hurt.”
Things have gotten much better since then. Evans has found a new role in the game working with young players that he enjoys, and he’s even picked up a couple of rings along the way.
“When I got out of the game, I was able to put it aside,” said Evans of adjusting to life after his playing days.
“Once they tear that uniform off you and tell you to go home, you have to shut the door and I was able to do that. A lot of guys can’t, but I could. I’m into my job now in player development. I love doing that and I’m happy where I’m at now.”
