Dwight Evans “The Unfathomable Dewey”
The 1909 Honus Wagner, T206—the crown jewel slash white whale of all sports collectibles. The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, number 311—the iconic rookie card that almost singlehandedly turned a frivolous hobby into serious business. And the 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken, number 616—the endlessly memeable, how-did-that-happen “Fuck Face” card. No question—those are the first three to be chiseled into card stock Mount Rushmore. But what about the fourth—what card should go there?
Personally, I love the 1954 Topps Aaron rookie for its pop of orange and its high design. But I also love the 1958 Topps Willie Mays—not the All Star card, just the good old regular number 5—for its mid-century elegance and its winning smile. I’ve long adored the 1987 Topps number 4—the Eddie Murray “Record Breakers” card, featuring twin Eddies—one lefty and righty—threatening pitchers with one bat and daring photographers with the other. And, while we’re on the subject of Eighties first basemen, I do have great affection for the 1984 Donruss number 248, pre-mustache, pre-Topps, Don Mattingly rookie for how it inspired irrational bidding wars among my then tween friends.
Ultimately, though, none of those esteemed contenders would take my final Mount Rushmore spot. Flying in the face of both popular opinion and market value, I’d save that for a card so seemingly minor that, for most collectors, it would appear unworthy of the honor. A card that for years was considered a “Beckett Common”—meaning that it should be relegated to an old shoebox rather than a plastic protector. And yet, despite its relative worthlessness, my choice for the fourth spot is an easy one—The 1982 Topps, number 162.
Which begs the next question—why? Why that card? Well I’m so glad you asked. Devoted to the home run leaders from 1981, The 162 was so deeply imprinted into my coming of age brain that I sometimes struggle to articulate what, exactly, it is so special. It’s not a particularly elegant card—the fonts and spacing are off and the purple, light blue and fuchsia color scheme is all wrong. Its greatness is not a matter of design but rather a matter of singularity. In the annals of baseball cards, there’s never been one like The 162. For one thing, there are five men featured on the card because, while there was just one home run leader in the National League, there was a four way tie in the A.L. An extreme coincidence, but also a byproduct of the strike-shortened season, this oddity had never occurred in the entire history of baseball—not in the Dead Ball Era or even in the COVID mini-season—and has not occurred since.
Topps solved the “five men in eight and three quarters square inches” conundrum by awarding Mike Schmidt, who mashed thirty-one for The Phillies that season, the card’s left third, while reserving the right two thirds for the four American League sluggers, who tied with twenty-two long balls. Which brings me to the card’s second great quirk. More than its statistical anomaly, The 162 reveals a follicular anomaly—all five men are sporting mustaches.
Notably, none of the men have beards, a trend reclaimed by closers and free spirited sluggers a few decades later. More notably, neither Rollie Fingers (who won the 1981 AL MVP award and whose handlebar was the most famous stache in the game) nor Gorman Thomas’ (who was runner up in the AL home run crown that year and whose fu manchu was the most formidable in the game) appear on the card. Nevertheless, the stashes on The 162 are exceptional in their own ways—either for the prowess of their owner or for their standalone aesthetic appeal. Schmidt’s is more of the former—tidy but not exactly intimidating. Though his hairstyle’s morphed from shags to perms to coiffed and gelled, Schmitty’s mustache remained a consistent, but unassuming, calling card. Of the five crumb catchers, Schmidt’s is the least interesting.
It’s in the American League where things get really fascinating. On the top left of the two by two grid is Oakland slugger Tony Armas, who spent fourteen seasons daring his nacho helmet to stay on while swinging for fences and striking out five times more often than he walked. Armas’ stache is solid, if slightly outshined by his frothy crown of curls, which peek out from both ideas of his snug cap. Going counterclockwise, beneath Armas is Bobby Grich, the six time All-Star and four time Gold Glove winning second baseman for the Angels who accumulated the eighth most W.A.R. of anyone to ever play the position. Yep—more than Ryne Sandberg and Roberto Alomar. But more importantly for The 162, Grinch’s mustache is flawless—thick and well groomed, not far from Tom Selleck’s supporting actor in “Magnum P.I.”
Continuing counter-clockwise, we get to the aforementioned Edward Clarence Murray, my baseball hero and the owner of a mustache defined less by its standalone value and more for how it functioned alongside the rest of his facial flair. Eddie sported mutton chops which extended like daggers into his mustache but which did not connect to his lower jawline. And though he would not dare consider a beard, Eddie did allow for a tuft of hair beneath his lower lip. There have been more impressive staches in the history of the game, but never has there been a more complete ensemble than the one adorning the face of Eddie Murray between 1977 and 1986.
And that leaves us with Dewey. Just above Eddie, completing our counterclockwise turn, is Red Sox right fielder, Dwight Evans, who—if you squint your eyes—could pass for Bobby Grich’s twin. Like Grich, Evans wears a youthful shag, with just a little party in the back. Like Grich, Evan’s stache is thick and virile. And, like Grich, Evans was an elite fielder with extra plus offense whose Cooperstown case seems more convincing with each passing year. But for as wonderfully atypical as The 162 is—the four way tie, the five mustaches, the two first ballot Hall of Famers—none of its curios are quite so curious as the inexplicable career of Dwight Evans.
In 1975, The Red Sox famously introduced two rookie outfielders who would go on to finish first and second in the R.O.Y. voting and first and third on the M.V.P. ballot. Fred Lynn, who won both awards, was widely considered to be the second coming of Roberto Clemente, but in center field. Jim Rice, meanwhile, was deemed a worthy heir to Yaz, with less defense but as much—if not more—power. To the immediate right of Lynn and Rice was “the other guy,” a twenty-three year old who’d already started for two seasons, considered to be a defensive specialist with good strike zone command and a little pop at the plate.
When folks talk about the 1975 Red Sox, they frequently talk about Lynn and Rice, and more frequently talk about Carlton Fisk and “Game Six.” But what almost nobody mentions is that Dwight Evans, their great glove/some bat right fielder, notched 5.1 WAR that year. By comparison, Jim Rice had 3.0 and Pudge Fisk had 3.2. On a pennant winning club that included Yaz, Lynn, Rice, Pudge, El Tiante and Spaceman, and who nearly bested The Big Red Machine, Dewey was the other young kid. Which is kind of the story of Dewey’s career—always a groomsman but never the groom, except for those eight seasons when he was actually the best man or those four when he was actually the groom.
Dewey was not Harold Baines—an excellent and consistent hitter who amassed gaudy hit and RBI totals over twenty-two seasons but who was a liability in the field and whose career WAR was less than sixty percent of Evans’. Put another way, he was worth more than two wins per season than Harold Baines. But also, Dewey was not Dave Parker, who had two distinct but remarkable peaks, separated by five years, and who won an MVP award, two batting titles and two World Series rings but who lacked Dewey’s plate discipline, defensive prowess and whose career WAR was—as a result of those deficiencies—less than seventy percent of Evans’ total. No, Dewey was unlike Harold Baines and Dave Parker in that he was more valuable on a per game basis and over the course of his career and in that those two men are in the Hall of Fame and Dwight Evans is not.
Nor was Dewey like Lynn or Rice, both of whom in 1975 seemed destined for greatness far beyond the reach of Evans but neither of whom hit more home runs or accumulated more WAR or won as many Thomas A. Yawkey awards—given annually to The Red Sox team MVP—as Dwight Evans. To put him in a broader perspective, Dewey hit more home runs than anyone in the American League in the 1980s—more than Jim Rice or Eddie Murray. And he had more extra base hits than anyone in baseball during that decade—more than George Brett or Mike Schmidt. Dewey ranks fourteenth all time in career WAR among right fielders—a list that includes Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron above him and Dave Winfleld, Gary Sheffield below him. By almost any standard other than peak value or “black ink”, Dwight Evans was a Hall of Fame caliber player.
Evan’s underratedness, especially when compared to Lynn’s dynamism and Rice’s power, is not terribly surprising. What is surprising, however, is the inverted nature of his career. Between 1972 and 1980—from age twenty to twenty-eight—Dewey was a Gold Glove, bronze bat outfielder who could be counted on for a .260 average, fifteen to twenty home runs and a good but not great on base percentage. However, during the next eight years—his age twenty-nine to thirty-seven seasons—Dewey became an MVP candidate who hit .285, with twenty-five to thirty home runs, a hundred RBIs and league leading walk totals, while still racking up Gold Gloves. Dwight Evans did not regress in the way that most players do. His peak started in 1981—the year he grew his mustache and landed on Topps number 162—and was sustained for nearly a decade. In the history of baseball, very few players are so disproportionately valuable after the age of thirty. I you remove known P.E.D. users, and pitchers like Warren Spahn and Randy Johnson, you are left with names like Willie Stargell and Paul Molitor. Evans second half ascent is not unique, but it is extremely rare and in direct conflict with what we know to be true about aging athletes.
In 1978, Evans was hit in the head with a wayward fastball from Mariners’ pitcher Mike Parrott. The event sent him straight to the hospital and left him with dizzy spells for years. From that moment through all of 1979 and most of 1980, Dewey’s progress buckled. In fact, things got so bad that in 1980 he was benched for Jim Dwyer. But eventually, as his symptoms faded and with the tutelage of Batting Buddha, Walt Hriniak, he recast the story of his second act. The new, but older and wiser, version of Dwight Evans broke out in 1981—mustached, balanced at the plate and remodeled from a defensive specialist into an virtually flawless player.
Had he met Hriniak and grown the stache at twenty rather than twenty-nine—Dewey might have approached Yaz as the second greatest Red Sock of all time. Or, had he started out with a bang—like Lynn or Rice—he might have been a first ballot hall of famer. Or, I suppose—because most phenoms do not sustain that level of performance—he might have ended up an injury casualty (Lynn) or a case of arrested development (Rice). My revisionist history is, of course, counterfactual. The reality is that Evans had an excellent but unspectacular first half and an elite but also somehow unspectacular second half. There are many career arcs similar to those of Lynn and Rice, but there are shockingly few shaped like Evans’. And because humans are pattern recognizers and because Evans never won a World Series or an MVP award, and because he spent two decades in the shadow of others (Yaz then Lynn and Rice, then Boggs and Clemens), and because he has so few comparables, his greatness has almost never made headlines.
Though his late bloom was rare, Evans onfield performance can still be assessed. With hard statistics and dutiful examination we can argue whether he was more like Torii Hunter (not exactly but also not so far) or Al Kaline (much closer if you invert their career progressions). Off the field, though—in the dugout and at home with family—Evans was not merely uncommon, but peerless. Handsome, humble and exceedingly loyal, there’s no scandal, bad blood or misstep to his name. Search as you might (and I have), there’s not a teammate, writer or opponent with anything negative to say about Dwight Evans. But what’s more remarkable than his glowing reputation is the fact that he—along with his wife of fifty plus years, which only bears mentioning because that is also a rare thing among athletes—was the parent of three children, two of whom suffered from a debilitating genetic conditions that took their lives before middle age.
It’s hard to fathom—all of it. It’s hard to fathom how a player could make the leap that Dewey made so late into his career. It’s hard to fathom where he started and where he ended. It’s hard to fathom that a player of his statistically unimpeachable caliber is not a member of the Hall of Fame. It’s even harder to fathom how he was able to flourish on the field and in public while privately facing a parent’s worst fears, every single day, year after year. It’s hard to fathom how that guy ended up on the only baseball card to ever feature five mustached sluggers, four of whom tied for their league’s lead in home runs. It’s all unfathomable. Or, alternately, because Dewey was so unfathomable, maybe it all makes perfect sense.