TORONTO - We’ve heard of six degrees of separation.
What about roughly six miles of separation between where scout Jim Stevenson played and coached at the shrine known as Talbot Park, to the Rogers Centre where Blue Jays lefty Dana Eveland starts Tuesday night.
Working for the Milwaukee Brewers, Stevenson drafted Eveland in the 16th round of the 2002 draft.
Stevenson graduated from Leaside High School in 1981 and pitched one year each at Santa Monica Community College and Westark Community College in Fort
Smith, Ark. before transferring to Ole Miss where he hurt his arm and never pitched again.
In 1992, Stevenson was hired as pitching coach at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College, bringing with him future Anaheim Angel Jason Dickson and Scarborough infielder Todd Betts. Then Stevenson joined the Cleveland Indians where he worked for five seasons, and then Brewers scouting director Jack Zdurienzik hired him in 2002.
While Eveland is on the Rogers Centre mound, Stevenson will be scouting his area — North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri — before returning home to Tulsa.
“I met Jim a few times, I had no idea he was Canadian, he didn’t have any accent but he didn’t have a drawl either,” Eveland said Monday night thinking back to pitching for the Hill College Rebels at Hillsboro, Tex., in 2002.
Eveland was projected to go in the first five rounds and started the season 5-0 “with a sub-2.00 ERA.” But he finished 5-5 as his ERA almost doubled.
Returning to Palmdale, Calif., he sat by his computer and listened to the play-by-play of the draft as the first day came and went without hearing his name.
“Jim called me and asked: ‘Would you still sign?’ if they took me in the seventh, nothing happened until the 16th,” Eveland said.
The Brewers offered $20,000 US and he said “I don’t think so, thanks.”
Eveland described his fall from a possible top five rounder to a $20,000 offer as “a humbling experience, I don’t know whether I got lazy or what.”
He pitched summer ball in Santa Barbara, the same way he pitched his first half at Hill, had a good season for the College of Canyons Cougars in 2003 and signed May 26, hours before the end of the deadline for when he would have to return to the 2003 draft.
“When I transferred schools, I transferred scouts, but I’ve run into Jim a few times in minors,” Eveland said. “Jim gets credit for drafting me, but not for signing me.”
The Brewers gave Eveland a $330,000 signing bonus — big-time bonus for a 16th rounder. Had he returned to the draft he would have had gone much higher.
“Being from Palmdale, I wasn’t going to risk it,” said Eveland.
Matt Harrington, a high schooler from Palmdale, a year older than Eveland, was selected seventh overall in 2000 by the Colorado Rockies and turned down a $4 million deal.
“Matt was overly developed, everyone truly believed Matt would make it,” Eveland said. “We figured he’d be in the majors in a couple of years and winning games.”
Eveland made his debut July 16, 2005 with the Brewers and truly made it in 2008 with the Oakland A’s when he made 29 starts, going 9-9 with a 4.34 earned run average in 168 innings.
He got out of the car in Dunedin throwing strikes, won the fifth starter’s spot with a 1.23 ERA and is the only Jays starter to win his first two starts (2-0, 1.35).
Stevenson is in his 14th year drafting and signing more than 50 players including lefty Mike Bacsik, right-hander Yovani Gallardo, the Brewers 2010 opening day starter, who signed a five year, $30.1 million deal and Eveland, acquired by trade this winter from the A’s.
From Leaside to the Rogers Centre, that’s how a California lefty wound up on the mound tonight.
So near and yet so round about.
bob.elliott@sunmedia.ca
