Even the 1992 Fleer Ultra Dwight Evans Can’t Believe It

Remember that time Dwight Evans helped his team lose 95 games AND lost his job to a 25-year-old rookie who would go on to amass a total of 111 hits in the majors?

Oh, and how that represented a 10-game slide from the year before, when Dewey wasn’t in the fold?

And how that team rebounded, hard, to 89 wins and into contention the year after he left?

No?

Well, it’s hard to blame you … and it’s hard to pick out the season in question from all of the Boston All-Star’s other summers in the major leagues.

After all, if you check out the Red Sox records during those years, 1972-1990, you’ll find only two losing seasons, with a low-water mark of 78-84 in 1983.

So what gives?

Am I just blowing smoke about that 95-and-job-loss season of Dewey’s?

Or did he have a stint in the Senior Leagues, or in Japan or Mexico, or on the moon, that resulted in a lost-to-the-masses season?

The answers are “no” and “sorta, but not quite.”

Here, let me give you a hint:

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“Oh, come on!” you’re probably saying to yourself and me right now.

The 1991 Baltimore Orioles??

Evans seems to have that same sentiment plastered across his face as he takes another painful cut during a swan song that would produce a .270 batting average with six home runs and 38 RBI … and a series of lower body injuries that left him in a platoon-ish situation with rookie Chito Martinez by the end of the season.

The final cut would come the next spring, when Baltimore manager Johnny Oates deemed Evans too unreliable — thanks to those leg bang-ups — to continue as a right-field/DH swingman.

With Dewey gone, Martinez would play in 83 games, his most ever, and 1991 American League MVP Cal Ripken would come back down to earth in 1992.

And, yet, the O’s climbed to 89-73 in Oates’ first full season at the helm.

Was it because Evans was gone?

Well, emerging youngsters like Mike Mussina, Brady Anderson, and Chris Hoiles, and the solid play of veteran Mike Devereaux (among others) might have contributed to the turnaround.

In any case, long-time collectors were slapped with the same sort of flabbergast that Evans shows above as we tore into our wax packs (and “other” packs) that spring and summer.

Because, since Dewey had planned to play in the new season, we were treated to a round of career-capper cards (yay!) featuring the incomprehensible sight of one of the game’s great right fielders in an Orioles uniform.

And, sometimes, as with Evans’ 1992 Fleer Ultra, even the cards agreed with us.

Oh, come on!