When San Francisco Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera was suspended in 2012 for using a banned substance, he led Major League Baseball in hits and had a .346 batting average. So most observers expected the Giants to put him on the postseason roster when his suspension expired just before the 2012 World Series.
But they didn’t, showing that character mattered as much to the team as offensive production. And they won the 2012 World Series anyway.
One Giants executive who helped make the decision to bench Cabrera was Bobby Evans, a Southern Baptist who said his most important task as assistant general manager is to honor Christ. He said that remained his chief goal Oct. 24 as the Giants moved forward into game three of the 2014 World Series, a game that they lost 3–2. The Giants went into game seven Oct. 29 with three wins and three losses. In the all-or-nothing final game, the Giants again became World Series champions with one point, winning 3–2 over the Kansas City Royals.
“You want your life to point people to Christ,” Evans said. “It starts for me with my own relationship with Christ. That’s going to direct and dictate what influence I have for Christ in my family, in my marriage and in the workplace.”
A member of First Baptist Church, San Francisco, for 21 years, Evans was saved as a 7-year-old living in Massachusetts. After attending college at the University of North Carolina, he went to work for MLB commissioner Fay Vincent in New York in 1991. Two and a half years later he joined the Giants in a minor league administration role.
Since 2006, Evans, 45, has served in his current role though his title has changed multiple times. Among his duties are negotiating all major league player contracts, helping acquire free agents and signing minor league talent.
Despite pressure to be dishonest in contract negotiations, Evans said he wants to be known for truthfulness.
“One of the common things in contract negotiations is to have a fudge factor in the sense of what you might tell an agent or express to a player not being entirely accurate,” he said. But “the last thing I ever wanted was to have anyone ever be able to say that we didn’t fulfill what we promised.”
Evans added, “It’s really about integrity and about being able to be trusted by a given agent or for players to feel like you’re going to be honest with them.”
Despite a 162-game schedule each season, Evans said he makes time with his family and church a priority — even though he attends Giants home games, about a fourth of the road games and travels to see minor league teams in California, Georgia, Virginia, Oregon and Arizona. Evans has a wife and three children ages 10, 6 and 8 months.
“Even with home games you’re at the ballpark til 11 o’clock at night after a night game,” he said. “And so whenever possible, I try to have my family at the ballpark. I make sure that if we have a night game, I’m up to take them to school the next day. I coach little league teams and just make sure there’s no priority that gets ahead of them.”
Some keys to a healthy marriage amid the rigors of baseball are “surrounding ourselves with other couples that are pursuing Christ” and not “compartmentalizing” life between Christian and secular activities, he said.
In 2012, Evans received the Bowie Kuhn Award, which is presented annually to an individual, team or organization that demonstrates support of the chapel program in professional baseball.
In baseball, as in other businesses, following Jesus and being a faithful church member is “hard,” Evans said. But “it’s going to all start with where I am in my relationship with Christ.” (BP)
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