Behind the Gold Glove

Finalist for the 2024 Casey Award and selected as a ‘Best Baseball Book of 2024’ by Sports Collector’s Digest

For twenty Major League seasons, the name Dwight Evans was synonymous with sterling defense and a potent bat. A Red Sox legend, he played in 2,505 games in Boston – second only to Carl Yastrzemski – and hit 379 home runs for the club, trailing only Yastrzemski and Ted Williams. Nobody hit more home runs in the American League and no player had more extra base hits in all of baseball than the man affectionately known as Dewey did during the decade of the 1980s, but it was his rifle-like right arm – and eight Gold Glove Awards – that established him as the best right fielder of his era.

In Dewey, Evans and baseball historian Erik Sherman take Red Sox fans back to a glorious time in baseball, filled with unforgettable World Series appearances in 1975 and 1986, legendary teammates including fellow outfield mainstays Jim Rice and Fred Lynn, and some of the most memorable games in MLB history.

Yet for all his greatness on the baseball field, the immense challenges that Evans and his family dealt with off it were even more impressive, a journey that Evans poignantly explores in detail like never before. A man who would become known for his class, dignity, and strength, Evans would use those attributes along with his wife Susan to help nurture and comfort two sons, Timothy and Justin, as they battled neurofibromatosis (NF) – commonly known as elephant man’s disease – a condition that causes tumors to form in the brain, spinal cord, and nerves.

Part charming memoir of an underrated star from bygone era of baseball and part exploration of a man whose inner strength sustained him through the trials and tribulations surrounding the diagnosis, treatment, and deaths of two sons who were tragically afflicted with NF, Dewey is the long-awaited full story of Dewey from the man himself.