A photo of Carl Everett.
Carl Edward Everett III (born June 3, 1971 in Tampa, Florida) is a former Major League Baseball outfielder currently playing for the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League. A switch hitter, he played with the Chicago White Sox on their 2005 World Series winning team. He throws right-handed and plays all outfield positions, and occasionally designated hitter.
High school years[]
Everett attended Hillsborough High School in Tampa, Florida and was a letterman in football, baseball, and track. In football, he garnered 948 rushing yards as a senior. Carl Everett graduated from Hillsborough High School in 1990.
Playing career[]
He was the 10th overall pick in the 1990 amateur draft, selected by the New York Yankees, but he would make his Major League debut with the Florida Marlins on July 1, 1993.
After being traded to the Mets, he had his first full season in 1997 with 443 at bats. He hit .248 that season, with a .420 slugging percentage.
He had his best seasons with the Houston Astros, hitting .325 with 27 stolen bases in 1999. That year, his .571 slugging percentage was in the top 10 in the league.
After being traded on December 14, 1999, to the Boston Red Sox for minor league shortstop Adam Everett, he had a career high 34 home runs in 2000. The Boston fans welcomed him at first, but their enthusiasm cooled somewhat after he was suspended for 10 days for bumping into umpire Ron Kulpa. The following year, Everett was fined for grabbing his crotch while yelling at Seattle Mariners pitcher Jamie Moyer after hitting a home run. He struggled in 2001, with a shoulder injury hampering his performance, and ongoing controversy with the Boston media serving as a distraction to the team. One of the few bright spots for Everett that season came on September 2, 2001, when Everett came into the game as a pinch hitter and broke up a potential perfect game by Mike Mussina of the New York Yankees. Mussina had retired the first 26 Boston Red Sox and gotten two strikes on Everett before he hit a soft single to left center.
On December 12, 2001, Everett was traded to the Texas Rangers for Darren Oliver.
In three separate years, Everett has made his league's top 10 in the hit by pitch category.
In October of 2005, Carl Everett won his first and only World Series Championship with the Chicago White Sox. Everett stepped in as the starting DH for most of that season for the White Sox after an early season injury to Frank Thomas.
On December 14, 2005, Everett was signed by the Mariners off of the free agent market to a one year contract for the 2006 season, with a vesting option for 2007. On Mother's Day, May 14, 2006, Everett was one of more than 50 hitters who brandished a pink bat to benefit the Breast Cancer Foundation.
The majority of the time, he was a designated hitter and very rarely played the field, backing up the corner outfield positions. He played in 92 games before the Mariners designated Everett for assignment on July 26, 2006, effectively ending his tenure with the Mariners organization. At the time of his release, Larry Stone pointed out in the Seattle Times [1], he was 85th out of 86 AL players with qualifying at bats in batting average, at .227.
Everett is currently on the roster of the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. Through July 22, 2008 Everett was hitting a remarkable .342 with 15 HR and 52 RBI in only 67 games. The Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Angels have expressed interest in the veteran slugger, but he remains unsigned by a major league team.
Controversies[]
Everett is an outspoken man, and his remarks have proven controversial on several occasions.
Perhaps the best-known of these was his denial of the existence of dinosaurs. He was quoted as saying, "God created the sun, the stars, the heavens and the earth, and then made Adam and Eve. The Bible never says anything about dinosaurs. You can't say there were dinosaurs when you never saw them. Somebody actually saw Adam and Eve. No one ever saw a Tyrannosaurus rex." He also derided fossils of dinosaur bones as man-made fakes. [2] In reference to these comments, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy dubbed Everett "Jurassic Carl." Everett, in turn, referred to Shaughnessy as the "curly-haired boyfriend" of Globe beat writer Gordon Edes,[1] a nickname which stuck after ESPN columnist Bill Simmons started incorporating it into his work. In Seattle, he was known as C-Rex, a name given him by writers for the Mariners blog U.S.S. Mariner [3].
Everett, again in an interview with Shaughnessy, questioned the validity of the Apollo Moon Landing.[4]
In 1997, Everett and his wife Linda were charged with abusing their two children, Shawna and Carl IV. The criminal charges, which stemmed from allegations that Linda had applied "excessive corporal punishment" and that Carl had chosen not to intervene, were ultimately dropped. A judge in New York Family court, however, placed Shawna in the care of her maternal grandmother, where she currently remains. [5]
Each season, Everett tends to get into altercations with umpires. Some of these tirades have resulted in suspensions and fines, the longest of which, 10 games, came during the 2000 season after an incident in which he bumped noses with umpire Ron Kulpa during the process of taking exception to Kulpa's ruling that Everett's batting stance was illegal, he was also fined $5,000. In numerous interviews, such as the one in which he denies the existence of dinosaurs[6], Everett has stated that he thrives on being hated, and that it keeps him on top of his game. Opposing players, umpires, and even his own teammates are not immune, as evidenced by his postgame shouting match with Seattle manager Mike Hargrove[7] after a 14-6 loss to the Los Angeles Angels on July 5, 2006.
Everett has also made controversial remarks about homosexuality. He once said that if he had an openly gay teammate that he would consider retiring, or, at the very least, "set him straight." In the 2005 season, he told Maxim that he has had gay teammates and accepted them, but, "Gays being gay is wrong. Two women can't produce a baby, two men can't produce a baby, so it's not how it's supposed to be. … I don't believe in gay marriages. I don't believe in being gay." [8].
References[]
- ↑ "A Curt response", Inside Track, the Boston Herald, published February 27, 2007, accessed February 27, 2007.
See also[]
External links[]
Template:Wikiquote
- Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube
- Long Island Ducks Statistics