Seattle Mariners
After Major League Baseball announced that it would be going to expansion for the 1977 season, Bevacqua openly admitted that he was looking forward to the opportunity to join an expansion club, though he was still a member of the Brewers' organization. His dream came to fruition on October 22, 1976 when he became the fourth member of the Seattle Mariners, who purchased his contract from the Brewers two weeks before the expansion draft. He arrived at camp that Spring to compete for the shortstop job with Craig Reynolds, whom the club had acquired from the Pirates for relief pitcher Grant Jackson. Despite an exceptional Spring training in which he batted .467, Bevacqua was released. The team's explanation was that Reynolds proved himself the better fielder, and the club already had too many right-handed bats off the bench. Furious over this decision, Bevacqua toyed with the idea of playing ball in Japan, but ultimately decided to sign a minor league deal with the Texas Rangers the day after the season started. Though he never played a regular season game with them, Bevacqua's 1977 Topps card (#317) shows him in a Mariners uniform.
Read more about this topic: Kurt Bevacqua
Famous quotes containing the words seattle and/or mariners:
“If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“Ye Mariners of England
That guard our native seas!
Whose flag has braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze!”
—Thomas Campbell (1774–1844)