After spending time away from the Cape Cod Baseball League (Cape League), Paul Evans is back 38 years later for a second coaching stint, this time with the Falmouth Commodores. Evans first experience of the Cape League was as a player, when he pitched for the Harwich Mariners.
In those days, the league was run completely differently. Evans reveals that “when I first came out here, we had to work jobs as players and you paid rent to your host families.”
He was a junior college assistant coach at Rend Lake Junior College in Illinois and says he “always dreamed that if I had a chance to come back up here, in some way, shape, or form, I would, and I got that opportunity.” In 1988, Evans became the pitching coach of the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox, where he would be for one summer.
At the end of that summer, Evans accepted the pitching coach job at Missouri State University (then Southwest Missouri State), in what would become a 34-year tenure.
During his time with the Missouri State University Bears, he led 67 pitchers to professional contracts, with 14 of them making it to the Major Leagues. He was a key part of three NCAA regional championship teams and the 2003 College World Series Squad
His career with the Bears was recognized in 2021, when he was inducted into Missouri State University’s Hall of Fame.
Currently, Evans helps with Drury University’s baseball team in Springfield, MO. A former player that was on Missouri State's ‘03 World Series team reached out to him, asking Evans if he was done (with baseball) despite knowing the answer already. He wasn’t done, but there was “flexibility I would like to do.” The plan is to return next season, which will be his 50th season as a player and coach in baseball.
Evans cares a lot about the game and winning. “After games, we try to meet as a team, and then I always meet with the pitchers. I try to make about two or three –maybe on a bad night, four or five points – about something that transpired in that game, or something that we could do better. Repeating something that needs to be repeated, in terms of holding a running game, or attacking hitters, or not making some mistakes on 0-2 counts.”
As to what he hopes the players take away from the summer? “My sense of humor,” Evans says. “I like to joke around with them and have fun with these guys. I guess that's what's kept me in the game for a long time.”
