I have eighteen cards of Kurt Bevacqua. This one is from 1985 Fleer.
Playing career:
Kurt Bevacqua spent fifteen years as a
backup infielder and pinch hitter for six different clubs. A .236 hitter with
20 lifetime home runs; he hit .412 with 2 home runs in his only World Series,
with the 1984 Padres. His Game 2 home run won what is still the only World
Series game victory in Padres history. A fuller account of his career can be
found at the
1974 Topps blog.
nteresting facts: Bevacqua was one of baseball’s most unusual
personalities in the 1970s and 1980s. Baseball card fans remember his
bubble-gum-blowing contest win, but he did a lot of unusual stunts and pranks
during his career. You can read about them in
this Sports Illustrated profile
from 1985, where the writer details many of Bevacqua’s antics as well as
clearly harbors a secret crush on Bevacqua’s then-wife, a former Playboy bunny.
here he is now: He owns a company in the San Diego area
called
Major League Systems that does car audio/video and security
installations. He holds
four patents in the area of security and monitoring
services.
My memories: He is from before my time. Only know him from
his card and his reputation as one of baseball’s biggest flakes. When I was a
kid in the 1980’s you would always hear about wacky baseball personalities and
they were called flakes. You don’t really hear that term anymore, and there
seem to be less really flaky players out there these days.
Google Autocomplete results: He is third when you type Kurt
Be, between Kurt Benz, a marketing host in Las Vegas, and Kurt Beers, a painter
in London. There do not appear to be any other prominent Kurt Bevacquas.
Coming up next: The next profile will be Jason Beverlin.
