Mr. Explosive

All-Star center fielder CARL EVERETT gives the Red Sox little reason to believe he can stay under control

Being Carl Everett cannot be easy.

He is blessed with all the talent any baseball player could ask for, yet cursed with enough attitude and baggage to make just about any other player pack it in.

Being Carl Everett's teammate cannot be easy.

The Red Sox center fielder is so dearly the spark the lineup needs, yet the major-league nutty he pulled with an umpire last month left him suspended and out of that lineup for a crucial 10 games.

Being Carl Everett's coach cannot be easy.

He hustles on every single play he is involved in all season long, yet on the same day he returns from his suspension he engages his manager in a face-to-face, obscenity-laden tirade.

Being Carl Everett's fan cannot be easy.

Besides playing the game so very well, he is charming, articulate, friendly, funny, forthright and always ready to offer an outrageous opinion, be it about dinosaurs or men walking on the moon. Yet, at any moment his intensity and temper can get the worst of him, and he turns into an explosive force of nature--Mount Everett, if you will.

There is nothing easy when it comes to Everett.

That has been his history.

It's hard to imagine a future any different.

When umpire Ron Kulpa told Everett to keep his feet in the batter's box at Fenway Park in a game against the Mets on July 15, Everett's wild-eyed response brought all of his accomplishments this season to a crashing halt. He had to be restrained by a fistful of teammates; boyhood friend Derek Bell of the Mets sprinted in from the outfield to try to restore , order, and Everett left his teammates watching in disbelief as he bashed a bat rack and knocked over a water cooler before retreating to the clubhouse with a bruised right hand that would bother him for the next several days.

By the time Frank Robinson, Major League Baseball's vice president of on-field operations, suspended Everett five days later, Everett's eruption threatened to bury the Red Sox's season in an unnatural and premature death.

Everett was having an All-Star season for the Red Sox, leading the club in home runs, RBIs and nearly every important offensive category while helping the club take early control of the A.L. East.

Then a 9-18 June swoon left the team reeling, and the team was continuing to lose ground when Everett lost control of his temper. By the time Everett finally dropped his appeal on July 2 5, it became clear that his outburst had robbed his teammates of an important chance to make a move in the pennant race.

A handwritten note of apology, awkwardly expressed yet utterly heartfelt, was released to reporters. It said, in part, "I apologize most importantly for not being on the field during this 10-game period, for playing late through October is the goal that each of us have set our sights on and for where I am, and in light of my daily rule with attaining this goal, I apologize once more."

The apology was overdue but ultimately accepted by his teammates. In the 10 games without Everett, the club went 5-5. The Sox started the week 3 1/2 games behind the first-place Yankees. In his absence, Red Sox center fielders went 9-for-36 (.250) with four RBIs.

On August 5, before his first game back, manager Jimy Williams pulled Everett into his office and told him he was being punished for breaking a team rule (believed to be that he left the team without consent one day early on a long road trip) during his suspension. Everett's response could be heard outside of the closed door of Williams' office, and it was loud, irate and profane.

One teammate left me clubhouse shortly afterward, but not before catching the eye of a reporter and mouthing the word, "Psycho."

But when the game was over, Everett was a triple shy of hitting for the cycle in a 7-5 loss to the Royals.

Afterward Williams termed the argument just a "family feud." The Red Sox family simply hopes that Everett can somehow keep his act together "for playing late through October."

"I think he'll learn from this," says Pedro Martinez, referring to the 10-game suspension. "Mentally, I don't think his attitude is really going to change. Everyone has it--a temper inside--and sometimes it snaps. I think he's going to be more careful now, not really because of what happened or his punishment but because of the way he made us feel. I'm sure he'll be more reserved if he snaps again, not because he is afraid to do it but because of his teammates."

This is the 29-year-old Everett's first year with the Red Sox and in the American League, and in terms of titling in, he seems be accepted, if not totally understood, by his new teammates.

During spring training, he endeared himself to Red Sox fans by pooh-poohing the Yankees, the team that drafted him in 1990, as too old and overrated, and he gave his teammates their first taste of his ability to say whatever is on his mind, damn the consequences.

In May, his comments about not believing that dinosaurs ever roamed the Earth or man ever walked on the moon drew some more attention. Some of his teammates privately confided that they were stunned over the things that came out of Everett's mouth, and that they had no idea what was going to come out next.

He has remained popular enough, though there is no rush to plant the "team leader" crown on his shaved head. He gets along particularly well with the clubhouse workers. He is prone to sneaking up to one of them, or sometimes a teammate, and wrapping them up in a bearhug until the victim breaks away, laughing. Everett, too, is usually good at injecting humor into the clubhouse, not that the Red Sox have any problems in that department.

His teammates seem, understandably, perfectly content with what he does with and to a baseball on the diamond--as long as he stays on that diamond.

"I think everyone generally likes the guy--he's a big part of our clubhouse," says reliever Rod Beck. "When you change a personality, you can also change what he is capable of doing. He's Carl. It's just him. He's intense. When you're intense and things don't go your way, you need a way to let it out. I think everyone here loves the guy. We just need to keep him on the team."

After Saturday's tirade, Everett said he no longer was talking to reporters about his up-and-down summer. When the suspension came down, he blamed news media reports for making him into a "monster" over the incident. His agent, Larry Reynolds, became particularly exorcised when commentators said that Everett had head-butted Kulpa. Not true, said Reynolds, who slowed down the tape and found that "only" Everett's nose and lips touched Kulpa's face.

On the day he returned to action after the suspension, Everett wanted no part of reporters, calling them "wolves" because of their handling of his case.

Before Everett decided to shut out the "wolves" who tried to make him out to be a "monster," he expressed his own world view earlier this spring.

"I'm going to be myself," he said. "I've always been myself. You're never able to control me. I'm not going to kiss up to anybody. You are not going to control me, it's just something I'm not going to do. I'm not going to let you run up my butt. If you can't be yourself, you're nothing. I wasn't brought up any other way.

"To me, if you don't like what I say, don't listen. I'm not out to harm anyone."

The matter of harm and Everett's temper are not issues that just cropped up this year. As much as Everett and those close to him do not like to be reminded about it, he has a track record of losing his cool in both public and private.

In the summer of 1997, when he was a Met, childcare workers at the day-care center at Shea Stadium noticed bruises on two of Everett's children. The authorities were notified and Everett, along with his wife, Linda, were soon missing ballgames to attend to their case in Queens Family Court. Ultimately, there was testimony that the Everetts had admitted to occasionally using an open hand or a belt to punish their children. In this instance, they were found to have exercised "child neglect."

The case helped lead to Everett's trade out of New York to Houston, where he enjoyed two relatively incident-free and productive seasons. Before spending his three seasons in the Mets organization, Everett was with the Marlins from 1992 to 1994.

In 1994, Everett was suspended after cussing out his Class AAA manager. Three coaches were needed to restrain Everett. In 1996, after an argument with an umpire, Everett jumped into the stands in a winter ballgame in Venezuela because he said a fan had poured beer on him.

His trade to the Red Sox this winter was believed to be part of a salary dump by the retooling Astros, yet manager Larry Dierker recently hinted that there might have been more behind the trade than just money concerns. In his Internet column, Dierker wrote, "Carl's temper has been a problem in the past, and may be again in the future. Some guys have a low flash point, and he is one of them.

"Carl Everett played so hard for us that he inspired the whole team. Still, there was that scary, uncertain side to his personality--and that's what keeps him moving from team to team. I wouldn't be surprised if he makes more stops before he hangs up his spikes."

The Red Sox have no intention of trading Everett. He is signed through this year and the next two, with a club option for 2003 that must be exercised this fall.

For 2 1/2 more years at least, Everett will be in Boston-barring the unexpected.

General manager Dan Duquette, who said that Everett's history had been thoroughly and satisfactorily investigated before he traded for him, said after Everett's encounter with Williams last week that Everett got a "little over-enthusiastic" and that the situation had been addressed.

"We're going to make some adjustments in regards to that behavior and certainly Carl will, too," Duquette says.

Williams simply expects Everett to improve his behavior.

"We all have had growing-up experiences, and sometimes we're better because of it," Williams says. "I know I've had experiences I've learned from. He's helped us get to where we are, and I hope we can continue where we want to go. I don't foresee any problems, I really don't."

Red Sox first-base coach Tommy Harper was called upon to help mediate between Everett and Williams.

"As an organization, we're hoping it doesn't happen again," he says. "It hurts Carl, and it hurts the organization's effort to win. He's intense. Even Frank Robinson had incidents with umpires. The question is, how far can you go? You have to stay within the limits."

Says Martinez: "He's not stupid. He's really smart. I don't think he's going to do the same thing again. I don't know if other people are going to believe that, but the Carl I've seen, I don't think he's going to snap like that in his career again."

If history is any guide, it's not going to be easy for Everett to keep a tighter lid on his emotions.

Being Carl Everett, though, nothing is easy.

For his sake, maybe this time it will.

Michael Silverman covers the Red Sox for the Boston Herald.

RELATED ARTICLE: EVERETT's WORLD

CARL EVERETT HAS GAINED A REPUTATION FOR MAKING OUTRAGEOUS COMMENTS:

* I believe there were no dinosaurs. I've never seen one; I've never seen a Tyrannosaurus Rex. How do you know those bones are millions of years old? Stuff you can't prove, I don't believe. Like men walking on the moon. I guarantee you none of us have seen a rock from the moon. Half of what you hear, I don't believe--actually, 95 percent of what I hear. It's just me--I have to witness it. I don't believe someone got out of a ship up there."

* "Everyone says, `You say stuff that can cost you your career.' No, if my career's going to be over, it's because the Lord wants it to be. There are guys who are afraid to express themselves because someone or something else has been placed in higher authority over them, and they are going to be misjudged."

* "Life's just like baseball. It's the only game where you're going to fail more than you succeed. The game of baseball is so mental, you're going to have more stress in this game. It's hard to live right, and it's hard to play the game of baseball right."

* "In this day and age you have people that don't have any kids trying to tell (other) people how to raise their kids. Can't tell you the first moaning of how to change a diaper. You know, how it is to stay up to 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning when you have a sick child, when you have a child who's hungry. Most of the people who make these laws can't tell you the first thing about raising a child."

Quotes compiled from published reports.

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