PHILADELPHIA — It had been two weeks since Byron Evans turned down a multi-million dollar contract when he planted his white cleat into the turf. Evans was a few months from turning 31 but the Eagles linebacker was still playing at a high level, seeming to get better with age halfway through his eighth NFL season.
This — a routine play in November of 1994 at Veterans Stadium — felt like another tackle on the way to that elusive Pro Bowl trip.
But then Bill Romanowski, Evans’ fellow linebacker, dove into the fray. He crashed into Evans’ right side, breaking his leg and tearing ligaments in his knee. Evans never had a chance. His leg was stuck in the Vet’s unforgiving artificial turf, a thin surface that didn’t give the same way as natural grass. His career — just like that contract negotiation — was finished.
“The doc said usually when you tear your knee up, you don’t break your leg. Or when you break your leg, you don’t tear your knee up,” Evans said. “But I did both. It’s one of those things where it’s in the turf and there it is.”
Before The Vet’s playing surface was thought to be cancerous, it was well known to be dangerous. The stadium’s bright green field was notorious for the damage it did to players’ knees and the way it shortened or even ended careers.
An investigation published this month by The Philadelphia Inquirer after six former Phillies players died from brain cancer discovered dangerous “forever chemicals” in turf said to be used at the stadium from 1977-1981. So far, former Eagles have not been plagued by brain cancer the way Phillies have. But the stadium’s turf — “It was the worst,” Evans said — still caused pain.
“It was like playing on concrete,” Evans said. “I didn’t have to take the brunt of it too many times so I was happy to be on the other side, delivering the hits as opposed to receiving the hits. That worked out a little bit better.”
‘Got stuck in the turf’
The Vet opened in 1971 with both the Phillies and Eagles leaving behind stadiums with grass surfaces to play on a carpet in South Philadelphia. A year earlier, Jim Bunning said he didn’t “think the owners realize the significance of playing on it, how it will cut careers short.”
Bob Carpenter’s father, the late Ruly Carpenter, became the Phillies’ team president in 1972 — a year after the team moved into Veterans Stadium — and remained in that role until 1981. Carpenter remembers shagging fly balls in the Vet’s outfield as an adolescent.
“That first generation of turf at the Vet was literally like indoor-outdoor carpet on concrete,” he said. “God knows how many careers ended early because of the lack of cushioning.”
Former Phils infielder Mickey Morandini said the Vet “took a toll on your body” and you had to be OK with suffering brush burns from diving catches or playing summer day games where the temperature soared well over 100 degrees because the turf trapped heat.
“I look back at all the times I dove for balls,” said former shortstop Larry Bowa. “You got turf burns. It skinned your arms, and left you with an open sore.”
By 1981, Bowa’s final season with the Phillies as a player, he said the Vet’s turf was “like playing on the Philadelphia airport runway.”
Phillies outfielder Tony Barron lived for years with a pinched nerve in his neck after slamming into the turf in 1997 after completing a diving catch.
“It felt like concrete,” Barron said. “Grass would have been nice. Just dirt would have been better. It was like when I landed, I just stuck. It didn’t give anything. That turf might have been a couple inches thick, but underneath that was just concrete.”
Bunning, the Phils’ Hall of Fame pitcher, was prescient. But he even may have been surprised to see how dramatically the Vet’s turf ended Wendell Davis’ career in 1993.
Davis, a Bears wide receiver, was tracking down an underthrown deep pass in an October game against the Eagles when he tried to leap into the air.
“Well, I thought I was going up,” he said. “My feet stayed in the turf and the patella tendons just ruptured. It just got stuck in the turf.”
The 5-foot-11 Davis crashed onto his back as the ball sailed overhead. When the trainer rolled up Davis’ pantlegs, it looked like he didn’t have kneecaps. Davis, a first-round pick five years earlier, was set to be a free agent after the season. His career — Davis led the run-heavy Bears in receiving yards the season prior — seemed to be trending in the right direction. And then it ended on an ordinary play in South Philly.
“One day you’re doing what you love to do as a professional,” Davis said. “The next day, you’re having surgery on both knees.”
It was no secret, Davis said, that The Vet’s turf was bad. There were seams to avoid from the baseball cutouts and “hollow spots” where it sounded different under your feet. Two weeks after Davis’ injury, Akron football coach Gerry Faust said the Vet’s turf was the worst he’s ever seen after two of his players suffered season-ending leg injuries without being touched.
A month later, the NFL inspected the playing surface and provided a list of fixes. Davis tried to return two years later with the Colts but never played another snap. He hired a lawyer but did not file a lawsuit.
“You had to really be able to prove that the spot that I hit caused the injury,” Davis said. “That was a very hard threshold to get over. I just said, ‘Don’t worry about it and I’ll move on.’ I had the privilege to play for seven years and I’m proud of that.”
Another victim
Evans was a part-time starter for the Eagles as he walked off the field after the Fog Bowl in December of 1988 with Jerome Brown and defensive coordinator Jeff Fisher. His second season ended with a playoff loss at Chicago and Fisher told the former fourth-round pick that the team needed more from him if the defense was going to work.
Evans committed himself that offseason to becoming the middle linebacker and earned a game ball after the Birds opened the next season with a 24-point win. His career took off from there. Evans was one of the league’s premier linebackers playing for one of the league’s most feared defenses.
He was playing like a Pro Bowler in 1993 when he broke his arm on Halloween against “the team from Texas,” as the career Eagle still can’t say his old rival’s name. Evans tried to lay a hit on Troy Aikman but the quarterback slid as Evans flew over top and fell hard onto The Vet’s turf. Evans missed the next five games with his arm in a cast.
Like the injury that ended his career a year later, Evans believes it would have been a different story on grass.
“It wouldn’t have happened,” he said. “I fell on my forearm and my forearm would’ve had a little bruise but I would’ve been good to go. My shoe would’ve had some give in it, my leg wouldn’t have stayed planted in it. But who knows?”
Evans overcame his first Vet injury, returned to form the next year, and was in talks with the Eagles on a long-term deal. He was set to be a free agent after the 1994 season. In October, he declined a four-year offer that would have paid him $1.7 million per year. Evans and his agent thought he was worth more and were prepared to test the market after the season.
Two weeks later, the 7-2 Eagles were hosting the 7-2 Browns. It was the type of game that should have been easy for Evans to get up for. But he seemed to be in a fog when he arrived at The Vet.
“I just couldn’t get into my rhythm like I usually could for some odd reason,” Evans said.
During the game, Evans said the ref threatened to eject him but he didn’t know why. It was just strange, perhaps another sign that something was up. When Eric Metcalf ran across the middle, Evans thought about hitting him but figured that would be the ref’s way to eject him. A few players later, his career was over when his cleat got stuck in the turf.
Evans, just like Davis a year earlier, was carted off the field. His mother was crying as she waited for him in the stadium tunnel. It was a gruesome injury, the Eagles didn’t win another game, and it cost Evans millions of dollars. Yet he found closure with it all.
“I have peace because I have peace with my spiritual maker,” said Evans, who is a pastor and high school football coach in Arizona. “I’ve been in 10,000 car crashes and that was the one I had to retire on. I just looked at it like it was time to do something else.”
The Eagles invited Evans in 2014 to be an honorary captain at Lincoln Financial Field, a decade after The Vet was demolished. He walked onto the grass field and told the current Eagles that he and the rest of Gang Green would still be playing if they had this luxury under their feet. Instead, his career ended across the street when The Vet’s turf claimed another victim.
“We’d be like Tom Brady and Brett Favre. We could’ve played forever,” Evans said. “Out of maybe 1,000 tackles I made over so many years and I never got hurt. It was a freak accident that came into play. I was blessed to play those years and be a part of what I was a part of.”
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Staff writer David Gambacorta contributed to this article.
