Dwight Evans

STATE REP. DWIGHT Evans offers no apologies. Not for any of it. Not for his 30-year effort to revitalize Ogontz Avenue in West Oak Lane. Not for the last decade trying to make Stenton Avenue a corridor of top-notch education choices, with Martin Luther King High School the centerpiece. Not for the "bulldog-on-a-bone" way he lobbied for an educational nonprofit, Foundations Inc., to take control of that school, including backroom pressure that has now cast him as a big-time bully.

He missed the impossible dream season of 1967. He's seen the rest of it, all the details, live and in color. Just 20 years old, fresh off a .300 season at Louisville, Dwight Evans came to Boston for the final 18 games of a pennant race that fell a half-game short of the American League East champion Detroit Tigers in 1972. It was one of those strike-shortened seasons where not every team played the same amount of games. Only Boston could lose by a half-game. And the Red Sox were just warming up for the baseball generation that would take them into the '90s, into the AL Championship Series again, starting tomorrow night against the defending world champion Oakland Athletics at Fenway Park (Channel 10, 8:30)

There is no shortage of awful, terrible Philadelphia stories to be told following last week's release of the report by the city's chief integrity officer, Joan Markman, on the Martin Luther King High School fiasco. You have the sordid details of backroom bullying, with an esteemed chair of the school board and a veteran legislator taking turns explaining to out-of-town charter-school operator Mosaica that things are different in Philadelphia and maybe he'd be better off leaving town.

A bombshell report by the Nutter administration on the backroom political dealings of State Rep. Dwight Evans and former School Reform Commission Chairman Robert L. Archie Jr. over a school contract fell flat Friday with City Council members, who called the men's behavior the stuff of everyday politics in Philadelphia. Several Council members defended Evans for advocating for a New Jersey nonprofit to receive a charter school contract even after the SRC had voted to award it to another company.

There are a few teams in sports that reach only for the sky. The Oakland Athletics of 1988 are one of them. They assembled in Phoenix in the final week of February. On the very first day of spring training, they sat down together and talked about where they were heading. They never were interested in merely winning their division. They never were interested in merely getting to the World Series and then saying they were just happy to be there. They were born to be great.

What do the French say? That there is no whine that can't be corked? That a World Series without controversy is like a day without sunshine? "That ball (Len) Dykstra hit carried back toward centerfield," Dwight Evans said, after the Mets squared the World Series at 2-2, beating the feeble Red Sox, 6-2. "And it went a little further than it should have. They oughta check that kid's bat. And a couple of others too. " Evans was serious. And in a minority. Gary Carter hit two homers to leftfield, helped on their way by a brisk wind.

Managing a large urban school district may be the hardest job going. These are people's children, and the stakes are enormous. The quality of their education, or lack thereof, becomes the groundwork for the city's future. Even as enrollment dwindles, the Philadelphia School District's problems appear to mutate daily. The latest controversy involves Martin Luther King High School in East Germantown. King's School Advisory Committee (SAC) deliberated weeks before overwhelmingly approving the Atlanta-based Mosaica Turnaround Partners Inc. to operate the institution as a charter.

In City Hall, only one cabinet member works next door to Mayor Nutter: Chief Integrity Officer Joan Markman. Her spot at the left hand of Philadelphia's mayor is symbolic. Markman was a lead prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's "bug" investigation of Mayor John F. Street's City Hall. By placing her office so close to his, Nutter signaled that city employees would have to behave. On Thursday, Markman, at Nutter's request, extended her reach to two of the mayor's own allies: State Rep. Dwight Evans and Robert L. Archie Jr., former chairman of the School Reform Commission.

The drama has been nonexistent. The number of memorable plays can be counted on one hand. The home-crowd electricity has been short-circuited. The first four games of the 1986 World Series won't be etched forever on people's memories. In fact, people probably will quickly erase these games from their VCRs. But from the ennui of four forgettable games comes a big picture that shows a strange Series in the midst of unfolding. After four games, the home teams have neither won nor even led. And as a result, the New York Mets have poked their heads out of a 2-0 hole to find themselves tied in the Series.

We have this hot advice for everyone out there who nodded off a few weeks ago while contemplating the exciting race in the AL East: Wake up, folks. It's getting interesting. It's getting interesting because the Boston Red Sox are finding out what everyone who has ever rooted for them knows all too well: That about as many pennants are won in July as there are bikinis worn in December. Eight times in the last 14 years, the Red Sox have found themselves in first place in the month of July.

The Northwest Philadelphia nonprofit founded by State Rep. Dwight Evans misspent or mismanaged portions of state grants worth $12 million since 2006, violated bid rules, and made questionable real estate purchases with taxpayer funds, according to a state investigation. In one two-year span, the Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corporation reported spending $111,000 in state money just to promote "Wine Down Wednesdays," a weekly after-work party at a restaurant where it had a financial stake, investigators found.

The West Oak Lane Jazz and Arts Festival, which received millions in state funding over nearly a decade with the help of Democratic State Rep. Dwight Evans, will not take place this year, organizers said Tuesday. The festival, which over the years featured such performers as Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau, began in 2003. It came under scrutiny after a 2010 Inquirer article questioned whether organizers inflated crowd estimates to improve chances for state funding. For 2012, the state decided not to give the three-day festival any money.

STATE REP. DWIGHT Evans offers no apologies. Not for any of it. Not for his 30-year effort to revitalize Ogontz Avenue in West Oak Lane. Not for the last decade trying to make Stenton Avenue a corridor of top-notch education choices, with Martin Luther King High School the centerpiece. Not for the "bulldog-on-a-bone" way he lobbied for an educational nonprofit, Foundations Inc., to take control of that school, including backroom pressure that has now cast him as a big-time bully.

There is no shortage of awful, terrible Philadelphia stories to be told following last week's release of the report by the city's chief integrity officer, Joan Markman, on the Martin Luther King High School fiasco. You have the sordid details of backroom bullying, with an esteemed chair of the school board and a veteran legislator taking turns explaining to out-of-town charter-school operator Mosaica that things are different in Philadelphia and maybe he'd be better off leaving town.

A bombshell report by the Nutter administration on the backroom political dealings of State Rep. Dwight Evans and former School Reform Commission Chairman Robert L. Archie Jr. over a school contract fell flat Friday with City Council members, who called the men's behavior the stuff of everyday politics in Philadelphia. Several Council members defended Evans for advocating for a New Jersey nonprofit to receive a charter school contract even after the SRC had voted to award it to another company.

In City Hall, only one cabinet member works next door to Mayor Nutter: Chief Integrity Officer Joan Markman. Her spot at the left hand of Philadelphia's mayor is symbolic. Markman was a lead prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's "bug" investigation of Mayor John F. Street's City Hall. By placing her office so close to his, Nutter signaled that city employees would have to behave. On Thursday, Markman, at Nutter's request, extended her reach to two of the mayor's own allies: State Rep. Dwight Evans and Robert L. Archie Jr., former chairman of the School Reform Commission.

Managing a large urban school district may be the hardest job going. These are people's children, and the stakes are enormous. The quality of their education, or lack thereof, becomes the groundwork for the city's future. Even as enrollment dwindles, the Philadelphia School District's problems appear to mutate daily. The latest controversy involves Martin Luther King High School in East Germantown. King's School Advisory Committee (SAC) deliberated weeks before overwhelmingly approving the Atlanta-based Mosaica Turnaround Partners Inc. to operate the institution as a charter.

RE COUNCILWOMAN Marian Tasco's op-ed, "Dwight Evans' 'Friends & Cronies' are Really Just Us," a touching tale about her visit to the Fresh Grocer in Germantown: I don't make any excuses about why I voted against Evans, I was up front about it, and I'll state it again: I voted against Evans because he cut funding in my district. As to Tasco's assertion that Evans got $1 million for the Maria Santos Medical Office, you've been sadly misinformed. Gov. Rendell was the one who helped me secure the $1 million for my district.

I T REALLY RUBS me the wrong way when small-minded politicians cut off their noses and end up spiting not only their own faces - but ours, too. The recent reversal of fortune for state Rep. Dwight Evans of West Oak Lane as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee at the hands of at least two local Democrats is bad for the entire city. There was a time when I wouldn't set foot - or car - in West Oak Lane. Especially Ogontz Avenue, where pothole-filled streets were hazardous to any set of wheels.

Among those not mourning the fall of State Rep. Dwight Evans from his post as Democratic House Appropriations Committee chairman is electricians union chief John J. Dougherty. Dougherty, a.k.a. Johnny Doc, told "Heard in the Hall" that he was only "watching from afar" when Evans lost his post as the committee's ranking Democrat, which he had held for 20 years. But sources say just because Dougherty was far from Harrisburg doesn't mean his cell phone wasn't on fire. Over the summer, Dougherty had a blowup with Ahmeenah Young, president and chief executive officer of the Convention Center and a close Evans ally, over work rules and the division of labor among trade unions at the expanded Convention Center.