A Twist of Fate for Evans : Raiders: It looks as if he will back up Schroeder against Broncos, but oh, what might have been.

As the Raider world turns, a 35-year-old, twice-retired quarterback, who hadn’t thrown a forward pass of significance in seven years before the one he threw last Sunday, is being mentioned as this week’s starter. It is a thought so inconceivable a few weeks ago that Vince Evans speaks in hushed tones of his fortune, as though it were a preordained act, not of this world.

Evans ties his comeback so much to fate that he cannot ignore the obstacles overcome, the former Notre Dame quarterback who dropped off the depth chart, the voices that kept telling Evans to push on, the visions he had in retirement of playing again in the Coliseum. Who else could it be but the Raiders? They didn’t move to Oakland in his vision.

There he was starring again in the Coliseum last Sunday. Scary.

The emotions had settled some by midweek, when Jay Schroeder tested a sprained left knee in practice and deemed himself fit for Sunday’s game against Denver. But for a brief time between Schroeder’s injury and the magnetic resonance imaging test results, Evans was the starting quarterback against the Broncos in a crucial game.

He has since been bumped to the on-deck circle, but Evans can still appreciate the view.

When the USFL folded in 1985, so did Evans, who was playing at the time for the Denver Gold. Seven years with the Chicago Bears after a Rose Bowl MVP performance at USC meant nothing. No one from the NFL called. Not for two years.

Evans’ career was saved by a labor dispute in 1987, a 24-day work stoppage orchestrated by NFL players and owners. Lucky break. The Raiders called, just the way Evans envisioned they would one day in church while singing a hymn.

Sure, they would call Evans a scab for crossing the picket line, but as a black quarterback in the NFL he had heard worse.

“It took a strike to get me back in,” Evans recalled this week. “I’m telling you. That was like a miracle in itself. And they (the Raiders) didn’t have to keep me. So there’s been little signs like that that have kept the spark going.”

The spark was almost extinguished too many times to remember. The Raiders held on to Evans after the strike, yet he rarely made it off the bench the next two seasons, and he was finally cast adrift last season.

Again, Evans thought about quitting.

“Many, many times,” he said. “You keep knocking your head up against the wall. You chisel away at that big rock, but it doesn’t seem like you’re making a dent in the thing. It gets frustrating, you know; you believe it’s going to rain, but you haven’t seen rain in a year. But something inside of me said, ‘Keep going, keep going.’ It might have been someone who called that said, ‘You still working out?’ or, ‘How things going?’ Or, ‘You’ve still got it.’ That would give me a sense of encouragement to go on another day. . . . I questioned myself a lot of times, but I just continued to go, because I believed that it wasn’t over.”

Evans needed another break. Another strike. Something. What he received was a summer holdout courtesy of Steve Beuerlein, last year’s starter. Evans stepped in to fill a temporary void, he thought, fully expecting another pink slip when Beuerlein returned. But when the Beuerlein holdout stretched into September, Evans was alive once more.

The events that have unfolded since are pure Raider drama: The banishment of Beuerlein to the sideline, the rise and fall of Schroeder’s efficiency rating. And there was Evans, sandwiched in between, an afterthought in a budding quarterback controversy that apparently did not involve him. When Schroeder started slumping, the clamorings were for Beuerlein, not Evans.

When the future of the Raiders was considered, it was Beuerlein over Evans.

No one solicited Evans for his opinions or reconsidered his skills until last Sunday, when Schroeder’s left knee was twisted against Kansas City and Evans was called in to bail out the Raiders. Not counting his USFL days and three strike games, Evans hadn’t been in a pressure position since 1983 with the Bears, when he was asked on occasion to relieve the oft-injured Jim McMahon.

Seven years between big plays is a lot, yet Evans coolly led the Raiders downfield, needing only four plays--three runs and one 36-yard completion--to get his team into the end zone and cut the deficit to 27-24.

Had the Raider defense been able to get him the ball back, who knows what kind of story Evans might have scripted?

Evans doesn’t mind that he is more or less ignored as the Raiders’ long-term answer, nor is he annoyed that Beuerlein is still considered the real No. 2 in some minds.

“I’m not offended by that,” Evans said. “I’m really excited for the opportunity I have to be on this football team, to be in a position like I was in this past Sunday, when Jay went down and I was the one called to go in the game, and to do what I think are productive things. I can’t control what people talk about.”

Evans has steered clear of a tangled web, pursuing his own course back from nowhere. That he will be first man off the bench Sunday if Schroeder’s knee falters is enough to make Evans realize how far he has come.

“When the Raiders called, they said, ‘We want you to be in training camp, basically to be security for Jay and Steve,’ ” Evans said. “So with that perspective in mind and seeing where I am today, of course I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.”

Evans sees his place and purpose in a larger scope. He considers himself an anachronism, but no less an inspiration, in an era when patience and perseverance are not necessarily virtues.

“It’s so very important, I think, not only in my occupation, but in life,” Evans said. “Not to be too philosophical, but I think we’re in an age right now where, as I see the younger generation, I see instantaneous success. Everything’s instant. Microwave coffee, sex, everything. That was the ‘80s and it’s the ‘90s, too.

“My mother and father taught me about paying dues, working hard, keeping your hand to the plow, not looking back, being patient--those kinds of things. I think that’s a fundamental principle. Because things don’t always go the way we think they should.

“It’s not that they’re not going to happen, it’s that we give up on our dreams too quickly.”