Twenty years ago today, Lee Stevens answered the phone in the kitchen of the family home in northwest Lawrence.

A representative of the California Angels called to tell Stevens, only days removed from his Lawrence High graduation, that he had been one of the team’s first-round draft selections.

“That was a big day for me,” Stevens reflected the other day. “I was excited. I didn’t expect to go in the first round. I was more surprised about where I went than who picked me.”

Over the next 17 years, Stevens would swing a baseball bat thousands upon thousands of times. He would play in 1,012 major-league games and hit 144 home runs as an outfielder and first baseman.

“Looking back, I was not an All-Star, and I’m not going to the Hall of Fame,” Stevens said, “but I had a long, great career.”

Stevens’ career ended April 30, 2003. He was playing for the Indianapolis Indians, a minor-league team, after he had been cut by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in spring training.

“I kind of knew I was done after I got cut,” Stevens said, “but I didn’t want to go home and retire. I wanted to walk off with my uniform on.”

Thus, three weeks into the Indianapolis season, Stevens announced his retirement. He left pro baseball for good at the age of 35 and has been living a life of relaxation in suburban Denver ever since.

Some estimates place Stevens’ baseball earnings at more than $15 million, and that doesn’t include the two years (1994-95) he toiled in Japan. In other words, Stevens doesn’t have to work for a living.

“I don’t have an extravagant lifestyle,” Stevens told me. “I wouldn’t have to get off the couch if I didn’t want to : but I will. I made a nice living. Everything I have in my life is because of baseball.”

As you would expect, Stevens will be interested in today’s free-agent baseball draft, but not so much for which players are selected but how those selectees react.

“It freaks me out,” Stevens said. “Some of those kids not signing because they don’t think they’re getting enough bonus money. I was ready to go wherever it was. I just wanted to play.”

For the record, Stevens received an $80,000 bonus from the Angels. About half of that money went for taxes, he says, yet he still had plenty of money to purchase a fancy new car. What did he buy? A used Honda Prelude.

“That’s me, Mr. Frugal : thinking about gas mileage,” Stevens quipped.

One more thing, and it’s an oddity. Stevens may never make baseball’s Hall of Fame, but his Montreal Expos’ uniform is in the Pro Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

Here’s the explanation: When former Montreal Canadiens great Maurice Richard died, the Expos wore a No. 9 patch – Richard’s number – to honor him. Since it was unusual for one sport to honor another, the hockey shrine wanted an Expos uniform included in the Richard exhibit and, since Stevens wore No. 9 with the Expos, his jersey was selected.

Curiously, while growing up in Olathe – his family moved here when he was a seventh grader – Stevens was deeply involved in youth hockey.

“The irony of it,” Stevens said, “is that when I was a kid, I thought hockey is what I would do.”

But baseball is what he did, and he did it well.