loanDepot vice president on swapping a career in the big leagues for the mortgage industry
For any pitcher who’s made it to The Show – and whose entire professional career has been geared toward producing elite performances under the bright lights in front of thousands of fans – deciding what comes next, after stepping off the mound for the final time, is no easy task.
Some choose to eke out a post-playing career inside baseball. Others struggle for years to find their calling outside the game. But for Bart Evans (pictured top), the journey to a high-profile role in the mortgage industry started out in the simplest way possible: a series of conversations with a golfing acquaintance who happened to own banks in the local area when Evans’ baseball career skidded to a halt.
A series of injuries had hindered Evans’ progress in the years following a promising 1998 season pitching relief for the Kansas City Royals, and the news at the turn of the millennium that he would never pitch again hit hard. Still, his time spent hitting the links during the off-seasons had planted the seeds for what would become a successful switch from the major leagues to the mortgage industry.
That businessman, Evans told Mortgage Professional America, was first to suggest a move to banking. “He would always say, ‘I love your personality. I want you to come work in the bank when you’re done’,” he recalled. “And I’d always be like, ‘Yeah, buddy. OK. I’m gonna play forever’. And I just happened to come out of my second surgery, and I’m in a sling at church, and he said, ‘Hey – you think we need to talk?’ I said, ‘Yeah’.”
Evans began a nine-month stint working essentially for free, he said, to take a crash course in banking and loan originating – and when he was finally released by the Detroit Tigers, his last team (he’d still been under contract despite his career-ending injury), he and his wife moved down to the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri so he could begin his first paid, full-time role at a small bank there.
Those times weren’t easy. “It was in the middle of nowhere. We were 30 minutes from a cup of milk,” he said. “I remember telling her, ‘If this is the best it gets after baseball, we’re in trouble’.”
But just then came another twist in the tale: Evans heard from a close friend suggesting he come work at a bank closer to the city and then, two weeks later, the president of that bank requested a meeting. One question from that executive, he said, paved the way for a new path. “‘Hey, how are your mortgage skills?’”
Embracing the mortgage industry after career curveball
Just like that, Evans was the new mortgage specialist at the bank, replacing his friend who’d decided to call it quits. While the learning curve was steep and the industry an unfamiliar one, Evans – an archcompetitor on the mound – found he relished the challenge. What’s more, the skills he honed in the major leagues proved of huge benefit as he charted his new path forward.
“I’m a people person,” he explained. “In baseball, you play with lots of different types of people; you play in different countries and all these other things, and you have to learn to adapt to wherever you’re at. In this business you have to be consistent, you have to be honest, you have to meet and know a lot of people.
“This is not really a sport, but I attack it each day like it is. But if you don’t make the people around you better, you’re failing and you’re failing them. I’m not perfect, but I’m a good communicator and I think a lot of that is from my career in sports. You have so many teammates – you can’t do it by yourself.”
Moving up to the mortgage big league
The next two decades took Evans to Houston and Sarasota, Florida, rising through the ranks as an area sales manager before switching to Movement Mortgage, where he served as market leader and then regional director, and onwards to Summit Funding as area manager.
After joining loanDepot last year, he was named in January as the company’s regional vice president, overseeing a Southeastern region including Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee.
That journey in the mortgage industry has coincided with plenty of market crises – not least the subprime meltdown of 2007-08 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. But while mortgage professionals have seen countless ups and downs during that spell, Evans once again pointed to the lessons learned during his ballplaying days as a crucial support in tough times.
Redfin reports the US housing market is slowing, with homes taking 54 days to sell, the longest in five years. High mortgage rates and prices are deterring buyers, but slight rate drops may spark activity. https://t.co/EmTmHB62t5
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) January 31, 2025
“Look at the Hall of Fame,” he said. “Who are the greatest hitters in the Hall of Fame? They hit .300. They failed seven out of 10 times. You face so much failure. I was a closer at the end of my career and the reason was that I could forget yesterday better than the rest of them.
“At the end of the day, you had to and have to get over what happened yesterday. I may give up two runs the day before and lose the game, but my job is to be the closer. So guess what happens when we’re up by a run the next day? I’m the guy there. And I already know my job.”
The loanDepot fit, he added, is the right one. “I’ve always liked the company. I’ve had a lot of friends that work here. I felt like it was a really good opportunity for me to work with a place that has top-notch technology, has a good reputation in the market,” he said.
“It’s kind of like playing with the Yankees: they have all the talent, they have the payroll, they have all this stuff. And that’s kind of where I felt like loanDepot was at. You work your whole career to get to where you feel like that upper echelon is. And I wasn’t gonna pass this opportunity up.”
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