I came home late last night from a meeting and saw that Gary Carter had died. My first thoughts were about how much I thought he was the next best-in-the-game after J. Bench declined. By '79, the year I graduated from college, Carter was Bench's equal.
When I was a kid, Bench was always one of my favorites, maybe my one favorite who wasn't a Met. I'm sure that my being a Little League/Babe Ruth catcher had something to do with that. It was natural for me, then, to pass on that feeling for Carter. He became one of my two or three favorite players.
G. Carter was a warrior, in the sense of being a battling, tenacious, Mr. Dirt type of competitor on the field who put on the mask and chest protector nearly every day. But I always had the feeling that off the field he was indeed a hale fellow, well met. Carter's next to last year was Pudge Rodriguez's first. Bench to Carter to Pudge and you cover 1967-2012. It hasn't quite the ring of Tinkers to Evers to Chance but it certainly has a luster the other can't quite match. Doc, for those of us fortunate enough to be able to remember him, let's count our lucky stars that we got to watch "The Kid" play.
Godspeed, Gary Carter.
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We've been asked to lead many funerals. One of the most important questions you ponder, as you're getting your material together, is "Did this person lead the life that they wanted to lead?"
The greatest example of this in my experience was my wife's father. He was a roughneck in school, joined the Navy, saw the world, went to college, became an engineer for Boeing, took care of his money, parceled it out patriarchally, tolerated no disobedience or even disagreement, had the respect if not the extreme love of his family, owned nice cars and motorcycles, vacationed to inexpensive but friendly little fishing resorts, retired as a highly-appreciated consultant to Boeing, pursued his aviation hobbies, and died at 67 -- with absolutely zero regrets, except for the time of his departure.
He took 15-20 vitamin pills per day, his entire life, running circuits around his tile basement every morning before work. It didn't stave off the pancreatic cancer. Perhaps his working in the Minuteman silos had trumped the vitamins.
The key to my wife's comfort, then and now, was this realization. From cradle to grave, her dad had lived exactly the life that he wanted to live.
Gary Carter lived 57 years, and they were 57 years that 99% of American boys dreeeeeeeeeaam of living. Is that preferable to 75 years of a life that isn't the life you'd prefer to live? It's an interesting philosophical question, isn't it? Which lifetime would you take?
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=== Reaching the Peak ===
My favorite baseball player, for a long time, was Johnny Bench. I think it was 1978 or so when an aging Bench started the All-Star Game ahead of an upcoming Gary Carter, and when the Reds went to Montreal, Bench got booed lustily. "I'd boo me, too," said Bench graciously. They didn't have WAR back then, but Carter in his prime gave 7 or 8 of them a year to the Expos. The fans could sense WAR as well as we could calculate it...
I've always thought that if you were going to start a team with any one player, the very best one to start with would be a superstar catcher. It seems that almost all of the HOF catchers played on teams that won lots of pennants... I know, I know.
The 1976-1984 Expos put this pet Dr. D theory to a serious test. They deployed Carter behind the plate, getting his 7 WAR, and they had Andre Dawson in CF. They had a star in LF, that being Ellis Valentine, and they had Warren Cromartie playing 1B. Steve Rogers and Bill Gullickson were aces in the NL, or at least it seemed so then. They won exactly nothing.
James talks about the Edgar/Junior/Buhner Mariners as one of history's great underachievers; maybe the Carter/Dawson Expos are in the top ten also? It wasn't Edgar's fault, and it wasn't Gary Carter's fault.
By the way, Edgar had 66 WAR and Gary Carter had 66 WAR. Two completely different approaches to helping your ballclub win games, in the end balancing left and right like a tightrope walker's pole.
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Carter did spend his last five good years with the Mets, and won. He won 108 games and a World Series ring one year, and went to Game 7 of an NLCS in another year with 100 wins that time, and won 98 games in another year, and played meaningful September baseball the other two years.
Gary Carter was a mountain climber who eventually got to stand on the peak and take in the 360-degree panorama. He experienced the moment that his entire life had been spent to achieve. You think about the people, Chuck Knox, Ken Griffey, Charles Barkley, who worked all their lives to get to that moment and never experienced it. It didn't prove that they were men of inferior character. It was simply a dream not realized.
I'll never understand people who undervalue the last game of the season, who speak of the World Series as if it were one of ten or twelve possible priorities. The last game of the season, that is the moment that creates meaning for all the previous moments. Chuck Knox wrote, watching the finish of a Super Bowl, "I vowed right then, that if ever such a moment were mine, then...."
The idea of a "Bucket List" is too flippant. Ask it this way. What "sparkle moments" do you intend to see during your life? Gary Carter saw a lot of them. When our own "sparkle moments" get here, will we savor them they way we need to?
In 1995, the Mariners gave me two of them. One on Edgar's double, the other on that 20-minute standing ovation after they lost to the Indians.
Baseball doesn't have all that much value as a mathematical exercise. It has a lot of value as an emotional human endeavor, struggle and challenge, valor and skill. Baseball, seen as anything other than a pennant race, is without soul, flat and lifeless. Get Carlos Guillen in here.
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=== Your Turn In the Sun ===
Lonnie and Moe and I, having seen a couple of generations come and go now, do start to get our arms around this cyclical rise and fall of each generation. One follows the other. The rain runs down the mountain, and into the river, and into the ocean, and evaporates, and it rains onto the mountain again. Some guys were there for Yogi Berra, and then for Johnny Bench, and then for Gary Carter, and then for Mike Piazza, and now for Jesus Montero. Fifty years on, what will people write about Montero?
The Mariners' plan is to get Montero about 40 games behind the plate, it seems, to avoid capsizing his catching career. I like it. If Jesus Montero grows into the catching position, he offers the tantalizing possibility of giving the Mariners the single best building block towards a dynasty.
Comments
Great write-up Doc. Bravo.
As an aside - when I briefly dabbled in Sim-league baseball, I made Gary Carter the manager of my Tampa team that went from laughingstock to playoff team in only 4 sim seasons. I've always had a great appreciation for special catchers as well, and think they make the best managers.
...when I read that Carter had left us I openly cried. I did so not because of the unfairness that he was taken at such a young age, but because of the hole he will leave in humanity.
At one point last year I was thinking of Erasmo Ramirez, he of the infectious smile and boyish mannerisms, and thought; what a glorious place this world must be for him. It's funny how when I read about Carter and learn (or, more appropriately, relearn) about who he was I almost instantly make the connection with ER. I sure hope that regardless of how his baseball career goes that he maintains that aspect of his personality.
Lonnie
Great comments. Thank you all. It is one thing to talk about a guy's performance on the field, have appreciation and even awe. But to speak of a man who lived off the field with as much class as what he gave to baseball on that diamond is too rare. I know several men who knew Carter at different stages of his life and all spoke with respect of him. Well done Gary Carter. You shall be missed!