Baseball Hall of Famer Gary Carter dies

Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter died Thursday after a battle with brain cancer. He was 57.

Affectionately known as the “Kid” during his 19-season major league career, Carter was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2003, his sixth year on the ballot.

Carter was a career .262 hitter with 324 homers and 1,225 RBIs. He hit at least 20 homers in nine seasons and topped 100 RBIs four times, leading the National League in that category in 1984 when he drove in 106 runs.

Among catchers, Carter ranks third all-time in RBIs and games caught, and fifth homers and runs scored.

He was an 11-time All-Star, a three-time Gold Glove winner and a five-time Silver Slugger. Additionally he was named to the Sporting News NL All-Star team six times.

Carter was named the MVP of the 1981 and 1984 All-Star Games, and he was the starting catcher for the 1986 World Series champion New York Mets. In the team’s famous comeback in Game 6 of that World Series against the Boston Red Sox, it was Carter’s two-out hit that ignited the improbable rally and resulted in a come-from-behind 6-5 victory.

Carter was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive, fast-moving brain cancer, in May. About a week before the diagnosis, four small tumors were found on his brain after Carter had complained of experiencing confusion and fatigue.

Since that diagnosis, Carter’s family has maintained a blog, which they used to update the public on the Hall of Famer’s condition. On Jan. 21, Carter’s children accepted the Milton and Arthur Richman “You Gotta Have Heart” award for their father at the Baseball Writers of America awards dinner in New York. Those in attendance gave Carter’s two daughters and one son a lengthy standing ovation when they stepped on the stage.

“I'll be telling my Dad about that standing ‘O.’ He likes that a lot,” Kimmy Bloemers, Carter’s daughter told the audience, according to the New York Daily News.

Carter’s son, D.J., then read a statement prepared by his father: “I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the people and city of New York. I’ll never forget my first game in a Mets uniform on opening day in 1985 when I had the fortune of leading our team to victory over the St. Louis Cardinals with a 10th-inning walkoff home run. I still remember the feeling of riding in the World Series parade with over one million people lining the streets to celebrate our championship. I’ve always strived to put my heart and soul into everything I’ve done in my life. I want to wish all of you the very, very best and hope that the Mets win many more World Series championships.”

In mid-January, Carter’s doctors announced they had found new tumors on his brain. At that time, his family announced that his condition had taken a turn for the worse.

Carter was a third-round pick by the Montreal Expos in 1972 and made his major league debut in 1974. He was traded to the Mets prior to the 1985 season and played one season with the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers before finishing his career with the Expos in 1992.

The Sox totally would have won game 7 if John McNamara had started Boyd instead of going back to Bruce Hurst on short rest!

Not necessarily.

* For one thing, the Mets literally played kick the can against Boyd in Boston, in Game Three. It only began in the top of the first, when Len Dykstra hit a 1-1 pitch over the right field fence, Gary Carter swatted an RBI double (still nobody out), and Danny Heep (the Mets' DH in the AL park) hit a two-out, two-run single to open 4-0.

* For another, Bruce Hurst wasn't on short rest---he'd pitched Game Five in Boston on a Thursday, the following day was an off/travel day, and the originally scheduled Sunday Game Seven was rained out, moving the game to a Monday and thus enabling both McNamara and Davey Johnson to use their best postseason starters, Hurst and Ron Darling (who'd pitched almost as well as Hurst in Game One and beat surprise starter Al Nipper in Game Four, in Boston), on near-regular rest.

McNamara made quite a number of mistakes in that Series, as did Johnson, but there were reasons why he lost confidence in Boyd in that Series. Boyd may have thrown zeroes from the second through two-thirds of the seventh (Gary Carter drove in the Mets' fifth and sixth runs with a single but got thrown out trying to advance as Dykstra was scoring the second of the two to end the inning), but the Mets made contact outs on all but three at-bats in their entire turn with Boyd and hit their balls hard enough that McNamara, weighing that with the first inning, feared Boyd had less than his best stuff while the Mets were reading him too well.

So if you get the opportunity with the extra day of rest, you go with your best Series starter one more time. Hurst had his best stuff that night and the Mets simply figured out how to hit him just enough to make it count when they needed it the most. And, of course, once they were in that Boston bullpen it was no contest.

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