Catcher Gary Carter died today of brain cancer.
I only remember him because my mother went to school with him. I wish I still had her yearbooks.
I remember him because I was a die-hard Red Sox fan in New England, in college, in a dorm room with about 30 other people because it was the only one that had stolen cable, in that awful night in 1986.
Sad. He was a good guy.
It’s sad news. Though Carter spent most of his career with the Expos, he’s a hero to all Mets fans.
The news of his cancer was announced last year. It sounded like he was improving for a while, but a few weeks ago, bad news surfaced.
He was a great athlete.
I assume you’re talking about the famous Game 6. It was Carter who started the rally that eventually ended with Bill Buckner’s error. I’ll never forget seeing that unfold, especially since I was a Mets fan at the time.
What was it like to be a Red Sox fan watching that in New England surrounded by other Red Sox fans?
Like watching your friend get run over by a truck in slow motion.
As heroic as his exploits were with New York, he was better in Montreal.
Gary Carter was an amazing catcher. He could hit like a bastard, but holy moly, watching him play defense was an education for a young baseball fan like me. Carter could throw like nobody’s business, as that was important back then when there was more basestealing.
In 1983 Montreal opponents attempted 161 stolen bases and Carter got 75 of them, an astounding rate; that’s 20, 25 more outs than a GOOD defensive catcher would make. That’s a lot of baserunners taken out of commission. He did everything else well, too; blocked pitches, called games, played the position, did it as well as anyone. And he was underrated; that year he DIDN’T win the Gold Glove even though he was the best catcher in the league.
He was also a decent man, a gentleman, and it’s unfair such a nice man should be taken from us so soon. But that is life, and Gary Carter got a hell of a lot out of the time he had, and gave us some pretty awesome memories.
An interesting fact; Carter is the only player who ever hit two home runs in an All Star game and two home runs in a World Series game.
By many accounts, Carter’s basic decency made him a rarity on the 1986 Mets. A huge percentage of those guys were heavy dopers and more than a few were dangerous psychopaths (Kevin Mitchell was just the most obvious one). Carter was one of the only real Boy Scouts on the team, and he was widely mocked for it by teammates.
I remember him from one of the very few games I ever watched as a child. Is he a HOF member? If not, should he be?
He is.
Heartbreaking.
Seriously, there must have been 30 of us in that little room, and as soon as Carter scored, the room emptied without a word.
Yes to both questions. He was elected to the Hall in 1993, and he certainly deserved it. He should have been a first ballot selection.
Carter was one of the five best catchers in baseball history, IMHO. Baseball Reference ranks him as the 86th best player of all time, which would put him well into in the top half of Hall of Famers, so he’s not just qualified, but easily qualified.
Carter’s batting stats don’t look that spectacular in hindsight, but not only are they coming from a magnificent catcher but they’re coming from a time when there wasn’t as much hitting. His 1984 season, when he batted .294 with 27 homers and led the league in RBI (and how many catchers have ever done that?) was, when you consider context, more valuable than Mike Piazza’s 1999 season when he hit .303 with 40 homers.
Truly a shame. Great player, upstanding individual. I had him on my Strat-o-Matic baseball team for a number of years.
This is a bummer. I think if anyone had said that Carter would go before Darryl, Doc, and Keith, it would have seemed both implausible and cosmically unfair.
I remember him because I attended two of the playoff games here when the Mets beat the Astros in '86. I despised him, Ron Darling and the rest for what they did to us but grudgingly admired him for the talent and ability to do so.
Hell yeah, I’d liked to have had him on my team. Helluva player.
Impressive. Seems like he was a good person too. A sad loss at a very young age.
I will never forget the best play of the 1979 Baseball All Star Game. Eighth inning and the AL has a slight lead when Brian Downing, the catcher of the California Angels, attempts to score from second with two outs on a Graig Nettles single to the right fielder, (my favorite player of all time) Dave Parker. One of the better throws of his career, Parker guns the ball straight home blowing off the cutoff man. Montreal Expos catcher Gary Carter blocks the plate, makes a great catch and tags out the head-first sliding Downing with inches to spare to end the inning.