And on the far right, barely in the shot, stood former New York Mets pitcher Ron Darling, holding a sign that said, “I stand up for my catcher.”
It took a split-second to completely grasp the message, but when it finally landed, your chest suddenly tightened because the reality was so clear: Gary Carter was dying.
“The Kid,” the 11-time all-star catcher who never failed to bring total enthusiasm and joy to a baseball field in his entire life. Carter was the first truly great player for the Montreal Expos — the team that spawned the Washington Nationals — and he was the heart and soul of the 1986 Mets team that won one of the most memorable World Series in baseball history.
The Hall of Famer died Thursday at age 57, nine months after being diagnosed with brain cancer. When the news broke last spring that Carter had tumors on his brain and that the prognosis was about as bad as it could get, there was an overwhelming sadness among baseball people. But there was also a sense that if anybody could beat an unbeatable disease, it would be The Kid, because that’s who he was his entire life.
“He was one of the great gladiators of the game,” Darling said Thursday evening after the news of Carter’s death broke, an apt choice of words from the Yale graduate, because gladiators also faced almost unbeatable odds.
With two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Carter came to bat with no one on and the Mets trailing the Boston Red Sox, 5-3, and three games to two.
Any baseball fan knows what happened after Carter’s single gave the Mets a ray of hope: Kevin Mitchell singled; Ray Knight singled to score Carter; Bob Stanley wild-pitched Mitchell across the plate to tie the score; and Mookie Wilson hit his fateful roller that went through Bill Buckner’s legs.
Among the many indelible images of that night is one of Carter crossing the plate to make it 5-4, clapping his hands wildly and pointing at Wilson as if to say, “Your turn, buddy.”
Carter played 19 seasons in the major leagues with the Expos, Mets, Giants, Dodgers and finally, in 1992, a farewell season with the Expos. He was 38 by then and all the years of catching had left him a shell of the player he had been, but his enthusiasm hadn’t faded. On a night in Montreal when he had made a key error late in the game that had led to an Expos loss, he stood in front of his locker for a good 30 minutes talking about dealing with not being the player he once had been.
Loading...
Comments