My Gary Carter Story

I’d like to say it was 1982, but don’t hold me to it.

I was around 10 and went to a baseball card convention at a hotel in Manhattan where Gary Carter was appearing and signing autographs.

We paid to get in and when we found the table where Carter was sitting, I walked over and handed my baseball cards to him. He smiled. He signed one, he signed two…and the guy sitting next to him asked in the general direction of me and my dad, “Where’re your tickets?”

In addition to the entrance fee, apparently there were blue tickets we had to buy to get the autographs.

I replied with my patented bewildered look of staring straight ahead as if the person speaking had just arrived from Neptune.

Thirty years later, not much has changed.

My dad asked, “What tickets?”

He was just as clueless as I was (am).

I had another card to sign but Carter, ever friendly, shrugged, pursed his lips and shook his head saying, “Sorry pardner.”

But he’d already signed the two cards below. We thanked him and left.

Carter, along with Al Leiter, are the two nicest ballplayers I’ve ever come across.

You can tell when the kindness is genuine and with Carter it was.

As a player, he had a reputation for self-promotion and always knowing where the camera was; that his hustle was sometimes done for the sake of perception, image and salesmanship.

When Pete Rose did it, it was okay because he also ran around, chased women and was one of the guys.

Carter was religious and straitlaced, so it wasn’t done in the context to selling himself while still maintaining the tribal acceptance. It was an end unto itself. That’s just the way he was. At least he wasn’t a hypocrite. His teammates probably would’ve liked him better if he had been.

He was called “The Kid” by fans and media because of the unbridled enthusiasm he brought to the field and that he was polite and accommodating with those same fans and media. But from certain teammates came the derogatory nicknames, “Teeth” and “Camera Carter”.

Carter was a self-promoter, but so are many players. Some are reviled like Curt Schilling; others are chuckled at like Brian Wilson.

Is it because Carter was a born again Christian, that Schilling is a conservative republican and that Wilson is just a guy with a thick beard who’s clearly goofing around?

Probably.

But what’s the difference?

With many players, interacting with fans at card shows is a necessary chore for extra cash they can shove in their pockets without notifying the federal government. Some of those players who were derisive of Carter did exactly that and worse, acting like they were doing a favor by chitchatting with the people who are essentially paying their salaries and being nice to a kid to give him or her a lasting memory.

With Carter, it wasn’t like that.

He was a truly nice man and giving human being. Baseball and the world are a worse place without him.

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2011 Feels More 1975 Than 1986 And The Rangers Will Win

Post-game note: Naturally, hours after I wrote this the Cardinals beat the Rangers to win the World Series. Even with that, the following is an interesting bit on the 1975 and 1986 World Series along with proof that even the most brilliant of us can be wrong; or the most idiotic can be right. Where I fall in there is yet to be determined. Probably both.

Two of the most dramatic game sixes in World Series history happened in 1975 and 1986.

Last night, 2011 joined those two great series in memorable worthiness.

Carlton Fisk‘s “body english” dance down the first base line as he willed his long drive off of Reds righty Pat Darcy off the foul pole just above the Green Monster in Fenway Park has become one of the enduring images and stories in the history of baseball.

But there was an even more dramatic and important moment earlier in that game as pinch hitter Bernie Carbo homered with two outs and two on in the bottom of the eighth inning to tie the score.

In 1986, the Mets dramatic comeback from two runs down with two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the tenth inning against the Red Sox culminated with Mookie Wilson‘s ground ball dribbling through Bill Buckner‘s legs as Ray Knight scored the winning run.

In 1975, the Reds came back the next night and beat the Red Sox 4-3. After leading 3-0 into the sixth inning, Tony Perez hit a two-run homer off a super-slow curveball from Red Sox lefty Bill Lee to make it 3-2; Pete Rose singled to tie the score in the seventh; and the Reds took the lead in the ninth on Joe Morgan‘s bloop hit to center field.  Carl Yastrzemski flew out to Cesar Geronimo in center field as the Reds finally whacked the albatross of unmet expectations off their backs; Reds pitcher Will McEnaney repeatedly leaped into the air, spinning his arms in joy as the ball descended into Geronimo’s glove and celebrated in Fenway Park.

1986’s game 7 saw the Red Sox jump out to a 3-0, second inning lead as well on back-to-back homers by Dwight Evans and Rich Gedman. Sid Fernandez relieved Ron Darling for the Mets and electrified the crowd, striking out four in 2 1/3 innings without allowing a hit. The game was quieted down sufficiently with Fernandez’s performance to set the stage for a comeback; the Mets rallied in the bottom of the sixth to tie the score. Knight homered off of Calvin Schiraldi to lead off the bottom of the seventh; the Mets scored two more runs to extend the lead to 6-3; the Red Sox scored twice in the top of the eighth; Darryl Strawberry hit a two-run shot in the bottom of the inning to make it 8-5. Jesse Orosco struck out Marty Barrett to end the series, then flung his glove into space in a memory that will forever be entrenched in the minds of Mets fans.

There are similarities to both series for both teams playing their game 7 tonight.

The Cardinals win in game 6 was more reminiscent of the Red Sox win in 1975 than that of the Mets in 1986; last night’s game had so many twists, turns and comebacks that the only way it could end was on a walk-off homer.

But as dramatic as the Fisk homer was, people tend to forget that the Reds finally validated their place in history the next night.

After having lost in the World Series in 1970 and 1972; being bounced in the playoffs by the supposedly inferior Mets in 1973, the joke was that the Big Red Machine was equipped with a choke.

The Rangers are in a similar position as those Reds. They blew a game and championship they thought they’d already won a year after losing in the World Series; they thought they’d still be celebrating and now need to come back, play another game and win to prove that their back-to-back American League championships aren’t worthless; that the well-rounded team they’ve constructed isn’t going to go down as a disappointment that falls apart in the big moments.

Before those championships, the Reds stars—Rose, Morgan, Perez and Johnny Bench—hadn’t won anything in a team sense.

The Rangers stars—Adrian Beltre, Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz—are looking for similar validation.

These Rangers rely on a decent starting rotation and ultra-deep bullpen always on call; so did those Sparky Anderson-managed Reds.

There was a sense of foreboding hovering around the 1986 Red Sox from such a devastating defeat and constant reminder of how something always seemed to go wrong to ruin whatever chance they had at finally breaking The Curse. They were destined to lose and they did.

As resilient as the 2011 Cardinals have been, they haven’t played particularly well this series—in fact, they’ve been horribly outplayed. The should’ve lost last night.

The Rangers are starting Matt Harrison tonight with C.J. Wilson on call in the bullpen set to play the Sid Fernandez-role if Harrison gets into trouble. There’s a decided on-paper disadvantage on the mound with Chris Carpenter pitching for the Cardinals.

But that won’t matter.

With that gut-wrenching loss behind them and their ability to overcome drama, on field and off, the Rangers are tougher than they’re given credit for; I don’t get the sense that the Cardinals are a team of destiny like the 1986 Mets.

And that’s why the Rangers are going to win tonight and make game 6 a dramatic and exciting footnote rather than a turning point to an unexpected championship.

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Paul Konerko As Player-Manager Could Not Have Worked

Before hiring Robin Ventura, White Sox GM Kenny Williams said he considered Paul Konerko as player-manager—Chicago Tribune Story.

It would’ve been great theatre for the White Sox and baseball in general, but the chances of it working out well were nearly non-existent.

The last player-manager was Pete Rose and he actually handled it effectively in 1984-1985; but by 1986, he was still writing his own name in the lineup semi-regularly when he shouldn’t have been.

Prior to that, Don Kessinger managed the White Sox in 1979 as an active player, resigned as manager and was replaced by Tony LaRussa in early August and retired as a player the same day. I doubt these were his decisions.

Joe Torre stepped right off the field and into the manager’s seat for the Mets in 1977 while he was still on the roster, but he didn’t play very much after that.

Rose, Kessinger and Torre were at the end of the line in their careers; Konerko is still an MVP-caliber player who’s got $25.5 million remaining on his contract through 2013.

If you combine the pressure Konerko would be under as the star player on a team with onerous contracts and expectations to win, along with the relentless attention from the media and fans and the news cycle being so explosive in today’s atmosphere, there’s no way it would succeed.

If he was slumping, what would he do? Bench himself? Is he supposed to say, “I can’t bench me because I’m one of the highest paid players on the team with a history of massive production”?

Athletes have a very high opinion of themselves. Even the most thoughtful and reasonable have to be told that they’re done before realizing it; this is independent of how respected and mature they are. For Konerko to do both jobs and do them correctly would take a level of objectivity and rationality that no human being could achieve.

Ozzie Guillen was a pal to many of the players, playing cards and socializing with them and it worked for the most part; but for an active player to be an important participant in the group dynamic and their boss? Impossible.

A player-manager can only work if the player is closing in on his final days, and Konerko is still a top-tier player.

It would’ve been entertaining and typical of Williams to do something so far outside the box that it belonged in Doc Brown’s DeLorean and ended up in 1937, but it was a fleeting idea that they—the White Sox, Williams and Konerko—are lucky was only that, an idea.

They may not do much better with Robin Ventura as manager than they would’ve with Konerko, but it’s better this way for Konerko’s sanity as much as anything else.

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Jose Reyes Does What Baseball Players Do Sometimes…Especially Late In The Season

Players have pulled themselves out of games in the interests of individual pursuits forever.

They’ve adjusted their competitiveness to be part of history.

They’ve been placed in different parts of the lineup.

They’ve bunted.

They’ve swung at pitches that were clearly out of the strike zone to get extra swings to achieve goals.

They’ve gone for doubles and triples to complete cycles.

They’ve done it all.

Baseball is an individual sport within a team concept.

There are 162 games in a baseball season and rules as to how many innings and plate appearances are necessary for players to be eligible for ERA and batting titles.

Do you really believe that as the season winds down that players are concerned—first and foremost—with winning?

No. They want to pad their stats and they do it intentionally.

Today Jose Reyes of the Mets went up to the plate leading the National League in batting over the Brewers Ryan Braun. (I’m not looking up the percentage points because, truth be told, I couldn’t care less about the batting title); Reyes had told Mets manager Terry Collins beforehand that if he got a hit, he wanted to come out of the game.

Then he bunted for a hit.

Then Collins took him out of the game.

Collins and Reyes admitted as such after-the-fact, in a matter-of-fact fashion.

Before this information was revealed, two of the most absurd places for the dissemination of fact on this or any other planet in the universe—Twitter and Michael Kay—went on abusive rants against the Mets as if they were the one perpetrating this act on an unsuspecting public waiting for aboveboard and fair victors in the all-important batting race.

Naturally, no one retracted their statements when the truth came out.

It was still the fault of the Mets somehow even if it wasn’t.

Never mind that Bernie Williams won a batting title in 1998 after starting the day tied with Mo Vaughn of the Red Sox and when Williams went 2 for 2 with a sacrifice fly, he was pulled.

Never mind that players like Bill Madlock won batting titles after taking themselves out of games to achieve that end.

Pete Rose bunted for a hit to win the batting title over Roberto Clemente.

Denny McLain threw a room service meatball to Mickey Mantle for Mantle to hit his 535th career homer because McLain wanted to be part of history; in fact, he asked Mantle where he wanted the pitch and Mantle obliged by telling him.

The St. Louis Browns let Napoleon Lajoie bunt to his heart’s content in an attempt to take the batting title away from the reviled Ty Cobb.

Reyes played in 126 games this season; George Brett played in 117 in the year he hit .390 and nearly hit .400.

Does the fact that Reyes pulled himself from a game to try and win the title and was injured with hamstring problems twice in 2011 “ruin” a title that few really pay attention to anymore? Does the fact that Brett was oft-injured as well somehow equate into the batting title needing to be put in a negative frame of reference in terms of competition?

When Roger Maris was chasing Babe Ruth‘s home run record, it was decreed that there would be two separate records, one for the 154 game schedule and the other for the 162 game schedule. Incredulous, Maris asked something to the tune of, “Which 154? The first 154? The last? The middle?”

The batting title is a resume builder; it’s an award; and it’s relatively meaningless.

This reaction is based on Mets hatred and the attempt to cast a negative light on a baseball player like Jose Reyes who looked to increase his own status with an “award”.

If you don’t know this or can’t handle it, you shouldn’t be talking about it in such a judgmental, holier-than-thou way.

They’re baseball players.

This is what they do.

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The Son To The Father

It’s not uncommon for a spy to be sent in to a situation to assess and report.

Could that be the case with Eduardo Perez taking over as the new Marlins hitting coach?

Could it be that notoriously impatient owner Jeffrey Loria is thinking of making a managerial change and wants to know what’s going on in the clubhouse before pulling the trigger?

That perhaps the insertion of Eduardo Perez is a signal that Marlins special assistant to team president David Samson, Hall of Famer and former Marlins manager himself Tony Perez might be in line to take over for Edwin Rodriguez if the team continues to stumble?

While a bit too conservative for my tastes, Rodriguez has done a fine job with the Marlins since he took over for Fredi Gonzalez a year ago; the players seem to like and respect him; he has a quiet, understated and professional way about him and this team has been overrated repeatedly by the owner.

Rodriguez is working under a 1-year contract.

The Marlins have glaring flaws that can’t be covered by the hiring of a new manager, but that appears to be where things are headed with the essentially meaningless, warning shot firing of hitting coach John Mallee in favor or Eduardo Perez.

The hitting coach is only doled credit when things go well, blame when they don’t; in reality and unlike the pitching coach, the hitters take what they want from the disseminated advice and use it when it suits them. For the most part, it’s cosmetic.

The Marlins have never shied away from making managerial changes. In the case of Gonzalez, it was ridiculous to fire him considering the job he’d done; in fact, it appeared that Loria was taking sides with his star player and prodigal son Hanley Ramirez over Gonzalez even though Ramirez was disciplined by Tony Perez and Andre Dawson for lazy, selfish play and power-mad arrogance.

Loria fired Joe Girardi because of purported insubordination and he fired his close friend Jeff Torborg and replaced him with Jack McKeon.

The Torborg/McKeon change is relevant in this case.

On May 10th 2003, the Marlins were floundering at 16-22 and in 4th place in the NL East; 9 games out of first place and 7 games from the Wild Card lead.

Loria fired Torborg and replaced him with the savvy, cigar-chomping 72-year-old veteran baseball lifer (and part of the Marlins front office at the time), McKeon. The team went on a tear, won the Wild Card and eventually the World Series over the heavily favored Yankees.

Tony Perez is 69. A widely respected baseball man, he’s part of the Marlins front office; managed the club in 2001 and there’s long been the perception that he’d have liked to give it a legitimate try and not be a caretaker.

In a Cincinnati Reds, Big Red Machine clubhouse that housed Johnny Bench, Pete Rose and Joe Morgan the true leader was the understated Tony Perez.

Given the way the Marlins have done business in the past, there’s a precedent for a move of this kind.

I had speculated in my book that the Marlins would be struggling around .500 into June and the on-again/off-again flirtation with Bobby Valentine would lead to Valentine taking over as manager.

It’s still possible I suppose, but the easiest thing to do now would be to give Tony Perez the job.

That might have been the idea when Eduardo Perez left ESPN to take the job as hitting coach.

It’s not fair to blame Rodriguez.

Like the concept of existence, it just is and fair has nothing to do with it one way or the other.

Keep an eye on it.

It could be coming any day now.

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