Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2003, Gary Carter held the record for most games caught by a National Leaguer from 1990-2021 when Yadier Molina broke his record. But his MLB career started differently.
Carter baseball card courtesy Pinterest
Not many people remember that Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter played more games in the outfield than behind the plate during his first two seasons in the major leagues. Montreal Expos manager Gene Mauch stayed with established catcher Barry Foote and put Carter in the outfield. And that’s where Carter had his first significant baseball injury.
Carter was playing right field with Pepe Mangual in center during a game against Atlanta in June 1976. Braves’ batter Darrel Chaney hit a liner into right-center field. “I came running over,” Carter recalls. “I was yelling, ‘I got it,’ and Mangual was yelling, ‘Yo tengo,’ and I didn’t hear anything, the crowd’s yelling and everything. And we collided, and my thumb was almost back to my wrist. And I knocked him out. He missed three games, but I missed six weeks.”
Later that same season, Carter cracked his 11th and 12th ribs when he robbed the Phillies’ Dave Cash of a home run. Carter says he felt safer behind the plate than in the outfield. “It was getting frustrating,” he says of the wide open spaces in right field. “Once I went back behind the plate and was more accustomed to the position, I don’t feel like I had anywhere near the injuries.”
Carter has had eleven knee surgeries, eight on the right and three on the left. But all of those surgeries stemmed from an injury he sustained to his right knee as a football player during his senior year in high school. Even the surgeries to his left knee were the result of overcompensating for his bad right knee. The knee surgeries were due to deterioration from his many years of catching. The 11-time All-Star believes some of that wear and tear could have been prevented.
Carter caught 2,056 games, more than any catcher in the history of the National League. He averaged 146 games behind the plate during his first eight years as a catcher for the Expos and the New York Mets (not counting the strike-shortened 1981 season). Nobody does that anymore.
“There’s no question I was overused,” states Carter. “Nowadays, catchers are a lot more protected. The average that a starting catcher will catch might be around 130 games.”
One way to preserve a catcher’s longevity is occasionally using him at first base. But that only happened once during Carter’s prime, his final year with Montreal in 1984. He played 159 games that season, but 25 were at first base under manager Bill Virdon.
“Virdon said, ‘You deserve to play, to keep your bat in the lineup, but play another position,’” Carter remembers. He usually played first base on a day game following a night game. He feels his career would have been lengthened had the Expos and the Mets made that a regular practice.
Fortunately, Carter landed on his feet, so to speak, after retirement. He was a broadcaster for the Expos and Florida Marlins for seven years, then worked as a catching instructor and manager for the Mets. He also began the Gary Carter Foundation, which has raised over $250,000 to support eight underprivileged schools in South Florida.
Carter’s theory that the safest place for him was behind home plate gained some support when he suffered a freak accident on the golf course. Carter, an avid golfer and member of the Celebrity Players Tour, was playing in a tournament in the Bahamas several years ago when a tropical storm blew in. “We had just gone through a devastating rainstorm, a major deluge,” he recalls. “I was keeping everybody undercover, and I was walking back to my cart and to my golf bags to put the umbrella back in, and this kid just inadvertently backed up (Carter’s golf cart) and hit my knee and blew my medial collateral ligament out again.”
The good news is that in October 2004, Carter had knee replacement surgery on his right knee, which enabled him to freely participate in many activities that had previously caused him significant discomfort. That includes throwing batting practice, hitting fungoes, and coaching at third base during the two years he managed in the Mets’ minor league system in Florida.
“I’m able to get back in and work out and do those things on a pretty regular basis,” says Carter, “and I’m very grateful for that.”
Would Carter do it all over again if he knew his baseball career would result in so much physical pain? “I have no regrets whatsoever,” says Carter. “Injuries are part of a career. It happens to everybody. It’s just a matter of how you overcome and handle them.”
Gary Carter died from brain cancer in February 2012 at the age of 57. Following his death, Sports Illustrated baseball writer Tom Verducci reminisced about Carter, “I cannot conjure a single image of Gary Carter with anything but a smile on his face. I have no recollection of a gloomy Carter, not even as his knees began to announce a slow surrender . . . Carter played every day with the joy as if it were the opening day of Little League.”
Amen!
____________
The article is an abbreviated version of what was published in Sports Spectrum, September-October 2007.
