Hall of Fame Catcher Gary Carter passed away today at the age of 57. He lost his battle to brain cancer. The baseball world truly lost one of the great ones.
He held a special spot in my life because I played catcher in little league and high school and Carter was one of the Big Three along with Bench and Fisk. Playing in the 70's and 80's those three gave young catchers some one to look up to and idolize. Besides being a great catcher one thing I remember about Gary Carter was his smile. He came across as extremely likeable and his smile always beamed in his interviews.
Carter played for 19 seasons which started with 11 seasons with the Montreal Expos, five with the New York Mets, one with the San Francisco Giants, one with the Los Angeles Dodgers and one final season with the Expos. His 1986 Mets team won the World Series. He was an All-Star 11 times and was twice the MVP of the All star game. He was originally drafted by the Expos in the third round in 1972. For his career he hit .262/.335/.439 with 324 home runs, 1225 RBI, 1025 runs and 39 steals in 2296 games. Also for his career he threw out 35% of the runners attempting to steal. By comparison only two catchers were higher than that in 2011 and Bench was 43%, Fisk was 34% and future Hall of Fame catcher Ivan Rodriguez is at 46%.
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