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Carter: "A Gracious And Giving Person"

NephCure Ambassador Ed Hearn talks about his former teammate Gary Carter in this  Wall Street Journal story by Jeff Pearlman.

Ed Hearn was crying when he called on Thursday.

Earlier in the afternoon, Hearn had learned that Gary Carter, the Hall of Fame catcher, had died from brain cancer at age 57. Like many former Mets, Hearn took the news hard. Carter, after all, was one of the centerpieces of the 1986 World Series champions—a fist-pumping, home run-hitting ball of energy who carried a long-suffering franchise to new heights.

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But unlike most of the former Mets who now mourned Carter's leadership and strength and compassion, Hearn was confronted by an extra wallop of emotion. Seventeen years ago, when Trish Hearn gave birth to her and her husband's only child, Ed suggested the boy be named Cody Carter Hearn—"for someone I admired so very much," Hearn said of the player he backed up in '86. "A gracious and giving person."

Three days ago, on Feb. 14, Cody, a handsome boy with his father's humility and his mother's smile, underwent his fifth chemotherapy treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. That, coupled with the passing of his son's namesake, was too much. "For him to have cancer, and for Gary to die of cancer… it's very hard," Hearn said through tears.

"But Cody is just like Gary—tough. I've always hoped that Cody will one day grow up to be the man Gary Carter was. A man of faith, a family man, a man who genuinely lived life to the fullest. If that happens…" A long pause. "If that happens," Hearn said, "I did something right."

Hearn, more than most, always had an understanding of Carter—a ballplayer who never quite fit in. It's a seemingly quizzical thing to say about a handsome, strapping man. But it also happens to be true.

Baseball clubhouses are much like junior-high lunchrooms, in that the cool kids divide themselves from the un-cool; the studs distance themselves from the geeks.

In the oft-ignorant, oft-shallow world of baseball, Carter was deemed a geek from the very beginning. He didn't drink and didn't smoke. He didn't curse and he didn't talk smack. He showed up to work early, played hard, embraced home-plate collisions and—by all accounts—worked his tail off. He was loyal to his wife, Sandy, and an involved and dedicated father to their three children.

Yet this was rarely good enough for teammates. In Montreal, where Carter established himself as a star from 1974-84, he was derisively tagged "Teeth," "Lights" and "Camera Carter" for his apparent love of the spotlight and his willingness to grant any and every interview request. Such behavior didn't sit well with many of the Expos, who mocked him (cowardly, Carter would later tell me) behind his back and made him the butt of their juvenile jokes. Why, Carter's famous nickname—The Kid—was born of neither love nor appreciation, but scorn.

As he was rising through the Expos' minor league system in the early 1970s, Montreal's players used to irritate the team's starting catcher, a gruff beer barrel named Barry Foote, with taunts of, "The Kid's coming! The Kid's gonna take your job! Watch out for The Kid!"

To his credit, Carter embraced the moniker. The way he saw it, he was a man being paid big dollars to play a child's game. [filtered word] yes, he was a kid.

Upon arriving in New York in 1985, Carter was celebrated as the final piece for a franchise long on talent and short on veteran leadership.

And, indeed, he immediately filled that void—hitting a game-winning homer against the hated Cardinals in his debut game, then bounding out of the dugout for a double-fisted curtain call. Yet even in the Big Apple, Carter had to deal with the bullies. Darryl Strawberry, the gifted-yet-immature slugger, once egged him into a fight on a bus, an unthinkable (and embarrassing) moment for a devout Christian who was rarely goaded.

So why all the hostility? Why the insults?

"Simple," says Hearn. "Jealousy and immaturity. There were people who chose to poke fun at Gary's strength and character as a man. When you're that different from the majority, and you're vibrantly outspoken, people don't understand. So they become mean—especially when you're as good as Gary was on the field."

Indeed. Throughout his 19-year career, Carter made baseball and, specifically, catching look easy. Writers marveled over Strawberry's sinewy grace and Dwight Gooden's 98-mph heater, yet those within the game knew that the Kid—a 6-foot-2, 205-pound statue of a man—was as gifted as anyone. His throwing arm was a rifle. His willingness to block the plate was unmatched (his 1986 collision with Cincinnati's Eddie Milner is the stuff of legend). He hit with power and hit in the clutch. Could he be a tad overly enthusiastic at times? Sure. Did he milk the occasional moment? Perhaps.

But would teammates rather be stuck with, say, Albert Belle? "Oh my goodness, Gary Carter was a marvelous player and a marvelous athlete," Brian Johnson, a San Francisco Giants scout and former Major League catcher, recalled Thursday. "The way he hit and threw, even the way he moved around the bases at his size, he was phenomenal. People don't talk about Gary Carter when they discuss the best of all time, but they should. He belongs in that dialogue."

Carter's 11 All-Star appearances, three Gold Gloves, five Silver Sluggers, 324 home runs and 1,225 RBI speak loudly for the career of a man whose bust (featuring, after much deliberation, an Expos cap) sits in the halls of Cooperstown. Yet for me, one tiny moment from a career of many enormous ones stands out.

In 1985, midway through the Mets' 98-win season, Carter received a call from a producer for "Good Morning America." The show was looking for an athlete to participate in an on-air bubble gum blowing contest and Carter—who, true to form, always opted for Bubblelicious and Hubba Bubba over Skoal and Copenhagen—seemed perfectly suited for the task.

To the producer's surprise, Carter insisted on a condition.

"I'll do it," he said, "but the gum has to be sugar free. I don't want to set a bad example."