Gary Carter Interviewed by the Hall of the Very Good

Gary Carter wasn't a player you had few emotions about. He was either hated or he was loved. He had one of those images that made you want to muss him up a bit even if you shared his belief system. For this Fan, Gary Carter was in the same category as Steve Garvey of the Dodgers. Both seemed too good to be true and thus were the objects of some deep dislike.

But they were very different in other ways. Steve Garvey was always trying to be dignified, like he was a Clark Kent on the baseball field. It's hard for any catcher to be dignified as that position is as close to constantly playing in the dirt as possible. He was more flamboyant than Garvey and much more animated. That combined with what seemed to be a yearning for attention from the media and that ridiculously permed hair made him somewhat cartoonish for this Fan during his playing days.

But Carter is in the Hall of Fame, so that is the ultimate comeback answer to all those guys like this writer who didn't like him. And he deserved his election. He hit over three hundred homers and drove in over 1200 runs. He played well in the post season, especially in 1981 for the Expos when we first found out who he was. In the end, it didn't matter who we thought Gary Carter was, because his body of work told us what kind of player he was. He won. And rightly so.

There is a terrific site on the Web called the Hall of the Very Good. The Fan has recently discovered it and the author of the site always keeps it interesting with on-point interviews and other posts of interest. The Fan has really come to enjoy it. The Fan encourages you to see the latest post as the site interviews Gary Carter, the Hall of Fame Catcher. Check it out.