Carter for LVP; Ashby for Some Attention

Now, Gary Carter is going for LVP.

Carter did such a bang-up job for the New York Mets this season, he made himself the favorite for the National League’s Most Valuable Player prize. Not only did he catch a good game, he talked one. Gary Carter, you see, also happens to be Major League Baseball’s most voluble player.

Other catchers paled in comparison. In their tools of ignorance, they were ignored. No one nominated Alan Ashby for any MVP awards. Rich Gedman, either. Or Bob Boone. Until the three of them delivered home runs for their sides in Sunday’s exciting playoff games, they had been recognized mostly as the guys who stuffed sponges in their mitts and caught Mike Scott, Roger Clemens and Mike Witt.

By the time Sunday night’s playoff game at Shea Stadium was in the books, though, as a 3-1 win for Scott and the Astros against the Mets, it was Carter who was the catcher doing squat. He made the game’s last out with a nothing-special fly to center field, when a home run would have tied it, and his batting average for the series bottomed out at .059--1 for 17.

From MVP candidate to LVP candidate, just like that.

To Carter, it hasn’t even mattered whether the accused cheater, Scott, is scuffing baseballs with a fingernail or a belt buckle or a Houston chainsaw. He hasn’t been able to hit anybody. His outs aren’t even loud. Ever since Scott struck him out three times on opening night, when Carter annoyed Astrodome fans by asking plate umpire Doug Harvey to inspect the ball, he has been up there swinging the bat with no more forcefulness than Johnny Carson swinging an imaginary golf club.

Is Carter concerned? “The series isn’t over yet,” he said. “Mike Schmidt had a bad start like this once, and that was a World Series. Dave Winfield, too. I still might do something.”

Is his manager concerned? “A little bit,” Davey Johnson said. “Carter is an integral part of our club, and he’s not hitting like he’s capable.”

Here we had a catcher famed in two countries, Canada and the United States, for knocking the ball over the wall, but who was out there stealing the playoff thunder? Ashby, who broke into the big leagues 13 years ago and has walloped the grand total of 69 home runs. Gedman, who hit two homers in his home park all season. And Boone, who usually could forget his batting glove at home, so long as he remembered to bring his catcher’s mitt.

What got into these backstage backstops Sunday? “I don’t know but I sure hope it continues,” Ashby said.

Here we had a catcher famed in no countries, no better known in North America than in Iceland. He entered this season pushing 35 years old and was hardly at the summit of his career, as evidenced by the fact that Houston Manager Hal Lanier handed the catching job to somebody named Mark Bailey and left Ashby the Astro wondering if his career was in ashes.

Catching was to Houston what third base was to the Mets. For the quarter-century of their existence, the Astros never did seem to have a catcher of distinction. “They still don’t,” Ashby said after Sunday’s game, self-effacingly. “But I like to think they’ve got a guy who can win.”

Carter, Carter, Carter . . . that’s the name the Houston catcher kept hearing as the championship series drew near. He had won his job back when Bailey failed to hit, and had nicely handled a staff led by Scott, the man whom Wally Backman, Carter and other Mets have branded as a sinister scuffer of baseballs.

If the Mets were supposed to have an advantage in this series, it was supposed to be behind the plate. Even before the first game was played, the Mets’ Johnson responded to an inquiry about Carter’s throwing arm not being what it used to be by saying: “Well, Alan Ashby’s no day at the park, either.” (New Yorkers say park, Californians say beach.)

When reminded of this Sunday, Ashby said: “I told Gary Carter the other day I was sick and tired of hearing about Gary Carter. I didn’t want to be compared to Gary Carter. He’s the Great One. He’s the famous guy and I’m not.”

What did give Ashby a kick was a chance finally to discuss someone other than the other team’s catcher or the Houston pitchers.

“Hey, it’s nice to be able to talk about me for a while,” he said.

No need to talk about old times, like his days at San Pedro High or at Harbor Junior College, or about witnessing two of Sandy Koufax’s no-hitters at Dodger Stadium as a kid, or about catching Nolan Ryan’s no-hitter against the Dodgers in 1981, or about catching Scott’s no-hitter on the day the 1986 Astros clinched their division.

No, recent history will do for now. Starting with the two-run homer off Sid Fernandez in the second inning Sunday night, which gave Scott all the runs he needed. Funny thing about the home run was that Ashby stayed alive only because the Mets had erected two new rows of temporary seats along the left-field line, which impeded the infielders who tried to catch Ashby’s foul fly.

“How about that?” Ashby said. “The fact that they sold a lot of tickets helped me.”

He called the home run “a Walter Mitty experience” and remained every bit as mild-mannered as Mitty, saying that the reason he saw a good pitch was that “after getting our good hitters out, maybe the pitcher’s concentration dropped a bit when he got to a guy like me.”

As for the Mets’ complaints about Scott: “I think that’s sad, that that’s what they’re saying. I thought they had their minds off of that this time. Gee, every time you see a ball fouled off, you can find a mark on it.”

In the other clubhouse, Gary Carter definitely wanted to believe that. One teammate, Backman, was busy calling Scott a cheater, and Ray Knight was talking about how Fernandez showed him baseballs that definitely had “man-made” marks on them, and the consensus seemed to be that Scott was doing something to make his pitches unhittable.

Carter sighed. “There’s not a whole lot we can do about it,” he said. “If Doug Harvey, who is the umpire of umpires, says he isn’t cheating, I guess he isn’t cheating.”

It didn’t matter, of course.

“The way I’m going,” Carter said, “I’m beginning to wonder if my bat is scuffed.”