Carter Is Still the Kid at Heart

On the day’s last play, with the bases empty and a five-run lead over the St. Louis Cardinals and no desperate need to bust his hump, Gary Carter, 37-year-old catcher, hustled up the first base line stride for stride with the batter and backed up the bag, in case of an overthrow. He has caught more than 1,900 games. He must have done this run 100,000 times.

You cannot over-hustle; there is no such thing. When Carter went after a foul ball near the screen Sunday, he slid in his shinguards near the backstop wall. When he ran to second base on Alfredo Griffin’s two-out grounder to the first baseman, Carter slid again, even though the putout was made at first and there wasn’t a Cardinal within 50 feet of second base.

Gary Carter’s old bones aren’t ready for the boneyard. They held an old-timer’s game before Sunday’s game at Dodger Stadium and perhaps someday Carter will find himself appearing in one. Until then, he still makes a living as a major leaguer, the National League record-holder for games caught, and after what turned out to be Sunday’s game-winning single, he needs 19 more for his 2,000th hit.

“I meant to take today off because it’s Father’s Day,” Carter said.

The old-timer of the Dodgers--older than everybody but John Candelaria--was hardly serious, because any day is a good day to play. Gary hadn’t started a game in a week and hadn’t had a hit in his last dozen at-bats before finding the hole between first and second in Sunday’s sixth inning, giving the first-place Dodgers a lead they never relinquished.

Since his own old man, Jim Carter, was in the stands, right behind home plate, Gary felt particularly pleased. Before the game, he appeared on the stadium’s Diamond Vision, wishing his father well on his special day, the same dad who 20 years ago watched his son approaching his senior year at Sunny Hills High in Fullerton, who 10 years ago watched Gary hit two home runs in the majors’ All-Star game at Cleveland.

There have not been nearly as many highlights on “This Week in Baseball” featuring Carter in the last few seasons, but baseball life does go on. The Dodgers weren’t necessarily sure they were doing the right thing by releasing reliable Rick Dempsey or by keeping Carter along with former New York teammate Barry Lyons, who had fancied himself Mike Scioscia’s second-stringer. By June, though, Lyons preferred accepting his unconditional release to a accepting a demotion to the minors.

While Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda ordinarily doesn’t start Carter against right-handed pitching, he did Sunday against Ken Hill, saying: “I never worry about playing Gary Carter. The man’s heading for the Hall of Fame. When he came to spring training, I asked him: ‘Can you beat out Barry Lyons for a job on this team?’ And he said: ‘Why not? I’ve beaten him out everywhere else.’ ”

Confidence is sometimes a little difficult to come by, however, particularly when a catcher once hailed as the second coming of Johnny Bench finds himself reporting to spring camp by special invitation only. Carter appeared in only 92 games last season for San Francisco. After hitting his 300th home run in 1988 to join an elite group, Carter has hit only 15 since. He is not the hitter he once was.

But the .180 batting average he brought to Sunday’s game was hardly the whole story.

Carter is firmly entrenched as the Dodgers’ No. 2 catcher. He has handled every pitcher on the staff except Tim Belcher, and he enjoyed himself thoroughly in his latest start, catching a four-hitter that became Bob Ojeda’s first Dodger complete game.

“I kept egging him on, right up to the finish--’C’mon, Bobby O, get the CG,’ ” said Carter, who is enough of an old-time baseball enthusiast that he probably calls home runs HRs and stolen bases SBs. “He just got stronger and stronger. By the eighth and ninth innings, he was out there dealing. “

Carter has earned his keep at least partly without his bat, throwing out half of the runners who tried to steal on him before Sunday’s game. The Cardinals had two steals Sunday, one when a changeup by Ojeda got stuck in the webbing of Carter’s mitt, forcing him to double-pump.

He doesn’t blame runners for challenging him; Carter’s no Kid anymore, even if that was once his nickname, and his body has endured a couple of decades of squatting and foul-tips, no matter how well his shins have been guarded.

“It hasn’t always been wonderful, these last couple of years,” Carter said. “My knee’s bothered me, my mechanics have been off, this and that. But right now, I feel great. All I want to do is do my job, and I’m grateful for any opportunity I get to do it.”