The Dead End Kid

Or
You can 86 the Met!
(Kudos to Phil)
Gary Carter, who on his 34th birthday on April 8, 1988 ended a game against the Phillies by getting picked off second base by Steve Jeltz pulling the hidden ball trick in one of my happiest baseball memories, has died of brain cancer at the age of 57. The original camera whore, Carter had an ego bigger than le Stade Olympique and a reputation for only playing hard when his games were nationally televised. He emerged as a slugging star with the Expos in the early 1980s, but major league baseball’s Siberia was too small a stage and he was traded to the New York Mets, where his obnoxious hot-dogging home run trots and swagger fit right in. Carter helped lead New York to the 1986 World Series, and in the 10th inning of Game 6 when the Mets were down 2 runs and down to their last out against Boston, Carter started the eventual game winning rally, so Red Sox fans got to relive that hell during every tribute. His bat as tired as his act, he left New York after the 1989 season, bouncing from San Francisco (where he made the last out of Terry Mulholland’s no-hitter, the first ever at Veterans Stadium) to Los Angeles before wrapping things up in 1992 in Montreal. After his election to Cooperstown, the Hall of Fame stuck him with an Expos cap on his plaque, despite his stated preference to go in as a Met, a team that still hasn’t bothered to even retire his number.