Happy Birthday Gary Carter

Yeah, I know he wasn't a Jay but he was my favorite player for years. And as the Expos are gone, I figured the other Canadian MLB team's fan site was a good place to say Happy Birthday to the only member of the baseball Hall of Fame to go in wearing an Expos cap, at least up till now. Gary Carter is 55 today.

The Expos were my first baseball love and Gary was my favorite player. He was the best catcher in baseball for several years. He had a great arm, was a good handler of pitchers, was athletic and was a great hitter. Bill James had him at 8th on his list of best catchers of all-time. My first and for a long time only sports jersey was a Expo's jersey with the number 8 on it. The one piece of baseball stuff I display in the house is a baseball signed by Carter and the background of this computer is a picture of him with my youngest son and me.

He was always smiling, always seemed happy, which I liked, I figured if you were making a fortune playing a kids game you should be happy about it.

I learned a lot about baseball from the Expos. Good and bad. Among the bad was that baseball teams always seemed to blame their best players when things didn't go as well as they hoped. So it was with the Expos, blaming Carter instead of oh maybe the middle infielders that couldn't hit their weight. To improve the team they traded Carter to the Mets for Hubie Brooks and a bunch scrubs. No surprise the team didn't get better. Carter got a World Series ring with the Mets.

Anyway, this was to be short and I've been rambling on. Happy Birthday, Gary. Have a good one.