Gary Carter died on Thursday.

He was, to most people, The Kid. A Hall of Fame catcher, a coach for Palm Beach Atlantic University, the guy with the most important single in New York Mets history in the 1986 World Series, a man who’d been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor last May. He was an 11-time All-Star, a 21-year veteran, a 3-time Gold Glove award winner, it’s hard to find a picture of him without a smile on his face and he died at a hospice.

I want to extend my condolences to Gary’s friends and family, but who am I to do that? I do wish them well. I wish death didn’t have to happen like this. Hell, I wish death didn’t have to happen. It’s mean. It doesn’t make sense, even when a doctor says “yeah, this is what’s happening to your brain” and you’ve got a year to plan for it.

The goal, I guess, is to be remembered. Gary Carter won’t have trouble with that. 78.02% of his peers made sure of that back in 2003. But right now — in the days immediately following the realization that he’s gone — how should we remember him? A paragraph of stats? Pictures?

It’s not a thing I figured out, but the memories are what matter most. I’ve been reading our goodbyes to him all morning … Marty Noble at MLB.com, Jeff Pearlman talking through Ed Hearn at The Wallstreet Journal, Jason Fry, a guy who loves the Mets more than anyone I’ve ever met, at Faith And Fear In Flushing. I make baseball players pretend to curse at each other for a living, so I found it hard to find my own words. I couldn’t. I looked for a video, because I’m a guy on the Internet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Remember the young “Good Samaritan” Arizona Diamondbacks fan who selflessly gave a ball to a crying little boy who’d dropped it? Well, that kid has taken the next step toward officially becoming Quiz Kid Donnie Smith by appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” alongside the whimpering little reprobate to continue receiving prizes and accolades for a common act of human decency that just so happened to be caught on camera. The boys (who sound like Harry Potter characters: Ian McMillan and Nicholas Goodfellow) got some We Say The Darnedest Things laughs from the studio audience and were given not only season tickets to the remaining Diamondbacks games, but Jimmy Kimmel “baseball hall of fame” plaques denoting them as “Kid Who Gave A Ball To Another Kid” and “Kid Who Was Given A Ball By Another Kid”.

Check out the video below, with a tip of the autographed bat to Big League Stew.

I’ve got to ask, if the Good Samaritan kid is the one who made the grand gesture, why does the crying kid keep getting applauded, too? Good Samaritan gets an autographed bat, crying kid gets a bat. Good Samaritan kid gets to be on TV and get gifts because he did something cool, so the crying kid gets to come along and get lumped in. People (including Kimmel) tell Ian how happy they are that good things are happening to him, but barely-conscious crybaby Nicholas is getting all those good things, PLUS he’s got a Rickie Weeks ball from that Diamondbacks game. Just watch them, Ian is smiling, Nicholas doesn’t give a sh**. Doesn’t seem fair.

I guess Ian’s big reward when all this is said and done is not having his 15 minutes of fame be “I was a little bitch once and got presents”.

Last week, we covered the bratty San Francisco Giants fan who was showered with riches for being a brat and several similar instances of grown-ups acting like babies and jerks and getting away with it. That trend continues today with one of the most hilarious and disappointing examples of baseball fans having the maturity and self-control of Angelica Pickles. Watch as “Brian chases Pete Rose to get an autograph for the first time”.

The YouTube description:

After my success of trying and getting Bryce Harper to sign my (previously signed) Mickey Mantle baseball, I traveled to Cooperstown, NY to try and meet the elite ball players, The Hall of Famers. In travels, I stopped at a local restaurant and was actually seated close to Pete Rose’s table. I was definately surprised to see that THE PETE ROSE was in Cooperstown (Since he is not a Hall of Famer). I politely approached him after he was finished eating and as he exited the restaurant. Here is my documentation of the event.

And here’s what actually happened — Brian approached Pete Rose for an autograph and appeared to be politely turned down … so he turned around and stomped off, but not before ANGRILY THROWING HIS BASEBALL INTO THE WOODS. The ball with Bryce Harper’s autograph?

The worst part of this is that Brian (or someone who likes Brian) decided to upload this to YouTube because you need validation that a celebrity is an asshole when they don’t do exactly what you want. Sorry, guy, but watching you huff and puff and destroy your own toys makes me want to see Pete turn around and plow through you like you were Ray Fosse. I understand how disappointing it can be. I waited for two hours in the cold after a Jenny Lewis concert to try and meet her, and all she did was walk by and dismiss me. It sucked, but at no point did I stomp my copy of Acid Tongue and throw it at her bus. Because I’m a nerd, but I’m an adult nerd. Big difference.

What Brian should’ve done was tell Pete he would have to live with the consequence of the act.

[h/t Off the Bench]

Baseball Hall of Famer and Minnesota Twins legend Harmon Killebrew said on Friday that he’s ending his battle with esophageal cancer, and plans live out the final days of his life in hospice care. It’s not a story with a lot of funny to make it pop online (and I’m sorry about the title), but if you’ve got any reverence whatsoever for professional sports you’ll understand the importance of Killebrew, if only in how much he means to the people who saw him play.

“It is with profound sadness that I share with you that my continued battle with esophageal cancer is coming to an end,” Killebrew said in a statement released by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“With the continued love and support of my wife, Nita, I have exhausted all options with respect to controlling this awful disease. My illness has progressed beyond my doctors’ expectation of cure.”

That is just a punch in the stomach. If we can find some sort of context in the stats he collected, his 573 career home runs are the 11th most in baseball. He played 21 of his 22 years in the Bigs in the Minnesota/Washington Senators organization, and brought in over 1,500 RBI. The Twins retired his uniform number in 1975 and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1984. He’s not going away, no matter where he goes.

“I look forward to spending my final days in comfort and peace with Nita by my side.”

Good luck, Mr. Killebrew.

[Reuters]

Baseball announced the results of its Hall Of Fame in Cooperstown, and two guys will be getting plaques this spring. Former Twins pitcher Bert Blyleven and second baseman Roberto Alomar, who played with eight different teams over his 17-year career, garnered the necessary 75 percent of votes for enshrinement into baseball’s hallowed hall.

If [former Cubs second baseman Ryne] Sandberg deserved to be in the Hall — and he absolutely did — then Alomar is a slam dunk. He probably should have gone in last year. It’s possible that some writers levied a one-year penalty for the John Hirschbeck spitting incident. I don’t agree with that, but I get it. And it’s moot now, anyway. Alomar is in the Hall of Fame because he was one of the greatest players of his generation.[..]

Blyleven finally won his way to Cooperstown, on his 14th year on the ballot. As I wrote earlier this week, he is the first Hall of Famer whose candidacy was definitively advanced by the sabermetric community.

–Jon Paul Morosi /FOX Sports.

Some people are pointing to Blyleven’s sudden rise in votes over the last two years as evidence of “unworthy” players getting into Cooperstown. If people are that bent out of shape about so many people getting in, then an obvious solution would be to have fewer elections for enshrinement. Why are the baseball writers voting every year, anyway? Just so that they can lord authority over a guy’s career for as long as possible? This is the same argument I made for our Dead Hookers Hall Of Fame at Christmas, and why Cinnamon and Mercedes won’t be getting in until 2012 at the earliest. It’s not the Hall Of Very Good, ladies.

Andre Dawson, the sole member of 2010′s Baseball Hall Of Fame class, will be enshrined into Cooperstown as a Montreal Expo, where he spent 11 of his 21 seasons in Major League Baseball. I guess I could have abbreviated that “MLB,” but I think that abbreviation’s stupid.

Dawson sent a text message to the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday night saying: “Hall will issue a press release [Wednesday] announcing that I will go in as an Expo.”

Dawson spent the first 11 seasons of his career in Montreal, winning Rookie of the Year in 1977. He hit 225 of his 438 career homers with the Expos. He also showcased more of a speed game in Montreal, registering 253 of his 314 career steals. –ESPN.

Interesting choice that Cooperstown has made for the eight-time All-Star, ditching the club where he made the biggest name for himself for the old red, white, and blue laundry of what’s now the Washington Nationals. It speaks to some of the dead ideals that baseball still clings to, like the notions of “one man, one team” and “get that needle out of my ass.”