Still a Kid at Heart: My Life in Baseball and Beyond Book

As a catcher for the 1986 World Series Champion New York Mets, Gary Carter cemented a place in baseball history. Now retired, Carter recounts his early years as a potential football star, finding a place in his true love of baseball, and the journey from rookie player to minor league coach. At a thin 250-ish pages, I thought this might be a quick read for a book club for which our monthly theme was a biography of an entertainer/celebrity.

I consider myself to be a casual fan of the sport; I've been to a few games here and there, will watch it occasionally, and have a general awareness of how my local teams are doing. Even at its skimpy length, though, this didn't seem to be a book for the casual fan. Heavy on stats during the early game anecdotes, Carter discusses game innings, outs, and plays that impacted him along his career with an enthusiasm that definitely speaks to his love of the game, but for someone like me that is only peripherally aware that there even IS a batting average, much of it was glossed over in favor of the storytelling aspects.

Unfortunately for me, there wasn't enough of the storytelling or the game insights. Partial and/or short anecdotes pepper the book amidst the game recounts, but they often fell short of satisfactory, providing a short example to illustrate a broadbased opinion about the game. This carried on into the second half of the book, which decreased the amount of stats present (though still there!) and replaced the stats with what read like the equivalent of an Oscar acknowledgement speech of all the people he had ever encountered or worked with, and an overlong (and desperate) cover letter for a major league manager position.

In one chapter, for example, Carter focuses on the different managers he'd worked under as a player. He provides some commentary on each of them in order, with some reflections on if he thought their managing style was effective; a few he focuses more on and offers some stories about personal experiences with them. In the middle, there is one he mentions as "probably being more effective as a front office guy" (my paraphrase) and then he quickly moves down the list to the next person. Uhm, what? That's it? Why do you think that way? What happened to make you feel so? And if you don't want to say because it's negative, why even mention it in the first place?

This was a pattern seen throughout the book: names mentioned as being "great" or "influential" or "fundamental" in some fashion, with nothing else to support it. It became a lot like listening to your old Uncle Al talk about his neighborhood pals and randomly injecting a "Man, that Pauly...he was a great guy...great guy." before shaking his head and totally changing the subject. And this, even, probably wouldn't have been as glaring of an issue for me except there is one section, in which Carter talks about some of today's players and the impact that some of the controversies may have on Hall of Fame voting, that I thought was really interesting and really insightful. I really benefited from Carter's experience, and his clearly articulated reasons for favoring on one side or another of certain players made a lot of sense, even if I didn't necessarily agree with his final opinion on the matter.

The one thing that's never in doubt is Carter's love of the game. His boyish eagerness and enthusiasm bleed through the pages, even the ones (maybe especially the ones?) dripping with numbers, and I can see why he might be a fan favorite for those that follow the game, and especially the teams he played on. I think this could be a small treasure for those fans, but for me, the enthusiasm wasn't enough to carry this one over the wall. Sorry, Mr. Carter...I do hope you get your major league manager chance someday.