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

The average rating for Still a Kid at Heart: My Life in Baseball and Beyond based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-11-28 00:00:00 Todd Hoover Baseball is a game that keeps us young. It allows us to remain a child forever. It's a kid's game, grown ups just screw it up. They called him "The Kid" from his first days in Expos training camp. Gary Carter treated every game in the majors like it could be his last; he loved baseball and played it with the same fire and passion for 21 years until he retired in 1992. He was my dad's favorite baseball player growing up, due in large part to dad also being a catcher in high school. Carter played the game the right way, every day. Carter's book itself, though intriguing, left a little to be desired. When an athlete pens a memoir, I rarely raise the bar. If they wanted to be a talented writer, they would have honed their craft for 20 years rather than pursuing a career in sports. I digress; he isn't a bad writer, but it was a fairly pedestrian attempt. The text just seemed to simplistic. It was almost as if someone approached Gary Carter with the idea that he should pen a book about his career, threw him a 50 dollar advance and told him he had two weeks to submit it for publishing. As a baseball fan, I've educated myself with some of the more subtle historical details, like the trials and tribulation of the Montreal Expos. I would have liked to have seen Carter go more in depth with his contributions to the 1981 Expos squad that earned their only playoff berth and winning their only postseason series before relocating to Washington D.C. What about the events leading up to the three run tenth inning of Game Six of the 1986 World Series? Carter sparked the rally with a two out single and later came around to score en route to an improbable comeback allowing the Mets to stun the Red Sox in seven games? Holy run-on sentence. Those were monumental moments in his Hall of Fame career. With that being said, I do not wish to tear this book apart. It was an honest and poignant account of his baseball career. No matter how underwhelming a book may seem to you, I genuinely believe you learn something with each new story we read. Carter was actually a two sport athlete in high school and was perilously close to earning a scholarship to play football at Notre Dame. However, he may have had to take a back seat to a lad named Joe Montana had he elected to play for the Irish. Once again I digress; I'm quite good at that. Why did they call him The Kid? He always acted like one. It's a child's game, meant for endless fun. Carter wanted to win every game; wanted to play every day. The love and devotion he had for the game of baseball is rivaled by only a handful to have ever taken the diamond since the mid 1800s. Rarely did you ever see Gary Carter not smiling. Some of the most iconic moments in baseball history are of Carter celebrating, the look of pure euphoria and joy on his face; the final out of the 1986 World Series and his final Major League at-bat. When The Kid caught the final pitch from his reliever Jesse Orosco in Game Seven, he was in another world. He tossed his mask, jumping up and down as he threw himself toward Orosco and into his arms before the rest of their Amazin' Mets" teammates mobbed them (and crushed them) on the pitcher's mound. By 1986, Carter was entering the twilight of his career. He'd have another six seasons left before returning to Montreal in 1992, ultimately his final year in baseball. On September 27, 1992, Carter stepped into the box one more time against the Chicago Cubs before 40,000 plus at Olympic Stadium. It was the seventh inning of a scoreless affair with a runner on. Carter ripped an 0-2 pitch to the opposite field. I find it rather cathartic that Carter laced a double over the head of his long-time friend and Expos teammate Andre Dawson. "The Hawk" was playing Carter shallow in right field, not expecting the ball to carry off his bat. When Carter stopped at second base on the RBI double, he looked like he had nothing left; like he had finally exhausted 21 years of effort, energy and emotion. But even in the moment, his last hit in his last baseball game, he raised both fists in the air. The result of the game with the Cubs that day was ancillary; Kid was stuck in the moment. With one foot on the bag, he reached up and removed his helmet, pumped it up in the air, closed his eyes and let out a resounding "YES!" before trotting off the field. It was over; he did it. And he got to do it his way. Kids always want to do things their way. When Gary Carter emerged from the dugout to appeased the 40,000 Expos fans with a final curtain call, he continued grinning from ear to ear. He wasn't sorry to see it end; he was ecstatic because he lived out his dream. As Harry Caray said on the Cubs telecast that night, "Enjoy it all, pal. You earned it!" He earned every last second of it; he earned this memory that would last a lifetime. For your viewing pleasure, I've enclosed the link to Carter's final at bat below. I was never an Expos fan and it came against my beloved Cubbies… it didn't matter. This is where the purest fans of the game wax sentimental on the matter. Moments like this allow fans of the game to put aside their hatred for another club and just soak in the moment. I often get chills when I watch this clip. You couldn't have scripted much of a better ending to such a long, successful career. I suspect if you're reading this you've a) never heard of Gary Carter, b) are a casual fan of the game of baseball but still aren't privy to Gary Carter. I was seven when he retired. I was still a year away from attending my first baseball game, let alone watching my first Cubs game on TV. The Kid got the call from Cooperstown in 2003 and would be inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. I appreciated the fact the Hall allowed publication of Carter's full acceptance speech, of which, I've included a couple excerpts below. My final thoughts on the subject stray away from book review and begin to feel more like an obituary. As I eluded to earlier, my dad loved watching Carter as he grew up. Dad didn't pitch, but he also loved Tom Seaver, whom Carter claimed was the best pitcher in the game during the mid to late 70s. Gary Carter died just a few years after publication. The Kid was just 57 when he succumbed to brain tumors. He was about the same age as my dad, their deaths separated by six months. It was heartbreaking to know that one of the few genuinely good humans in professional sports was taken at such a young age. He was, in many ways, still just a kid. Unfortunately, he fell short of his post playing career goal of becoming a Major League manager. There was real potential there for Carter. Mike Scioscia, Mike Matheny, Joe Maddon and Joe Girardi are all former students of the game to have enjoyed recent success as a manager. Like Carter, all of the aforementioned were also catchers. To imply Carter would have been out of his element as a Major League manager is nothing short of preposterous. But though he died young, he lived the dream. His dream. The Kid spent most of his life surrounded by the game he adored as a child. From the time he first picked up a baseball bat to the final hit of his career, Gary Carter truly played the game like a kid; like the Kid. And none of us could ever think differently of him for doing so. Even in the afterlife, Gary, you will always be a Kid at heart. "I took failure hard as a player. I was always hard on myself. I expected perfection. But I tried never to let my failure affect my family, and they would be waiting for me after the game with open arms to ease my anguish with a smile, a kind word, a hug. Failure made me look forward to the next day, when I could brush off the failure and try to do better. All along I have wanted to try to be the best at whatever I do. I never wanted to accept second best. My whole life I have been performance-oriented. I was my happiest when I was playing. I couldn't wait to get to get to the ballpark every day, and I loved every minute of it. I am privileged that God gave me the talent to play Major League Baseball, an opportunity that comes to so very few. I love this game. I always will."

Review # 2 was written on 2013-04-24 00:00:00 Chris Mueller 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.