Mets Card of the Week: Early Gary Carter

GARY CARTER ON TOPPS: THE EARLY YEARS

Gary Carter was born on this 1975 Topps Rookie Catchers-Outfielders card, occupying the Marsha slot on a Brady Bunchesque piece of cardboard.

And surely Marc Hill, Leon Roberts, and Danny Meyer spent many years lamenting their place in this particular family.

“Gary, Garrry, Garrrrry!” they could be heard to exclaim from designated spots on their respective benches.

He graduated to a card of his own in 1976, with a well-earned Topps all-star rookie cup nestled in the lower-right corner and a spring-training uniform number pinned to his chest.

But the 1977 Gary Carter card might very well be the most “Gary Carter” card that ever was.

Catching is a rough business– you spend your time squatting in the dirt, getting nicked and thumped and hammered in the summer heat while laden with a wire mask and all manner of padding. It is the definition of grunt work.

But here’s Gary, with his dress whites bleached as bright as the teeth behind his smile, in an open and engaging pose. He looks less like a hard-bitten catcher and more like a gentle man getting ready to welcome a small, tottering child into his arms…

*****

All of us at Mets360 are pulling for Gary Carter to make it through these tough times. If anyone can survive brain tumors, it has to be the man who refused to make the last out in the 1986 World Series. Start the rally again, Kid!