R.I.P. Gary Carter

As a kid and teenager, my favourite baseball player was Tim Raines (still my all-time favourite), but Gary Carter was the one that got me interested in the sport itself.

Heck, when I was growing up - and even after he was traded to the New York Mets in 1984 - all of us kids in Montréal wore our caps backwards to be ''just like The Kid, as he was known, despite the fact that all catchers wore their caps backwards when behind the plate. To us, it was a way to identify with him even more than we already did, and we did a lot.

He loved the cameras, loved to smile for them, talk in front of them, pose for pictures - and all the cameras - and the people behind them - loved him back.

In a city all about hockey, he was as big a star as Guy Lafleur, the Montréal Canadiens' last star forward; he was the playoff hero in the failed 1981 NL run, one of four starting Montréal Expos at the 1982 All-Star Game (a fifth starter, Pete Rose, then of the Philadelphia Phillies, was a former Expo), the most charismatic figure in the history of the team.

I still remember when he was traded in 1984 (December 10th!) and against whom (Hubie Brooks, Floyd Youmans, Herman Winningham and the guy who replaced him behind the plate for half a decade, Mike Fitzgerald), and the World Series he won with the Mets in his second season in New York still stings.

He was treated like the living legend he was when the Expos brought him back to finish his career here in 1992, a year removed from Dennis Martinez' perfect game, two years before the kids (Delino DeShields, Marquis Grisson, Moises Alou, Larry Walker, Mel Rojas and John Wetteland) unexpectedly became the best team in the NL two years too early under the watchful eye of Felipe Alou.

When he was inducted in the Hall Of Fame in 2003, he said he'd want to be inducted as a member of both the Mets and Expos, but since Cooperstown decrees players can only represent one team, he favoured NYC because of his championship, but felt like a Montrealer despite this. The Hall decided to make him an Expo, and he was always bittersweet about it. He is now joined in the Hall by Andre Dawson, who was his enemy in the clubhouse. I hope Raines joins them soon, he is also very worthy of the Hall.

Today, Carter died from the multiple tumours in his head. Today, baseball died again in Montréal.