Rico Carty Has Passed Away at 85
Braves Grieves As They Mourn Legendary Fielder. Rico Carty, who played in the major leagues from 1963 to 1979, missed the entire 1968 season due to tuberculosis and sat out in 1971 because of a knee injury. Over his career, he played for several teams, including the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves (1963-72), Texas Rangers (1973), Chicago Cubs (1973), Oakland Athletics (1973, 1978), Cleveland Indians (1974-77), and Toronto Blue Jays (1978, 1979). Though he played for multiple teams, Carty was best known for his time with the Braves, where he was inducted into their Hall of Fame last year. Renowned for his flamboyant style of play, Carty was also famous for making one-handed catches in left field before it became a popular trend.
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A right-handed batter, Carty finished his career with a .299/.369/.464 slash line, 204 home runs, 890 RBIs, and a 132 OPS+. He won the National League batting title in 1970, hitting .366 and leading the league with a .454 on-base percentage. Primarily a left fielder, Carty also saw action at the other outfield spots, first base, and amazingly, 17 games at catcher in 1966, where he threw out an astonishing 50 percent of would-be base stealers. He was just an average fielder, but in 1966, he led all NL left fielders with 218 putouts.
“I Believe He’s Capturin’ Their Imagination”
“I Never Gave Up”
After missing the 1968 season, Rico Carty made a remarkable comeback in 1969, hitting .342/.401/.549 with 16 home runs and 58 RBIs. Reflecting on his return, he told Al Abrams of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “My belief in God and my body helped me come through.” This was a time when players from opposing teams would sit down with writers for interviews, and Carty shared his unwavering faith in his recovery: “I never gave up. I knew in my heart I would come back. Why did I know? Because I have faith. I also know I never been sick, bad, since I was one year old.”
On September 30, Carty’s seventh-inning sacrifice fly off pitcher Wayne Granger broke a tie and proved to be the game-winning play in a 3-2 victory over the Cincinnati Reds, securing the Braves’ first-ever NL West Division title. In the subsequent NL Championship Series against the New York Mets, Carty contributed by going 3-for-10 with two doubles and three walks in his only postseason appearance.
“A Hitter Has to Be Like a Sportswriter”
In 1970, Rico Carty had a legendary season, posting a .366/.454/.584 slash line, 25 home runs, 101 RBIs, and an OPS+ of 171. He was hitting a remarkable .401 as late as June 17. Just nine days later, when his average had dropped to .377, he confessed to Ira Berkow of the Newspaper Enterprise Association that he had grown tired of being asked whether he could hit .400. Carty made an insightful analogy, saying, “A hitter has to be like a sportswriter. He cannot be bashful. In my job, be bold. I walk into every pitcher and I’m not scared of any of them, no matter if his name is Seaver, Gibson, Marichal, Maloney, Dierker.”
After missing the 1971 season and struggling with a .277 average in 1972, the Braves traded Carty to the Texas Rangers. He later bounced around the majors, finishing his career with the Oakland Athletics under Charlie O. Finley and the Toronto Blue Jays, two teams where aging hitters often went to finish their careers as designated hitters.
The Last Word
In 1995, Post-Gazette sportswriter Paul Meyer overheard a conversation between former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Steve Blass, who was then a broadcaster, and Carty’s former teammate Felipe Alou, the manager of the Montreal Expos. Blass shared his admiration for Carty, saying, “You know, Rico Carty was the best two-strike hitter I ever pitched against. He would shorten up his stroke on two strikes, and he was so strong he could almost play ‘pepper’ in games and do pretty much what he wanted to do with two strikes.”
Alou nodded in agreement, adding, “To this day, I think he was the best two-strike hitter I’ve ever seen in baseball.”
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