Dwight Gooden and Gary Carter had unlikely ‘amazing friendship’

They had finally gone and done it. They had found the house of their dreams. Gary and Sandy Carter, a couple of Californian children, had finally decided to put down lasting roots in their adopted city, Montreal, and why not? Gary had just completed his 10th full year in professional football, all with the Expos. He had made six consecutive All-Star appearances.

He was the face of baseball in Montreal.

And then the phone rang.

“And at first,” says Sandy Carter, “it almost seemed like a joke. They called Gary and asked if he would be interested in being traded. In New York, among other places.

The Expos also had to ask the question. As a 10-and-5 man — 10 years in the majors, five with the same club — Carter couldn’t be traded without his permission. But the Expos – who had come so close to making the World Series in 1981, losing the NLCS to the Dodgers when Rick Monday hit a ninth-inning home run in the deciding Game 5 – were on the verge of rebuilding.

And the Mets offered a harvest, identifying Carter as the final piece of a championship tapestry.

“And there was something else,” Sandy Carter said with a laugh. “There was Dwight.”

A year earlier, at 19, Dwight Gooden had taken baseball by storm, a kid with gas in his right arm and an early predilection for dominating good hitters. Carter learned it the hard way, striking out four times in 13 at-bats against him in 1984. But he also learned it in an unforgettable way.

On July 10, Gooden became the youngest player to appear in an All-Star Game when he entered in the top of the fifth inning at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. And in 15 pitches, he blew up the sport: he struck out Lance Parrish, Chet Lemon and Alvin Davis, and he made the veterans shake their heads.

“It was ballet,” said Goose Gossage, a fireball expert. “It was beautiful to see. It was the best pitch I’ve seen in a long time.

Gary Carter caught all 15 of Gooden’s shots. Later, he told his wife: “There is something special about this child. It is beyond special.

And now, five months later, the memory of that summer night came back to Carter. And even though he had learned to love Montreal, he knew where his destiny now lay.

“I can catch this kid 30 times a year,” he said. “How could anyone say no?”

Sandy says: “And that was the start of an incredible friendship. »

Sandy Carter will be among the guests of honor Sunday afternoon when the Mets retire Gooden’s No. 16 jersey, 40 years after his debut in the sport, 40 years after Dr. K became the brightest star in the New York sport, so big that for nearly 10 years, a Nike ad of him – 95 feet high, 42 feet wide – occupied the entire side of the Holland Hotel in Manhattan, at 351 W. 42nd St.

So big that a few kids from North Haledon, New Jersey – Dennis Scalzitti and Bob Belle – used to bring 27 billboards bearing the letter “K” to their seats on the upper left deck of the old stadium Shea, at Article 44, where start after start, they would hang after each strikeout. This is how the “K Korner” was born.

“We always had 27,” Scalzitti said. “Because you never know.”

It was an unlikely friendship, Gooden and Carter. The receiver was already a family man, pious and disciplined, an exception on a team that played hard on the field and played harder off it. Gooden landed at Smithers Institute in the spring of 1987 and relapsed frequently in the years to come.

“And Gary was always reaching out to him, offering him encouragement, telling him he loved him and visiting him whenever he could,” Sandy Carter said. “They had a wonderful relationship since the day Gary joined the Mets and it has only grown stronger over the years. They trusted each other implicitly.

It was true on the field: “Dwight told me years later that he never shook Gary, not once, he knew Gary knew exactly what pitches he should throw,” Sandy says. But this bond became stronger later. At first, it was Gary who tried to coax Doc through the dark times. Later, the situation reversed, once Carter received his cancer diagnosis, and later again when the prognosis darkened.

“Dwight called all the time,” Sandy said. “And they always had the same message for each other.”

“You can beat this,” Gary told Doc.

“You can beat this,” Doc told Gary.

Gooden relapsed several times. Carter ultimately died on February 6, 2012, just under nine years after being elected to the Hall of Fame. His best years came in Montreal. But its most glorious took place in New York.

“Gary has caught a lot of great pitchers,” Sandy says. But he always said his 100 percent favorite was Dwight. If he could be there (Sunday), I can promise you that no one would be happier, no one would be prouder than Gary.

Sandy Carter laughs.

“He loved her,” she said. “They loved each other.”