4. Gary Carter, C
Without question, Gary Carter was the heart and soul of the 1986 New York Mets. He was known as “The Kid” and he he played like one.
Teammate Keith Hernandez would say later about Carter:
"“He was a human backstop back there. Early, before his knees went bad, you couldn’t steal on him in Montreal. When he wasn’t able to throw because of his knees, that never affected his performance. He was running on and off the field after three outs. This guy played in some pain and it was hustle, hustle, hustle.”"
Carter spent the early part of his career with the Montreal Expos . He came to the Mets in 1984 at a time when the organization was just putting the team together. Gary Carter was the missing piece of the puzzle.
He would lead his ‘86 team to a World Series championship, hitting .276 with two home runs and nine RBI in the Fall Classic. His two-out, 10th-inning single ignited a three-run rally that resulted in a Mets win to even the series. New York went on to win the Fall Classic in seven games.
Here’s the video of those two home runs in Game 4:
In Game Six, he went 1-for-4, scoring a run and driving one home on a sacrifice fly to the outfield. A typical game for Gary Carter in his brief time with the Mets.
Slowed down by aching knees, he would leave the Mets and play for for the Giants and Dodgers before returning to Montreal to end his career in 1992.
He waited quite a while, but eventually he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003. Stricken with brain cancer, the world of baseball and especially his former teammate Keith Hernandez took it hard when he died at only 57 in February of 2012.