Big Personality, Big Bat, Beeg Boy

Rico Carty brought a few unique firsts to the v-Club. He was one of the first big league players from the Dominican and the first player from Latin America to join the club. He is also the first (of two) players who joined two iterations of the Club – the v24 Club in 1975 and the v26 Club in 1977. On the other hand, Rico Carty, known as Beeg Boy, shared many of the same skills and abilities, but also the personality and physical resilience (or lack thereof) of members before him.

Beeg Boy Bingo

If you load up a bingo card of v-Club members’ characteristics, you’d find that Rico Carty would be able to score you an easy win. Instead of peppering this profile with these instances, here’s a sampling of things that Rico shared with fellow members.

☑ Highly touted prospect1

☑ Injury prone (with frequent severe injuries)

☑ Hot-tempered brawler

☑ Clubhouse headache

☑ Year after year of diminished playing time due to injury and/or performance

☑ Perseverance

☑ Resurgence

☑ “A perfect designated hitter”

☑ Finished with a decent career overall but only a handful of great seasons

Beeg Braves Bruiser Boy(s)

Carty’s first full season with the Braves in 1964 continued showcasing the same potential he had shown in the minors and playing in the Dominican Republic (but of course hot starts are a bingo space too). He finished the season as runner-up in Rookie of the Year voting (to Dick Allen) and had the second highest batting average (to Roberto Clemente). He also smashed 22 home runs which included seven ledgers.

LEDGER ONE: May 12, 1964 at New York Mets

LEDGER TWO: May 19, 1964 at Cincinnati Reds

LEDGER THREE: May 23, 1964 vs St. Louis Cardinals

LEDGER FOUR: July 14, 1964 vs San Francisco Giants

LEDGER FIVE: August 24, 1964 vs Philadelphia Phillies

LEDGER SIX: September 19, 1964 (Game 2) vs Chicago Cubs

LEDGER SEVEN: October 3, 1964 vs Pittsburgh Pirates

Carty added another pair of ledgers in 1965 to max out his count against the National League.

LEDGER EIGHT: July 7, 1965 vs Houston Astros

LEDGER NINE: July 22, 1965 at Los Angeles Dodgers

We move on to 1968 a year in which Carty is felled by a bout of tuberculous and missed the entire season. While unfortunate for Carty, his lost season leads to a great v-Club trivia nugget.

The Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves rostered a future v-Club inductee in every season between 1947 and 1970, by far the longest consecutive streak before the 1977 expansion.

1947-1952: Earl Torgeson
1953-1962: Joe Adcock
1963-1967: Rico Carty
1968: Deron Johnson
1969-1970: Rico Carty (did not play in 1971 due to injury, played in 1972)

Deron Johnson's trade to the Braves came in October 1967, months before Carty was diagnosed during Spring Training in 1968. Johnson would only spend a single season in Milwaukee.

Carty returned to the Braves in 1969 and put up MVP-caliber numbers. He added ledgers against the two NL expansion teams and was once again maxed out.

LEDGER TEN: May 16, 1969 at Montreal Expos

LEDGER ELEVEN: September 27, 1969 vs San Diego Padres

1970 would be an even better year.

Beeg Boy the Batting Champ

When Carty was healthy he was a consistent .300+ hitter. This productivity came to the forefront as he won the National League batting crown in 1970 with a .366 average. For the second consecutive year he collected MVP votes and enjoyed his only trip to the All-Star Game.

And this All Star appearance is famous in its own right. Carty had been left off the fan ballot but amassed more than a half million write-in votes and started in the NL outfield alongside Willie Mays and teammate Hank Aaron.

Beeg Boy and Bull

1970 was uncannily coincident. A known rabble-rouser and fighter2 had won the NL batting crown in the best season of their career. Over in the American League, a rabble-rouser of a different sort also played the best season of his career and won the batting title too. That player was fellow future v24 Club member Alex “Bull” Johnson. These two would cross paths again.

Carty sat out the entirety of the 1971 season after he sustained a crushing knee injury in Spring Training. He returned for a final season with the Braves in 1972 and was traded to the Texas Rangers in the 1973 off-season.

And so was Alex Johnson. The Angels shipped him off to Texas in March 1963. First year manager Whitey Herzog presciently remarked he needed to field a team of “ballplayers, not Boy Scouts.” But he had his hands full with the personalities of his two moody batting champs. So much so he was canned before the season ended.

Let’s get back to the ledgers. Carty had three in Texas before he too departed the organization after appearing in 86 games.

LEDGER TWELVE: April 21, 1973 at Minnesota Twins

LEDGER THIRTEEN: May 31, 1973 vs Cleveland Indians

LEDGER FOURTEEN: June 8, 1973 vs Boston Red Sox

His next stop would be the north side of Chicago.

Beeg Boy Blasts Braves (Barely)

Carty played twenty-two games with the Cubs and only hit a single home run. It was an important one.

LEDGER FIFTEEN: August 28, 1973 at Atlanta Braves

Prior to this home run, the v-Club record for fewest plate appearances against an opponent in a career was 313. Carty hit his Braves home run in his tenth plate appearance and would only have eight more before finishing out his career as an American Leaguer.

Carty was purchased by and played a very short, unproductive stint for the Athletics to round out the 1973 season4. This is the familiar crossroads other v-Club members have encountered. Was Carty washed? Most people thought so. Carty played winter ball in the Dominican and signed on to Cordoba of the Mexican League for the start of the 1974 season. He played well enough that Cleveland, in the midst of a pennant chase, took a chance and signed him to a deal.

Beeg Boy Becomes a Member

And Carty had a very serviceable start to his rejuvenated career, both in the stat line and the ledgers.

LEDGER SIXTEEN: September 28, 1974 (Game 2) vs New York Yankees

LEDGER SEVENTEEN: April 20, 1975 vs Milwaukee Brewers

LEDGER EIGHTEEN: May 2, 1975 vs Baltimore Orioles

LEDGER NINETEEN: May 11, 1975 vs Chicago White Sox

LEDGER TWENTY: May 24, 1975 vs Oakland Athletics

LEDGER TWENTY-ONE: July 20, 1975 vs California Angels

LEDGER TWENTY-TWO: July 26, 1975 at Detroit Tigers

LEDGER TWENTY-THREE: August 9, 1975 vs Kansas City Royals

LEDGER TWENTY-FOUR: August 18, 1975 (Game 2) vs Texas Rangers

In just over one full season Carty had turned 19 home runs into an induction to the v24 Club. Carty continued to be a fine player for Cleveland for an additional season but at the end of the 1976 season found himself at the v-Club crossroads again. His story wasn’t over yet.

Cleveland made Carty available in the 1977 Expansion Draft. The Blue Jays selected him with the fifth pick, but soon returned him to Cleveland. Had Carty stayed with the Blue Jays he would probably not have ever faced them, let alone hit a home run against them. His story would have ended here as the second member of the v24 Club5.

But Beeg Boy Becomes a Member, Again (Expansion Boogaloo)

Carty enjoyed a final fine season in Cleveland and as you can gather, hit home runs against the newest MLB teams – the Blue Jays and the Mariners.

LEDGER TWENTY-FIVE: June 23, 1977 at Toronto Blue Jays

LEDGER TWENTY-SIX: August 22, 1977 (Game 1) at Seattle Mariners

In 1978 he was traded to the Blue Jays in a deal that stuck. He rounded out his career with another stint with the Athletics and a second tenure with the Jays. But from the ledger perspective, Carty had no more story to tell. He became the first player to join two versions of the Club.

Rico Carty adds another strong personality to the v-Club roster and opened the door to what I consider a new era of the Club. Everything post-1977 feels just a touch more modern and familiar. We’re approaching the very early junk wax era of baseball where names more readily ring a bell to people of my late Gen-X/early millennial generation. Will their stories be as rich as those of their forerunners?