The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [42]
Carty was not his usual athletic self, because he was just recovering from a severe leg injury. Spotting a uniformed white policeman, he got out of his car and limped up to him and asked for his help, saying he had an injury and didn’t want any trouble from the two men in the car. But the two he was complaining about were plainclothes policemen. The police took out their guns and one of them said, “These are the cop-killing niggers.” He hit Ramírez over the head with his handgun, and then they began beating Carty with a blackjack, kicking him on the ground, then handcuffed and arrested him before finally one of the policemen recognized him.
The policemen were suspended; one already had a record of brutalizing black people, and the police chief and mayor apologized profusely. The attorney for the three suspended policemen said that it was a minor incident that had been blown up because it involved a famous baseball player. But in truth, Carty had been saved by his standing in baseball. The Atlanta press expressed concern that the finger injuries and black eye might somehow keep Carty from finishing the season.
Carty was what is known as a natural hitter, or, as they say in San Pedro, nació para batear, he was “born to bat.” His swing had both power and grace, and he had that mysterious ability to see pitches and put his bat where they were going. For seven years he maintained the highest lifetime batting average of any current player. At the time, few players were hitting well—a period known in baseball history as “the second dead-ball era.” The first dead-ball era, a time when hitters inexplicably were all slumping, was the first two decades of the twentieth century. The second dead-ball era, from 1963 to 1972, corresponded almost exactly with Carty’s career. The phenomenon is only partly explained by the fact that it was an era of great pitchers. Carty was, along with Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Carl Yastrzemski, and only a few others, one of the rare great hitters of his time. The reverse of Marichal, who was underappreciated because of the wealth of great pitchers, Carty enjoyed great renown because so few others were hitting so well.
Had he stayed healthy, Carty might have been one of the all-time greatest hitters in baseball. In 1963 he had a brilliant rookie year, but the following year he had back problems. In 1967 he missed weeks of play from a shoulder injury caused by a bad slide into second base. In 1968 he seemed to run completely out of luck: that year he missed the entire season, spending 163 days in the hospital with tuberculosis. He missed fifty-eight games in 1969 with three shoulder separations. Often his injuries were sustained in the winter, playing for the Dominican League, which he insisted on doing every winter.
In 1970 he had a phenomenal batting average of .366, which was the best in the major leagues since 1957, when Ted Williams hit .388 for the Red Sox. Then, triumphant, Carty went home to San Pedro to play for the Estrellas, but he was traded to Escogido. While playing for Escogido, he broke his leg in three places and shattered his knee colliding with Matty Alou in the outfield. The Braves did not have their batting champion for the entire 1971 season. After the knee healed and a hip-to-calf brace was removed, he went back to Escogido and, in a game against Licey, Cincinnati Reds pitcher Pedro Borbón hit Carty on the left side of his face and broke his jaw.
Carty never did make tremendous amounts of money in Major League Baseball. A restaurant he started in Atlanta, Rico Carty’s Open Pit Barbecue, burned down when flames leaped out of the open pit after the restaurant had been operating only fifteen days.
He did wear rings that spelled out his name and uniform number in diamonds. When he was in Atlanta, he earned a reputation as a shopper after buying twenty-five pairs of shoes at one time. He also once bought six suits and another time twenty-four shirts. When a reporter asked him about this, he said,