Gary Carter Marquee Hall of Fame 2003

His first eleven seasons were spent in Montreal, and the Expos never finished first in any of them. He was plainly their best player: three Gold Gloves, five Silver Sluggers, eleven All-Star selections, two All-Star Game MVP awards, and a share of the 1984 National League RBI title with Mike Schmidt at 106 apiece. Then they traded him to New York.

The 1986 Mets won 108 games and the World Series, and his part in it was a single with two outs in the tenth inning of Game 6, when one more out would have ended their season. He caught 2,056 games in all, a total only four men have passed, and hit 324 home runs.

The writers needed six ballots. In 2002 he came eleven votes short of the 354 he needed; the next year he drew 387 and went in wearing a Montreal cap, the first player to do so. He died of a brain tumor in February 2012, at 57, nine years after his induction.