It All Started in Oklahoma City for Baseball Legend Joe Carter

For Joe Carter, Millwood High School in Oklahoma City was more than a hometown campus, it was the foundation for both his athletic rise and the values that shaped his life.

Long before his walk-off home run sealed the 1993 World Series for the Toronto Blue Jays, Carter stood out as a transcendent multisport talent for the Falcons, setting the stage for a career that would make him one of baseball’s most memorable postseason heroes.

One of 11 children, Carter grew up in a hypercompetitive environment. At the same time, his father, Joe Sr., instilled a strong sense of humility and work ethic in him, emphasizing that his all star son should embrace servant leadership and treat everyone with respect.

Those lessons remain with Carter, 66, and continue to guide him in retirement.

On the baseball field, Carter was a four-year starting pitcher for Millwood, and played shortstop, third base and outfield. As a senior, he earned first-team all-state honors after batting .663 with 10 home runs and 31 RBIs. He hit .412 as a sophomore and .475 as a junior, earning first-team all-city recognition.

In basketball, Carter helped lead Millwood to its first-ever state championship, capturing the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association title in 1976. The Falcons reached the state finals in all three of Carter’s varsity seasons, winning twice and finishing runner-up once. He was an all-state selection as a senior and was named Class 2A state tournament MVP during the team’s second title run.

Carter also excelled in football, primarily serving as the team’s quarterback and defensive back. He helped lead the Falcons to a Class 2A runner-up finish as a sophomore.

Perhaps one of his most remarkable feats came in a sport he joined for only a few weeks. Late in his senior year, Carter competed in the long jump, winning a regional title before capturing the state track and field championship with a leap of 23 feet — the fourth-longest jump in the state that year, regardless of class.

After graduating high school, Carter played three seasons of college baseball at Wichita State University before getting selected No. 2 overall by the Chicago Cubs in 1981. He set 10 single-season and 11 career records at Wichita State, including career marks of 58 home runs, a .430 batting average and a .788 slugging percentage. His single-season records included a .450 batting average, 34 doubles and 13 triples.

Carter started his professional career with the Chicago Cubs and went on to play for five additional teams. In addition to his 1993 heroics, he was also part of the Blue Jays’ 1992 World Series championship team. Over 16 seasons, Carter recorded 2,194 hits, 396 home runs and 1,445 RBIs.

Since 2010, Carter has hosted the Joe Carter Classic golf tournament, which raises money for the Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada and scholarships for underprivileged and at-risk youth. Each year, the event awards 120 one-year scholarships and four four-year scholarships and has raised approximately $8 million since its inception.

On June 29, Carter will be inducted into the National High School Hall of Fame along with 11 other honorees during a ceremony at the 107th NFHS Summer Meeting in Salt Lake City. He is already a member of the Wichita State University Hall of Fame, Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame, Ontario Sports Hall of Fame and Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.

Question: Why did you decide to participate in multiple sports in high school?

Carter: My father was a multi-sport star, and in my neighborhood, growing up in the 1960s, that’s what everybody did. We moved into our new house in 1966. I was 6 years old, and in the neighborhood, we’d be outside playing kickball, baseball, football, basketball – whatever the sport was. It wasn’t just playing one sport. At a young age, I knew I was very athletic, and I wanted to do everything. I wanted to be right in the middle of every single activity. There’s nothing that I didn’t do. I was kind of inquisitive. … I was always active, if I would sit and watch somebody else play, I felt that I could go out there and do it better. But it also kept me involved and kept me out of trouble by playing multiple sports.

Question: Which sports did you gravitate toward most growing up?

Carter: I grew up gravitating toward baseball. I remember when I was seven years old, it was the first year that we could play. We didn’t have T-ball back then. … I remember we had our banquet, and we had a guest speaker, and it was in front of like 700 kids from the YMCA. The guest speaker goes, “You know, if one of you guys out here makes it to the Big Leagues, you’re lucky, because the odds are against you. It’s like 1-in-700 real chance to make it to the Big Leagues.” When he said that, I stood up in front of all those kids and said out loud, “All y’all can go home, because it’s gonna be me.” From 7 years old, I honestly believed that, and I never lost focus with that. I knew that was going to be my ticket out, but I still wanted to, once baseball season was over with, especially in the summertime, play other sports. I didn’t start playing football until seventh grade, and I was the quarterback on that team. And then after football season was over with, I went to basketball. And when basketball season was over with, I went to baseball. I just wanted to stay busy, and that was a way for me to do it.

Question: What are some of your fondest memories as a student- athlete at Millwood?

Carter: In high school, as a freshman, we had a very good freshman football program there, and we had gone undefeated for many years. Then in my freshman year, we lost a game, which was sad, because we broke the streak, but then I was able to suit up for a couple of varsity football games. So, I knew I was going to be taking the helm the very next year. When I became a sophomore, we had a pretty senior-laden ball club. So, they were going to have a sophomore come in and take over and hand the ball off to these seniors and be kind of the team leader. I remember one of the first games I played, the coach called me to the sideline, and we had this play called “24 Blast.” Well, I thought he said, “24 Pass.” So, I dropped back, faked it to the two running backs, and threw a deep route down the middle for a touchdown. … As a sophomore, that was huge, because usually it was just handing the ball off and kind of being a game manager. I was also the punter, and were ranked No. 1 in the state in our class and were undefeated and went to the state finals that year. Unfortunately, we got beat by one of the fastest backfields in all of Oklahoma. I still remember those guys from Beggs, Oklahoma. Rodney Tate, who went to University of Texas; Bobby Grayson, who went to University of Oklahoma … Ivan Doakes. I mean, they had one of the fastest backfields in the history of Oklahoma, and they ran the wishbone. In basketball, we ended up winning the state championship in 1976. It was the first state championship that Millwood had ever won because we became a high school in 1972. We beat Collinsville to win our first state championship. We were on top of the moon back then to win that. Those were the memories, you know, jumping up and down on the court, bringing home that gold basketball, and getting a day off from school the next Monday.

Question: Who are some people you looked up to growing up and helped shape who you are?

Carter: My parents were definitely a big influence. There were 11 of us in my family -- six girls and five boys -- and both my parents worked. My father owned a gas station, and he had me there. I was 9 years old working at his gas station, so he gave me a lot of responsibility early on. To start out, I would just go there on the weekends. … At 9 years old, I kept his books, and I guess that’s kind of my accounting major. I checked how much gas we sold and what we needed to order and things like that. (My father), I saw the way that he greeted everybody, and he knew all his customers, and he knew them by name. He always told me, “Hey, you’re no better than anybody else, and nobody is better than you, so you treat others like you want to be treated.” That left a lasting impression on me. To this day, as I get older, you forget names, but everywhere I played, everywhere I went, or anybody I met, I always focused on remembering their names because of him. That was the utmost respect, and I wanted to convey that to people when I talked to them. So, he was definitely the biggest influence on my life. Gene Stevenson, my coach at Wichita State. I mean, he was the one that really got me to that next level because I was a raw talent in baseball. When I went to Wichita State, I played football and baseball – went on a football scholarship because I wanted to play multiple sports. … The way my father brought me up and raised me, one of the things that I admired about him most was he could not afford to take off work because he had 11 kids. He needed to stay at work and make money because he had a lot of mouths to feed. But … he took off every single time to come watch me play, whether it was in high school, whether it was in college. His boss could not figure out why he was taking off, because he knew he needed the money, but (my dad) said that the support of watching his son play is more important than the money. So, he put in the time and the effort. He traveled wherever I played. Dad was always there, and another lesson I remember, when his boss had a son who played fast-pitch softball, my father would go see his son play and take us. He took me to all of the Oklahoma basketball games when Alvin Adams was there. He loved being around sports, and when my father’s boss was on his death bed, he had never really saw his son play all those sports. When he talked to my father, he said, “Joe, I see why you did that. … I never took time off, but you took off even though you couldn’t afford to. You made it happen.” And so that was one of the biggest lessons that my dad instilled in me. When I looked up in the stands, my dad was always there, and that meant a lot to me.

Question: Are you still involved with your high school?

Carter: I go back there a little bit. I’ve lived in Kansas City since 1986, but to go back there, they have done a tremendous job. They’ve named their baseball field after me, which is a huge honor and a legacy. I’m always rooting for them. I go there to see the games, stop by and just show my face, because, you know, the neighborhood I grew up in, not a lot of athletes made it out of there. So, for them to see a person that grew up right there on 51st Street make it, that’s an inspiration for those young kids there. Superintendent (Cecilia) Robinson-Woods has done a tremendous job in keeping the Carter family name alive tat Millwood High School, and it’s something that I’m very proud of because those are my roots. Those are the people that formed me into the person that I am and got me to where I needed to be.

Question: Tell me the story behind how you ended up at the state track and field meet your senior year.

Carter: In seventh and eighth grade I always ran track because you could do baseball and track at the same time. I was pretty fast for being as tall as I was. I ran the 100 and the 4x100. I was the anchor. I did the long jump, and that was my specialty. So, when I got to high school, I couldn’t do it because baseball and track were at the same time. It wasn’t until my senior year, we had just gotten beaten in the second round of the playoffs, and my high school baseball career was over. I knew that my high school was performing in the (track) regionals, so I went to go watch. ... So I’m sitting in the stands, and the track coach is my football coach, Leodis Robinson, and he comes up, he says, “Hey, you want to long jump?” I told him I hadn’t jumped in four years. He said, “Well, your name has always been on the list that you could jump.” And I’m like, OK, I’ll do it. So, I take one of the guys’ uniforms because I don’t have one. I have tennis shoes on and everything. So, we go down there, I take his uniform, get dressed, go out there, and I won the event. … Because it was the regionals, I qualified for the state finals the next week. … The state finals were at like 8 a.m. and we had three jumps for the preliminaries. After the first three jumps, I was in first place. Well, there was also a young man named Kirk Phillips that was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys. He played for Spiro, Oklahoma, and that’s a team that we beat in the state finals in basketball that year. So we got down to the last two jumps, and I scratched on my second jump, and he passed me. I’m then the last guy in the pit to jump, and my coach comes up and says, “Hey, you’ve got to jump 23 feet to win it.” I jumped off my right leg rather than my left leg because I sustained a knee injury in high school in football my senior year – so I jumped off the wrong foot. (Coach) went down to the end of the pit and said, “this is 23 feet right here.” I took off, hit the board perfect, and jumped. It was like 23 maybe 23 and a quarter inch, something like that. But it was the (fourth) best jump in Oklahoma that year, and I ended up winning the state championship. It’s just that competitive nature that I have to go out there, and if you tell me I can’t do something, then, to me, it was like, “OK, watch this.” That was my that was my whole mentality, because I knew I had confidence in myself. It wasn’t cockiness. It was just confidence that I had in myself that I could do something, especially if you told me that I couldn’t.

Question: Why did you decide to start the Joe Carter Classic golf tournament?

Carter: To much is given, much is expected. I’ve always felt that way, and my parents were that way. When I got married to my wife, Diana, we’ve been married over 45 years now, she was a giver. So that was around me, and because of my faith in God, in Jesus Christ, it’s given me a platform to be able to go back and help kids. Because no matter who we are or where we are, there was always someone who helped us get there. I remember when I got into the Big Leagues as a 21-year-old rookie, one of the first roommates I had was Fergie Jenkins, who is now a Hall-of-Famer. We both played for the Cubs, and he was my first Big League roommate when I went to Spring Training. So here I am, and Fergie Jenkins only had maybe two years left or so, and he pulls me aside. He didn’t let me pay for anything. He took care of me, but he told me, “What I’m doing for you now, you pay it back and you do it for the young guys that come up when you become a veteran.” He said, “don’t get too big on yourself, or think you can’t help the young guys.” And so that was always my mantra, that was always my identity.

Question: What’s some advice you might give a high school student-athlete today?

Carter: I’ve always told (parents) to let their kids, first of all, be kids. No one knows for sure what they’ll be when they’re eight, nine, 11 years old. They might have an idea of what they like, but they should try a lot of things. Try different sports. They may think it’s one sport, but if they put all their eggs in one basket, in one sport, and something happens, then what do they have to fall back on? I tell everyone, especially the student-athletes, what my dad told me: in any situation, always be ready. When I got to the Big Leagues, one of the best managers I had was Cito Gaston in Toronto, and one thing he preached was to always have a plan. You can be sitting on the bench in high school and you can do one or two things: you can sulk about it, or you can go out there and improve your skills to get better. All you need is an opportunity, but if you’re always in a bad mood because you’re not playing, and then when your time is called, you’re not mentally prepared because you’re still thinking about how bad you were treated. Well, that’s the wrong attitude. … In Cleveland, I wasn’t playing every day. I was platooning, but as soon as the game started, I would sit on the bench with my helmet right next to me, with my batting gloves on and a bat in my hand from the first inning. My coach Pat Corrales would always look down there and just shake his head. I’m like, “coach, whenever you need me, I’m ready.” That’s the attitude you must have. … Be ready, and once you get in, never look back. Always give it 100% and if you can look yourself in the mirror after you’ve played the game and say “I gave it my all today,” that’s all that anybody can ask of you.

Question: What does your induction into the National High School Hall of Fame mean to you?

Carter: This is big. I’ve been very blessed and very fortunate to be in a lot of Hall of Fames, but when something is awarded to you on a national level that encompasses 50 states … I’m grateful, I’m thankful, I’m humbled by the award. It’s something I never thought about. Even being 66, it is still an honor and a blessing for me to receive an induction into the National High School Hall of Fame. It makes you speechless and just goes to show what a great honor that it is.

Jordan Morey is manager of communications and media relations at the NFHS.