Steve Carlton is in his 50th year of life. Come next Dec. 22, he will have been of this earth half a century. But don't bother the man himself with such nonsense.
"He doesn't celebrate birthdays anymore because he believes if you don't, you don't age," Tim McCarver said."He doesn't celebrate Christmas anymore either because all of these dates lend themselves to aging and he doesn't want to age."
Tim McCarver knows Steve Carlton probably better than any other man. They were teammates for more than 10 seasons with two teams, and McCarver served as Carlton's personal catcher.
They also were friends. They were such good friends they often spent time together between seasons.
In other words, there isn't anything about Carlton that McCarver hasn't learned in the 29 years they have known each other.
"I can say with all the assurance in the world that Lefty is not a bigot and he is not an anti-Semite," McCarver said Wednesday.
He sure is strange, though. That is evident from his comments that are quoted in an article in the April issue of Philadelphia magazine, the same article that gave rise to charges that Carlton is anti-Semitic.
The comments, in turn, give rise to the feeling that the world was better off all of those years when Carlton was pitching and not talking.
According to Pat Jordan, the writer of the article, Carlton alternately said the world is ruled or controlled by the Russian and United States governments, which "fill the air with low-frequency sound waves," the Elders of Zion, British intelligence agencies, "12 Jewish bankers meeting in Switzerland" and "a committee of 300 which meets at a roundtable in Rome."
Not only that, but Carlton also charges, according to Jordan, that President Clinton has "a black son" he won't acknowledge and that the AIDS virus was created at a secret Maryland biological warfare laboratory "to get rid of gays and blacks."
All of this and more from the fertile mind of a man who lives reclusively in what Jordan describes as a bunker in Durango, Colo.
Carlton's comments about the Elders of Zion and the 12 Jewish bankers in Switzerland have prompted charges of anti-Semitism.
In a statement issued through the Phillies Wednesday, Carlton said, "The article has almost no truth in it."
"Lefty reads too many books," McCarver said.
"If he's guilty of anything, it's believing some of the material he reads. Does he become confused with his reading about radical things? Yes. I've told him that. Does that translate into him being anti-Semitic? No."
McCarver was not surprised by what he read in the Jordan piece because he has vast experience with the muddled mind of the silent one.
"We drove across country three out of six years in the 70s to go hunting in Montana and Canada," the gifted baseball broadcaster related.
"We had an argument every other mile. We couldn't agree on anything. Is his eccentricty misguided? Yes, in my opinion. I'm not defending him. But he's a friend of mine and will remain a friend."