How Don Carman Remained Batterymates With Darren Daulton Through His Final Hours

Throughout a long Major League Baseball career, one might have hundreds who they call teammates, but only a select few they can call true friends. Despite bonding while traveling the country for six months trying to win a World Series championship, as soon as teammates clean out their lockers, they often go their separate ways until spring training.

With the platitudes expressed for Darren Daulton in the wake of his passing, one of his teammates shared how a union formed before their first major league game together persisted through Daulton's final hours. Don Carman, a former Philadelphia Phillies pitcher who broke into the majors with Dalton in 1983, explained the nature of their transcendental friendship.

“We had something special, because in baseball I have a lot of really good friends that I spent time with, [but] the day they stop playing, they go home and you never hear from them again,” Carman said via phone shortly after Daulton's death. “It happens all the time. … That's the rule. … He and I had an amazing friendship, a wonderful friendship, [we were] very close, and I loved him like mad. There's not a time where we wouldn't hug, kiss each other, and say, 'I love you,' because you knew you had something different.”

To understand just how their relationship started, go back to the 1983 season when the two were a battery for the Philadelphia Phillies Double-A team in Reading, Pennsylvania. After both had breakout seasons in the minors, the National League champion Philadelphia Phillies called them up when rosters expanded. Arriving in the heat of a pennant race, the pair watched as future Hall of Famers Steve Carlton, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, and Mike Schmidt worked at clinching the pennant. Finally, with the pennant in hand, manager Paul Owens inserted Daulton into the starting lineup on the next-to-last game of the 1983 season.

In the bottom of the 8th inning, Daulton scored the go-ahead run against the Pittsburgh Pirates, giving Owens the opportunity to summon Carman to seal the deal. The lefty spent most of the season as Reading's closer and he now was in the position to get a save in his major league debut. As a nervous Carman approached the mound, a familiar face greeted him with the right message to get him under control.

“I remember being scared to death,” he said. “Then he [Daulton] came out the mound and said something like, 'We made it. You and I made it. We're here, and we're playing in the big leagues.' I remember still being afraid, but at least I didn't have to worry about how to pitch and what I wanted to do because the guy knew me so well. And I did, I had a 1-2-3 inning. It was obviously my first outing, but it was as much as being comfortable with knowing that I didn't have to think; all I had to do, whatever he put down, I'm going to throw it because I couldn't think because I was so scared. I was the closer in Reading for the last three months of the season, so he knew me, what I wanted to do, and what made me effective, so I didn't have to worry about that.”

Just how Daulton helped to guide Carman in his debut, Carman noted that “Dutch” had a magnetism that drew his teammates to follow him. From the beginning of his career, Daulton had an uncanny ability to inspire that was evident across the league.

“The strange thing about him, everybody in baseball knows he was one of the most special baseball-type people—he was the consummate player and everybody looked up to him, even when he was 26-27, the 35-year-olds looked up to him," Carman said. “He was the leader of every team he was on. I've never met a better leader, just an amazing guy; he was like that in the minor leagues. He was a natural.”

Daulton made it a point to extend himself not only to his teammates, but to everyone around him who made the game run. Carman felt it was how “Dutch” treated those whose names did not show up in the box score that was a true testament to his character.

“It didn't matter if you were grounds crew or the owner of the team, everybody wanted to be around him and everybody felt special,” he said.“It was every person; it didn't matter who you were. If the owner of the team came over, he would walk over, grab him by the face with both hands and kiss him on the cheek. If it was the guys who just dragged the field and they walked by, 'Dutch' would do the same thing. It didn't matter who you were, you demanded his respect because he gave it to you, and everybody felt special.

“There's something about his personality that gave you this feeling that he really does care. This moment he cares about me, enough to pay attention to me, to listen to me, to smile at me, to make eye contact with me, and hear what I just said.”

Philadelphia's love affair with Dutch grew as his spirit and personality resonated with the Phillies faithful. The Phillies honored their leader when they inducted him into their Wall of Fame in 2010. Even amongst the of Hall of Famers, Carman's keen eye noted that in later years, Daulton stood out as the obvious fan favorite.

“When you go to the Wall of Fame in Philly, they call them all out on the field,” he said. “They always call him out last because they know he's going to get the biggest ovation every time. You're talking about Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt, who spent more time there and are in the Hall of Fame. People would cheer, but when he came out, the place would erupt. He even made fans feel special."



While Daulton stayed in the spotlight, he and Carman remained tight behind the scenes. They participated in each other's weddings while becoming confidants throughout tough times in their lives. They stuck together even when many walked away from Daulton when he released his controversial book, “If They Only Knew” in 2007.

“Throughout all three marriages, he and I talked because he knew he could trust me," Carman said. “He would come to me for advice through all of this, so we've become very close over the years. When he went through his bizarre time when he wrote the book [If They Only Knew], a lot of people didn't know how to respond; I didn't know how, but it wasn't by leaving him because I knew this person and something was wrong. It turns out he had a brain tumor. As soon as they removed the bulk of the brain tumor, the crazy behavior changed and he was back. It was amazing."

When Daulton's brain cancer recently took a turn for the worse, Carman dropped what he was doing to make the three-hour trip to Daulton's bed side. For the next two weeks, he made spending time with Dutch his main priority.

“I kind of put work on hold for the last two weeks because that's when he made a really downward turn,” he said. “I've been with him every other day for the past 15 days. He lives three hours away. I would drive up, see him, and leave [his wife] Amanda, her mother, and his parents. I would spend the day there, go to a hotel, and then come back see him, and then drive home. A couple of days later, I would do it again.”

Even in his final days, Daulton stayed true to form, mustering up whatever strength he had left to make Carman feel welcome. This time, Carman did most of the heavy lifting.

“Obviously it was difficult,” he said. “The last ten days, he couldn't talk, but he could listen, smile, and hug you with one arm as the right side was paralyzed. Since he could do that, I did the talking.”

Carman spent five hours with Daulton on the day he died. Speaking with him only two days later, Carman did his best to hold back tears while humbly expressing gratitude for being there one last time for his good friend.

“I'm just glad I could talk to him.”

* This article originally appeared in the now defunct Sports Post on August, 10, 2017.

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How one baseball card pack ignited a writer's quest to discover the afterlife of a major league career

Opening a pack of baseball cards for a child in the 1980s brought feelings of tremendous anticipation not only for the cards that were hidden beneath the sealed wax paper, but also the stale piece of gum that was pressed up against hopefully the worst one in the bunch. For many, those images on the front of each card and the stats on the back were burned into memory after spending hours poring over their contents. Well before the advent of widespread availability through cable television and the internet, these cards were often one's only visions of the players we followed in newspaper box scores. These men stood as heroes to an entire generation, frozen in time due to a picture on a baseball card; however, what happens when that fame melts and the players are left to deal with the closing of their careers at an age when most of their peers are just establishing theirs? 

Author Brad Balukjian cracked open a pack of his favorite 1986 Topps and after sorting out the players, he set out to find the next world for a ballplayer after an entire generation has passed since they ended their career. Engaging in a cross-country trek starting from his home in California, he put over 10,000 miles in seven weeks on his 2002 Honda Accord to meet with and examine the lives of the 14 players in one pack of 1986 Topps baseball cards for a book cleverly entitled “Wax Pack.”

1986 Topps Wax Pack (WaxPackBook.com)

Fast forward thirty years and every statistic that can be measured or imagined exists a mouse click away on the internet. While seemingly every bit of data exists about their effectiveness on the field, for most of the players in the 792 card set, little is written about what happened to them after they put their gloves away and hung up their spikes. The idea for breathing life to the stories of each of the men in this singular pack of baseball cards was spawned from Balukjian and a friend reminiscing about their childhood.

“One of my best friends and I were talking about growing up in that era and how we really felt like some of the best stories could be told from some of the players who were not superstars,” Balukjian said during a July 2015 stop in Brooklyn. “These guys maybe have not been asked as often about their careers and their lives. We started to think about what would be a project that would allow us to start to explore those stories from those guys who were not the superstars. I had the idea that what was really fun about buying a pack of baseball cards as a kid was the random factor, you don’t know what you’re going to get in the pack.”

After opening a few packs to get one with a mix of players that were attainable to reach, Balukjian settled on a collection that included 14 players and one checklist. Once he had his pack laid out in front of him, he decided how he was going to string together this group who all shared one thing in common, their presence on the eerily familiar black bordered 1986 Topps baseball card.

“Being a random selection of players, most of the guys are not going to be the superstars,” he said. “I thought there are 15 cards in a pack, 15 chapters in a book, it sort of lends itself to that format to make a book about that single pack. Initially we talked about doing a book pack about the 1985 season told from the varying perspectives of whatever 15 players we got in the pack. As we tried to figure out how to do that, it got a little bit difficult because there might not be a cohesive narrative from 15 random guys, so we decided it would be better to focus on the journey of trying to track down the 15 guys in the pack, telling the story of the journey, and each of the individual players.”

Now that Balukjian had a plan, he set out to track down the men in his pack of baseball cards. They ranged from the highly recognized (Carlton Fisk and Doc Gooden), to the controversial (Vince Coleman), to the relative unknown (Jaime Cocanower). Spread out across the country, the author filled his summer with appointments stretched out from coast to coast.

“Most guys were pretty receptive,” he said. “Garry Templeton and Steve Yeager both were guys that on the first phone call, they seemed like they would cooperative. They may not have fully understood the project, but when I said, ‘Hey I’m going to be in your town on this date,’ they said, ‘I could do that.’ With a couple of exceptions, most of the guys were pretty easy to work with.”

Garry Templeton with the Wax Pack / (WaxPackBook.com)

Of course the story wouldn’t be so interesting if all of the players fell in line. It turned out that the highest profile players in Balukjian’s pack turned out to be the most elusive. Using tactics that could serve him well as a private investigator, he turned to covert methods to try to track down the likes of Fisk and Coleman, which he kept running tabs of in his blog.

“In a way those failures makes the book better,” he said. “I think it is better that I don’t get all 14 players. The story of sneaking my way into an exclusive golf course in Sarasota, Florida to try to ambush Carlton Fisk after he plays a round of golf is going to be really fun. Tracking down Vince Coleman’s childhood home, his high school in Jacksonville, and the story of how he told me basically to ‘f-off,’ those stories would be kind of more fun — the quest aspect.” 

As close as the author would get to Fisk in Cooperstown (WaxPackBook.com)

As Balukjian continued to survey the players in his pack of baseball cards while spending endless hours on the road counting off whether Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts had a grip on each locale, he found a consistent theme with each of the retired athletes. They no longer basked in their glory days the way fans romanticize their on-field accomplishments.

“There is a disconnect between the fans’ enthusiasm for some of the stuff in baseball history and the players that were actually part of that history,” he noted. “As fans we tend to glorify and get really enthusiastic about our memories. The guys that actually lived through that stuff, even the really positive moments, I found a lot of the guys kind of had the attitude of being not too excited to talk about or relive those moments. 

“I think there are a couple of reasons why that may be. It may be painful; relieving those glory days is a reminder to them that they will never be that athlete again. You are dredging up a lot of feelings and memories about a time when their entire lives were dedicated to achieving this goal. Once you are past your prime, you know you will never win another World Series or hit another home run. It could be kind of painful to have to talk about that.”

Many of the players had difficulty replacing the highly regimented major league baseball player's schedule and the adulation that comes with playing in front of 30,000 fans every night. Their struggles transitioning to a regular civilian caused problems in many facets of their lives, including their relationships and what vices they sought to cope.

“It was hard for all of them,” he said. “It’s no coincidence that some major life changes happened in those years right after they retired. Some guys started drinking, some guys got divorced, and some tried some other professions where they didn’t catch on. I think they all had a hard time letting go of playing. Even if they were going into coaching, Randy Ready said something like, ‘Putting the player inside to bed, letting that person go is a very hard thing to do.’ They all spoke to the competitive nature they needed to have to get to the major leagues, and how hard it is to know that you’ll never be able to do that again.”

This isn’t to say that all of these men are disgruntled ex-athletes, rather Balukjian’s odyssey revealed how human these ballplayers are. While most only get to know them from their baseball cards and television highlights, he was fortunate enough to be able to engage them in some deep conversations that had nothing to do with stepping in between the lines.

“A lot of the time we haven’t talked about baseball directly,” he said. “It’s been about relationships — really candid, really powerful and emotional stuff about relationships with their fathers, relationships with their kids, with spouses, and the game itself. Some stuff that comes up has been very traumatic that they’ve talked about.” 

These deeply guarded layers are ones that he intends to reveal in his book. He hoped that by peeling back the curtain on their lives, he will appeal to a group wider than just baseball fans.

“I’m more interested in understanding these guys as people and men,” he stated. “I’m less interested in asking about their favorite memory in their baseball career was or how they felt when they won the World Series; they’ve been asked that a million times. I’m more interested in what they did the day after they retired, or how did being on the road for all those years affected their marriages — things of broader interest than baseball.”

One such player that he connected with beyond balls and strikes was former Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Don Carman, who was Balukjian’s favorite player growing up. Carman is now a sports psychologist that works for super agent Scott Boras, whose clientele includes New York Mets ace Matt Harvey.

“I felt like after spending a couple of days with him, it sounds cheesy, but it almost was like I was meant to have him as a favorite player,” he said. “Getting to know him personally I really identified with who he is as a person. He told me a lot of stories about growing up in Western Oklahoma in a difficult family situation. He said his dad never spoke to him directly ever. His dad died of a heart attack when he was 15, so there’s a lot of pain there. I couldn’t relate to that because I had a good relationship with my dad, but Don described sort of being sort of an outside as a kid, always being a little bit different. That’s something I could relate to. When you make these human connections with a guy that was literally my idol as a kid, it is a really unique thing. It’s no longer, ‘I’m a fan and he’s my favorite player,’ it’s sort of a relationship between two people.”

Balukjian with Don Carman (r.) / (WaxPackBook.com)

At 34 years old, Balukjian is about the same age as when many of his subjects ended their professional baseball careers. This journey allowed him to examine many questions about his own life, taking bits of wisdom from each interview to help him gain perspective on his own direction.

“Frankly, it’s not even about baseball,” he said. “Really it’s a story about growing up. I am now the age these guys were when these guys had to retire and stop playing the game for a living. I’m a single guy, 34, no kids, nowhere near married. I’m sort of facing my own questions in life; do I need to grow up? I always bucked against the trend of getting married, settling down, and doing the traditional thing career wise. This book is giving me an opportunity to think out loud about myself and also learn from the lives of 14 other men that had to grow up themselves when they could no longer play baseball.”

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