Catching Up With… CRIS CARPENTER
In the spirit of college baseball season being in full swing, along with the start of spring football, I recently reached out to undoubtedly one of the top dual-sport athletes in Bulldog history, Cris Carpenter.
Excelling in three sports, and doing so during the early age of specialization, Carpenter was truly a special and gifted all-around athlete. As a senior at Gainesville (Ga.) High School in 1983-84, he earned first-team All-State honors as both a quarterback and punter, and was an All-State guard in basketball. In 1984, it was believed Carpenter was the first, and remains the only, high school athlete ever to be voted to participate in both the GACA’s (Georgia Athletic Coaches Association) football and basketball all-star games. Yet, and get this, as one of the leading—if not the top—pitchers in the state at the time, it was said Carpenter’s “best” sport was likely baseball.
Georgia’s first scholarship punter, Carpenter’s 40.0-yard career net punting average from 1985-1986 still ranks second all-time in UGA football history. For his latter football season, he earned all-conference recognition as a redshirt sophomore. Starring on the mound for the Bulldogs, Carpenter’s 97 appearances, 2.93 ERA, 22 wins, 33 saves, and 260 strikeouts in three seasons (1985-1987) all still rank among the top seven in Georgia’s career leaders. A baseball All-American in 1986 and 1987, he became only the third Bulldog chosen in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft. Selected 14th overall by the St. Louis Cardinals, Carpenter remains the fastest Cardinal in history to make his major-league debut after being drafted (346 days).
Since retiring from baseball following an eight-season MLB career, Carpenter has lived and primarily worked in his hometown of Gainesville, where I caught up with him from his home:
PG: Cris, what’s your background in regards to the three sports you excelled at—baseball, football, and basketball—while growing up in Gainesville?
CC: Well, my time was pretty much full. But, growing up in Gainesville, I went to a very athletic high school where we were pretty much good in every sport. Before that, I was in an annual free throw shooting contest called the Hoop Shoot, and participated in Punt, Pass and Kick for football, whereas baseball kind of came on last for me. Basketball was probably my favorite sport. We won two state championships at Gainesville High School in basketball (1983 and 1984). But, I knew I wanted to punt and play baseball in college. I’ll always say, the best thing I was good at athletically was punting.
PG: So, why did you want to punt and pitch in college instead of, say, play basketball and be a quarterback—or something else?
CC: I knew I wasn’t going to play basketball in the long run. There just aren’t too many 6-foot-1 guys in the NBA. I knew if I was to play baseball in college, I wasn’t going to be able to play quarterback, as well. I thought my best chance, and what I liked the most, was to be a punter, and baseball was just something I wanted to do on the side. And, in order to do those two things, I thought my best opportunity was in Athens.
PG: What other schools recruited you hard, and why did you ultimately decide to sign with Georgia?
CC: My five visits were to Georgia, Georgia Tech, Clemson, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt. Clemson started recruiting me the summer of my sophomore year. But, I had gone to Georgia games growing up, there were a lot of Bulldog fans in Gainesville, and I really loved Athens. I just had a really good feeling there compared to Clemson and the other places.
PG: You excelled in two sports at Georgia after being exceptional in three in high school. How did you accomplish, and juggle, as much?
CC: And, I loved all three sports, so it broke my heart when I had to give up basketball. I decided this is what I wanted to do: play football and baseball. Some people thought football players who also played baseball played baseball to get out of football (spring practice). That might have been the case for some, but honestly not me. I really enjoyed that I was able to hang on and play two sports in college. When we went to bowl games for football, which were around Christmas, the first day I came back to Georgia, I was in the Coliseum (Georgia Coliseum, now Stegeman Coliseum) running with the baseball team at 6 a.m. I had no time off between the two sports, but I didn’t want time off. After football, I wanted to be with my buddies on the baseball team.
PG: After such a brilliant career in high school as a standout starting pitcher, how was it that you essentially became a reliever as soon as you came to UGA?
CC: It’s kind of a funny story… As a freshman, I didn’t pitch the first six or seven games of the [1985] season when Steve Webber (Georgia’s head baseball coach at the time) said I would be the team’s closer. The relief pitcher wasn’t really popular then. I remember going back to my room and looking at the Georgia media guide, and seeing the school record for saves in a season was three. I called home and said, “I’m not going to get to pitch!” But, Coach Webber finally put me in against Florida in a game we were getting blown out in, and I struck out the side. It was then that I had kind of found my niche as a reliever, and served that role from then on.
PG: Tell me about Georgia baseball’s rise to success when you were there, culminating with the 1987 College World Series team.
CC: Unfortunately, Georgia hadn’t been really good in the seasons leading up to 1985 (From the tourney’s inception in 1977 through 1984, the Bulldogs reached the SEC Tournament just once, 1978, when, at the time, four of the conference’s 10 teams—two each from two divisions—participated.). But in 1985, we brought in a recruiting class that included Derek Lilliquist (pitcher, Baseball America Freshman All-American) and Ron Wenrich (Baseball America Freshman-of-the-Year). I remember being on the mound when we won a home game against Vanderbilt that year late in the regular season, and everyone rushed onto the field from the dugout. I didn’t even know why they were rushing me, and everyone was tackling one another. I was like, what the heck is going on? Turned out, we had made the SEC Tournament for the first time in years, and we were just so excited to do that. We went onto the tournament finals to face Mississippi State. That ’85 team kind of set the precedent, and we started to gain a little momentum (33-23 record in ’85 to 35-24 in ’86). I thought we were really good in ’87 (42-21) when we made the conference tournament for the third straight year, and went onto the College World Series. We hit 102 home runs (a single-season school record until 2009) and had as good of a lineup as anyone in the country that year.
PG: Back to football, what is the most memorable game from your career as a Bulldog punter?
CC: Two stand out. I had a good day punting against Florida in 1985 (seven punts, including four downed inside the Gators’ own 25-yard line, for a 50-yard average) and, at Auburn the next season, when they turned the water cannons on our fans after beating them, I had two punts downed close to their goal line in the final quarter. More so, both games were typical Georgia-underdog-[Vince] Dooley wins when we were supposed to lose. The [24-3] win over Florida was when they were ranked No. 1 in the country. Against Auburn, reserve Wayne Johnson had to fill in [for James Jackson] at quarterback and we won [20-16] when Steve Boswell (senior linebacker) intercepted a pass at the end of the game.
PG: I noticed that you were selected twice in the MLB Draft in successive years (1986 and 1987). What was that all about?
CC: I had let it be known that I was not going to come out [of college] in 1986. At that point, I had only punted for one year and had promised Coach Dooley I would come back. Still, I got drafted anyway by the [Toronto] Blue Jays in the seventh round, but they offered me first-round money to try to get me to sign. But, like I said, I had made a promise to Coach Dooley. After the 1986 football season, it was projected that I was going to be a first-round pick, but I still had two more years I could play football. At the time, most of the conferences in the NCAA would let you be a pro in one sport and an amateur in another—but not the SEC. In fact, we petitioned the SEC to allow me to play pro baseball and still punt for Georgia (which wasn’t approved by the conference). I eventually got drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals. At the time, I was really looking forward to punting for the next two seasons, but at 22 years old, if I wanted to get to the big leagues, I needed to move on. I couldn’t pass on being a first-round pick in baseball. And, if I had to do it over again, I would have done the same thing.
PG: Playing with four different organizations (Cardinals, Marlins, Rangers, and Brewers), your MLB career was nearly a decade-long (1988-1996). Briefly describe your time in the big leagues (Carpenter’s 291 MLB pitching appearances are the most ever by a UGA baseball letterman.)?
CC: If you could take stressful, scary, exhilarating, exciting, devastating, and the greatest time of my life, and roll it all into one, that’s about what it was like in the Major Leagues. That’s about as easy and as simple as I can explain it.
PG: So, what’s been going on with you since you retired from baseball in 1996?
CC: I first wanted to finish my degree, and chose to do so at Piedmont College (Demorest, Ga.) because it was closer to my Gainesville home than UGA in Athens. After finishing my degree, I got a job at Gainesville High School, where I taught and was also the baseball team’s pitching coach for about 10 years. There, I was lucky enough to be part of three state championship teams. I quit coaching when my oldest daughter got to high school because both of my girls were soccer players, and I wasn’t going to miss my children playing. I went to Flowery Branch High School for a couple of years before returning to Gainesville, where I now teach world history as a half-day teacher.
PG: You mentioned your daughters. Please tell me about your family.
CC: My wife, Jane, who I met in high school and also went to UGA, and I have been married for 28 years. My oldest daughter, Liza, just got married about a month and a half ago. We also have 20-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. Sam is a lefthanded starting pitcher at Piedmont College, while his sister, Margaret, is at the College of Charleston in the honors college. She’s the smart one in the family (chuckling).
PG: I'm really interested, why did you decide to teach school after your MLB career? Was it to where you needed something to keep yourself busy, or did you have a passion to teach?
CC: I had a passion for my high school. I knew I wanted to be a pitching coach, and in order for that to happen, I needed to teach. Actually, my son is planning on doing that too; he’d love to be a pitching coach and teach. Teaching and coaching have been really good for me, I’ve had a great time, and I coached some really good teams at Gainesville. Great memories.
PG: Do you currently associate yourself with the UGA football program in any way?
CC: I still keep up with a few football teammates, but probably more from the baseball program. We don’t get back as much as we like because there has always been something going on. We were able to get back for a football reunion fairly recently the weekend of the Nicholls State game (2016) when the ’86 team was honored. Still, we love the University of Georgia, and when my son is done playing baseball, we’ll get to do a lot more of that.