For 10 years, only two numbers have hung from the fence of Veterans Stadium, never to be worn again.
Tomorrow night, they will get company.
Tomorrow night, the No. 32 will be mounted alongside Robin Roberts' famed No. 36 and Richie Ashburn's storied No. 1.
And from tomorrow night on, in this town, that No. 32 will conjure up visions of one man and one man only: Steven Norman Carlton - the greatest lefthanded pitcher in the history of the Phillies.
Fifty years from now, your grandchildren will gaze out at that number, and what will they know of Steve Carlton?
They will know only that this was a man who won 329 games, who won 241 games in his 15 seasons as a Phillie, who collected a record four Cy Young Awards, who led his league in strikeouts five times, who won 15 games in a row for a team that won only 59 games all season.
But when the people who played with Steve Carlton reflect on that No. 32 in the weeks and months to come, it will not be Carlton's records and milestones that they recall.
The image that that No. 32 forever will summon for them is of the powerful aura of the most unusual man they ever played with - a man who almost transcended the normal limits of the human mind and body.
"Lefty always had a tough time being human," said Tim McCarver, a buddy of Carlton's and his longtime private catcher. "If you talked to him, he would really prefer not to be a member of the human race.
"Now, obviously, I'm not saying that with any malice whatever. That quality was one of the reasons for his success. He overcame his human frailty at a very young age. He lifted himself out of that human-failure stuff. He just got himself on another level mentally."
And the level on which he did reside was one with no other occupants.
People often have talked over the years of Carlton's awesome physical strength. But what his former teammates can't forget is his even more powerful mental strength - and the staggering regimen he followed to hone it.
"The image I'll always have of him is game day," said Phillies coach John Vukovich, who played with Carlton on the '72 Phils and later on the 1980 World Series champs. "You didn't approach him. All he wanted to hear from you was, 'Hi, Lefty.' And that's where everybody left it.
"You knew his concentration, from the time he got to the ballpark until the time he pitched, was too great. You didn't ever want to reach beyond that. He didn't want to hear anything from anybody on the day he pitched.
