Richard Carter
Journalist, 89 NEW YORK - Richard Carter, 89, a newspaper journalist and author who wrote on crime, medicine and baseball but was best remembered for his books on racetrack handicapping under the pseudonym Tom Ainslie, died Aug. 31 in New City, N.Y. The cause of death was not announced.
Journalist, 89
NEW YORK - Richard Carter, 89, a newspaper journalist and author who wrote on crime, medicine and baseball but was best remembered for his books on racetrack handicapping under the pseudonym Tom Ainslie, died Aug. 31 in New City, N.Y. The cause of death was not announced.
Mr. Carter won a 1951 George Polk Award for a series about racketeering on New York's waterfront while he was a reporter for the New York Compass. He collaborated with William J. Keating, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan, to write The Man Who Rocked the Boat, a memoir relating the prosecution of waterfront crime and the basis for a movie, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.
Mr. Carter also wrote a biography of Jonas Salk, Breakthrough, and a critical view of the American Medical Association, The Doctor Business. He collaborated with major league outfielder Curt Flood on his memoir, The Way It Is, published in 1971, while Flood was challenging baseball's reserve clause in the federal courts.
But beginning in the mid-1960s, Carter turned his literary pursuits to a long-held passion - horse racing.
According to his son, John Carter, he adopted a new literary persona when writing about the track because "horse racing was a step above organized crime" for some. As a joke, Richard Carter took the name Ainslie from the whiskey brand. Under that name, he wrote Ainslie's Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing.
Beyond his guide, first published in 1968, he reached a wide audience with books like The Compleat Horseplayer, Ainslie's Encyclopedia of Thoroughbred Handicapping, and Ainslie's Complete Guide to Harness Racing. He was also a columnist for the Daily Racing Form.
Mr. Carter, a New York native, graduated from City College. In addition to his son, of Stony Point, N.Y., he is survived by his daughter, Nancy Carter, of Seattle, and three grandchildren. His wife, Gladys, died in 1996. - N.Y. Times News Service
