Richard Carter, 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. He was 89.
His death was announced by his son, John.
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 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 the 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, Mr. Carter turned his literary pursuits to a long-held passion — thoroughbred racing.
According to 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.
“My own interest in racing arose more than a half century ago,” he wrote in the preface to the 1986 third edition of “Ainslie’s Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing.”
“But I was a serious-minded type with a thin billfold. I saw no profit in betting on something about which I knew nothing. I decided to buy some books. No such thing was to be had. I was appalled. …
“‘The reason they don’t publish books for horseplayers,’ explained one merchant, ‘is that horseplayers can’t read.'”
Mr. Carter found otherwise. 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.