Tim McCarver
1941-2023
Tim McCarver, a twenty-one year veteran of Major League Baseball, died this past week at the age of 82. McCarver was one of those few players who played in four different decades, 1959-1980. It was a career that spanned over 1,900 games and produced 1,501 hits, 97 home runs, 645 RBI, and a .271 lifetime batting average, but the mere numbers don't capture the hard-nosed all around good player, a catcher, that McCarver was.
His career was spent primarily with the Cardinals and the Phillies. How good a catcher was he? Well, he was the preferred catcher to two pitchers of whom you may have heard: Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton. How's that for a couple of references?
He also played in three World Series, all with the Cardinals, in 1964, 1967, and 1968. He played in all 21 of those games, had 71 at bats, 2 home runs and 11 RBI and hit .311.
Several generations of baseball fans know Tim McCarver only as the color analyst for Fox Broadcasting who did All-Star games, Playoff and World Series games with play-by-play man Joe Buck. For some reason, social media always seemed to be filled with brickbats aimed at McCarver, which I could never quite understand. I always thought that McCarver was quite good and insightful, and I was sorry when he retired from the Fox team. I missed him on those broadcasts.
I also admit to having an affinity for McCarver since the 1960's when I learned that he was educated at a Catholic high school in Memphis that was staffed by the Christian Brothers. So he and I had that in common. Whenever McCarver's teams visited a city, he would find out of there was a Christian Brothers community in the area, and he would leave tickets for the Brothers to come see the games. Pretty nice.
RIP Tim McCarver.
No comments:
Post a Comment