Tim McCarver and the tools of assurance

The standout catcher and Hall of Fame broadcaster dies at 81.

Everything about Tim McCarver was righteous, including his indignation. 

Tell him a guy “has good speed for a catcher” and he would squawk, as would any catcher who once led the National League in triples. He also passed Garry Maddox on the basepaths while in his home run trot one night. “Sheer speed,” he explained.

Tell your first and third basemen to guard the baselines, late in the game, and McCarver would  erupt. Why are you giving up singles that could become game-tying runs, just to honor a baseball motto that makes no sense?

When Memphis named its ballpark after McCarver, someone told him it was a tribute to his arm, which had passed away, years before. Even he had to laugh, through clenched teeth. 

The rest of McCarver left us on Thursday, at age 81. He had  a fulltime job in major league baseball from the time he was 17 until 71 and, without checking the printouts, he left every ballpark on every night having made someone laugh, argue or think. You always knew he was there.

McCarver was at the core of Cardinal teams that won the World Series in 1964 and 1967 and got to Game 7 in 1968. It was a group of worldly, opinionated men like Orlando Cepeda, Curt Flood, Lou Brock, Mike Shannon, Bill White, Ken Boyer and of course Bob Gibson. Most of them lived impressive lives once they retired. McCarver listened and realized how much he could learn.

He  was the son of a Memphis cop who didn’t see the need to scale walls when he would head-butt his way through. But one day he was drinking an orange soda on the bus, and Gibson mischievously asked him if he could have a swig, McCarver was taken aback, both by the request and the challenge to his own prejudices.

“I’ll save you some,” McCarver said, finally, and Gibson laughed. “Good answer,” he replied. What’s interesting is that McCarver was secure enough to tell that story.

The two became a high-functioning battery even before Gibson’s legendary work in the pitching-rich year of 1968, when Gibson gave up 34 earned runs in 38 starts and had a 1.18 ERA.

McCarver called Gibson “a difficult friend,” and he did not return from his trips to Gibson’s mound without shrapnel. But they bonded, just as McCarver had with Steve Carlton. McCarver was shipped from Philadelphia to Montreal early in the 1972 season, just after Carlton came over from St. Louis, and just in time to miss Carlton assembling one of the best seasons in the game’s history. He went 27-10 with 30 complete games and eight shutouts for a team that won 59. “Hitting him was like drinking soup with a fork,” said Willie Stargell, who used to say the same about Sandy Koufax.

Carlton was still there when McCarver returned in 1975, and he won three more Cy Young Awards, two with McCarver as his designated catcher. McCarver had to give that up, however, when Bob Boone got settled behind the plate. He didn’t like being supplanted like that, not a damn bit, because he rightfully believed he salvaged Carlton’s career. Besides, McCarver was born for the one-on-one relationship that a battery requires. Everyone he ever met was seen and heard.

McCarver retired after the 1979 season to begin his broadcasting career aside Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn. But he was activated as a special guest at the end of the next season, when the Phillies were trying to nail down the N.L. East on the way to their first world championship.

On Sept. 24, with the division title very much uncertain, McCarver pinch-hit in the 10th inning of a double shutout and neatly bunted Jay Loviglio over to second, so Pete Rose could win the game with a single. Muscle memory can be a wonderful thing.

McCarver was an MVP runnerup in 1967 and had1,501 hits. He still reached a far bigger audience with a microphone, through his work with the Mets and then on the networks, where he teamed with Al Michaels, Bob Costas and two generations of Bucks. In 2012 he won the Ford Frick Award for broadcasting, which got him into a corner of Cooperstown with Vin Scully and Ernie Harwell and all the greats.

Did you know that a slider makes a “red dot” when it spins? You didn’t know until McCarver told you. He had an evangelist’s fervor when he made a point, which grated on some folks, but he was both more informative and less afraid than anyone else who has had the seat, before him or since.

McCarver lost his gig with the Yankees because he took on George Steinbrenner’s judgments, particularly when the club took Kenny Rogers over Chuck Finley for a pennant run. He upbraided Deion Sanders for playing  NFL games in the afternoon and NLCS games at night, and Sanders emptied a water  bucket on him in response. (Sanders eventually became an outspoken analyst on NFL Network.)

Yet McCarver took pains to keep it light. To him, the game was important enough for the occasional laugh, and there was an occasion every day. On really hot days in Philly he would take batting practice in a fur coat. In the Mets’ booth, he and Ralph Kiner were the definition of easy listening.

Kiner could fly a malaprop now and then, and one day he referred to his partner as “Tim McArthur.” At the end of the game, a Mets’ loss, McCarver said, “Well, Ralph, as Gen. MacArthur once said, ‘Chance favors the prepared man,’ and the Mets just weren’t prepared tonight.’ Without a hitch, Kiner replied, “Yes, and Gen. MacArthur also said, ‘I shall return,’ and we’ll be back in just one moment.”

They were in Wrigley Field on a cloudy Saturday and observed a wedding ceremony. “If the game gets rained out, does the wedding count?” McCarver wondered. Kiner said, “Only if it goes five innings.”

It was also possible to spend a conversational hour with McCarver without mentioning baseball at all. He was hooked on Stephen Sondheim’s music, could have taught a world history course without much preparation, and loved wine so much that he lived in Napa Valley after he retired.

He was neither a huckster nor a cheerleader nor an umpire nor a rubber stamp when he was in the booth, which meant (A) he revolutionized the job and (B) he wouldn’t have a prayer of getting work today. 

If confronted with the analytic avalanche that either fascinates or disgusts today’s analysts, McCarver would have examined the numbers, picked out the ones he liked and dismissed the rest.

It’s hard to imagine he would have ever liked the ghost runner, but who knows? That’s how McCarver made his living and legacy, seeing things nobody else could.