Tim McCarver has died.
Terrible announcer, I was so happy when he retired.
Solid catcher, most famous as a player for catching Gibson and Carlton.
still wont help … they should move divisions … i mean the dodgers clean their clock no matter what
and ghost runner sounds like a bunch of 8-year-olds playing ball in the vacant lot behind the abandoned facto y doesn’t it?
He was a perfectly acceptable color commentator. Certainly better than a lot of them. At least he had things to say.
McCarver once led the NL in triples. I would be damn surprised if any other catcher in the live ball era ever did that.
He did have things to say, often very insightful. I remember back in the eighties when he was broadcasting for the Mets. He caught something in the pitcher’s delivery in the first inning of the game (sorry, don’t recall exactly what), looked down at Keith Hernandez in the batter’s box, and said “Keith saw that too. He’s going to blast this next pitch out of the park,” and Hernandez, who as you will remember didn’t have a lot of power, did exactly that.
I also heard him speak as part of a panel a few years later. He had several very interesting things to say about baseball from both inside and outside perspectives, none of which remember specifically at this point, but hey, I don’t remember who any of the other panelists were…
Sad news. I remember him well as a player, too. Must be getting old…
Re: catchers leading the league in triples.
Carlton Fisk led the AL in triples (tied with Joe Rudi) in 1972.
From ESPN’s obit/remembrance:
“At times, he seemed to have psychic powers. In Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, the score was tied at 2 between the Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Yankees drew in their infield with the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the ninth. Relief ace Mariano Rivera was facing Arizona’s Luis Gonzalez.”
“Rivera throws inside to left-handers,” McCarver observed. “Left-handers get a lot of broken-bat hits into shallow outfield, the shallow part of the outfield. That’s the danger of bringing the infield in with a guy like Rivera on the mound.”
“Moments later, Gonzalez’s bloop to short center field drove in the winning run.”
Cool! I watched that game (and was DELIGHTED when the ball landed in the outfield) but don’t remember McCarver saying this particular line. Makes perfect sense, though. Thanks for sharing.
I don’t know why so many people didn’t like McCarver as an announcer. I thought he was pretty good, pretty insightful. Sad day for baseball.
Well at least he was better than Morgan. Morgan was the worst.
You haven’t heard Kevin Frandsen.
I never minded McCarver; doing a little digging, it sounds like those who didn’t like his announcing felt that he was overly opinionated, and/or talked too much.
This one.
Morgan was better than Phil Rizzuto.
“Look, White! Look up there at the moon! Look, you can see Texas…”
And possibly better than Lou Boudreau as well. Boudreau had a tendency to mispronounce everybody’s name, among other things.
Maybe HOF shortstops should not be announcers?
I agree that McCraver had a tendency to dominate the discussion.
Or Harry Caray, particularly during his tenure as the Cubs’ announcer. He’s still venerated by Cubs fans, but even prior to the stroke he suffered in 1987, it was like listening to your drunk grandpa talking about baseball.
“Hey, Steve…did you know that Jody Davis’s name backwards is Sivad Ydoj?”
Scooter was great in the 70s. Not so much by the 90s. The few old classic games I’ve heard like Maris’s 61st Scooter was good. He allowed the game to breathe. Most remember the poor, old, tired Scooter of the 90s though.
Mike Shannon, long-time Cardinals radio broadcaster, had a bit of that vibe too.
Hell, those guys were all 18543895203 times as good as Pat Tabler, whom the Blue Jays finally got rid of this offseason after 20 or so years.
Tabler, in those 20 years, said nothing of interest. Nothing. He wasn’t weird or drunk or offensive, he just contributed nothing. Oh, he TALKED, but would say things like “the Blue Jays could really use a hit here” or “ya gotta make that play” or “he’s a real ballplayer” and other nothing statements. It was as if static had taken on human form.
Every now and then they’d have to have someone else fill in for some temporary reason, and it would always be absolutely shocking when a guy actually had some baseball insight. Recently they’d sometimes had Kevin Barker or Joe Siddall in there, and they would actually point out baseball-related things that would provide some really interesting info to the fan at home, and it was wonderful. Then two days later Pat would be back saying “you need to score runs to win ballgames.”
Pat Tabler is the reason I’ve become convinced that actually being able to discuss baseball in an intelligent and interesting way has nothing to do whatsoever with who gets hired to be on an announcing team.
A color commentator, who only works in the color of beige.
It’s remarkable how many former players wind up in broadcasting and offer very little insight into the game. Paul O’Neill has been working Yankees games for the past 20 years and I can’t remember him saying anything the casual fan didn’t already know. Carlos Beltran worked some games last season and had even less to say, besides the bleeding obvious. David Cone, on the other hand, shares all kinds of interesting info you’d expect from someone who played in MLB.