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Thursday, February 16, 2023
Tim McCarver, a two-time World Series champion who became a household name as a highly skilled broadcaster both nationally and in three Major League cities, died on Thursday at the age of 81. The cause of death was heart failure.
McCarver, who made his Major League debut with the Cardinals in 1959, spent seven decades in professional baseball. That included a 21-year Major League playing career before transitioning into an award-winning broadcaster, whom many considered to be baseball’s version of football’s John Madden. McCarver had a way of simplifying the game of baseball for the average fan; his use of the English language was impeccable, punctuated by a touch of friendly Southern drawl.
McCarver was awarded the Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award in 2012 for his Emmy-winning work in the booth.
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1. Starring Bradley Scotchman as RMc Posted: February 16, 2023 at 02:42 PM (#6117418)EDIT: Elvis Luciano did it (born 2000, debuted with the Blue Jays 2019)...
I know he evolved into a sort of "get off my lawn" type of guy, but for a while there he was a genuinely enjoyable addition to any booth he worked in.
For me, as a Cardinals fan, I still think of him as a Cardinal, and while his days as the team's starting catcher were before my time as a fan, I was around for his second act in St. Louis, as a role player for the good-not-great 1973/74 squads that each finished second by 1.5 games.
As a role player in 1975-77 with the Phillies (plus 12 games with the Red Sox) he hit .297/.408/.465 (137 OPS+) in 497 PA, much of that as Steve Carlton's "personal catcher," continuing a relationship that had begun in the mid-60s with the Cardinals.
He was a part of the game's fabric for a long, long time, and the sport was richer for his presence.
I'd add, in 2002, during the 7th inning of game 6, Felix Rodriguez kept throwing fastballs away to Scott Spiezio, promtping McCarver to say "you make a mistake outside, it's a foul ball. You make a mistake inside, it's 5-3". A couple pitches later...
RIP, Tim.
That said, I've grown to appreciate McCarver the player as I've gotten older. I was 3 years old when he played his last game...so I never saw him play, but three things become evident:
1) He must have been incredibly intelligent. To break into the bigs as a 17 year old, despite not being a freakish athlete. I can't imagine how surreal that must have been for him.
2) His prime overlapped with being the catcher for some very good-to-great pitching staffs. I know WAR doesn't paint him as a good defensive catcher, but he must have been doing something right.
3) His late career role as a high-OBP backup catcher (.400 OBP or greater for three consecutive seasons at ages 33, 34, and 35) made him the rare 2nd stringer who added starter-like value. Again, signs of high intelligence.
RIP
Whatever his style in the booth, the #1 requirement for any announcer, in any sport, is does he love the game he's bringing across to the audience?
McCarver met that in spades. His massive enthusiasm for baseball always came through. As much as another catcher turned broadcaster, Joe Garagiola.
He was a popularizer, and a good one. RIP.
How rare was it for a player to accumulate over 6000 PA in the post-war era and hit fewer than 100 home runs, as did McCarver? Probably a bunch of middle infielders on that list and not much else.
I agree with those on this thread who say we should not judge McCarver's broadcasting abilities based on his last years in the booth. In his time (I used to watch a lot of Mets in the 1980s in WWOR, and of course he did all the national TV for years), he was ahead of his time as a relatively analytical color commentator. When he and Al Michaels worked together, that was about as good as it got. (FWIW, the sound of Al Michaels' voice, going back to the 1970s, is synonymous with "big moments".)
I have to contradict you here. Have you ever known any professional athletes? I have and they are all freakish athletes. The slowest guys in MLB are faster then 99% of non pro athletes. Any professional from a ball sport like MLB could pick up a basketball, tennis racket, ping pong racket, etc and just smoke 99% of non-professional athletes in just about any game, any time, anywhere. It's amazing how good their eye-hand coordination is, their balance, their rhythm, anticipation...it is freakish and to be a pro athlete, you need to have it.
As Brian Scalabrine says after he smokes another guy in a pick up game, "I'm a lot closer to LeBron then you are to me."
I have to contradict you here. Have you ever known any professional athletes? I have and they are all freakish athletes. The slowest guys in MLB are faster then 99% of non pro athletes. Any professional from a ball sport like MLB could pick up a basketball, tennis racket, ping pong racket, etc and just smoke 99% of non-professional athletes in just about any game, any time, anywhere. It's amazing how good their eye-hand coordination is, their balance, their rhythm, anticipation...it is freakish and to be a pro athlete, you need to have it.
You don't have to exaggerate to make the point, and it remains an exaggeration. I know this from first hand experience. Ken Harrelson used to fancy himself as a pool shark, and bragged about it in his autobiography. But when he was with the Senators in 1966-67, he would sometimes come up to a pool room off 14th St. that I used to play in, and even though none of the players there were on the pro level, he tried to give the 8 ball (in 9 ball) to a guy I used to beat with ease, and walked out a loser. The better players there would've eaten him for lunch.
Same with Michael Jordan at Carolina. No way on Earth he could ever have beaten any of the better local players, no matter how much smack he talked about his pool game.
Pool and golf require great hand/eye coordination, and it's safe to assume that all pro athletes have it, but it's insane to think that any random pro athlete can just take up those games and succeed at them without devoting an incredible amount of time to perfecting their stroke / swing. If it were that easy, you'd see many examples of it, but to date I can't think of any.
But then maybe you're not talking about sports where the ball is stationary. If so, then I'll let some tennis or ping-pong player reply to your comment.
Still a good player, good announcer(at his peak).
“Rivera throws inside to left-handers,” McCarver observed. “Lefthanders 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.
He also sort of "predicted" the 8th inning Alfonso Soriano HR in that same game:
but he didn't have an unlimited supply of stories, and his insights became a bit less impactful the longer he was from his playing days. so yes, 'late McCarver' was annoying.
still, he had a good peak. RIP
Anyway, RIP to McCarver. I grew up listening to him on Mets broadcasts in the 1980s, so his voice is what a "baseball announcer" sounds like in my head. And he was pretty darn good, despite many of the complaints that people made later in his career.
RIP.
As a Yankees fan, I have to admit that if they'd won that 2001 World Series it would've topped the 1960 WS for the sheer stupidity of the outcome. Even if they'd held on to win that game 7, they still would've been outscored by 35 to 14.
(bbc will love this story, sorry I don't have pics)
The Phillies were playing the Giants in SF, and in the sixth inning, Willie Mays hit a foul tip off of McCarver's right hand and broke his finger, McCarver got pulled from the game, of course, and his backup, Mike Ryan, came in. Meanwhile, McCarver was put into an ambulance to be taken to the hospital for x-rays. But....
A couple of batters later, in a play at the plate, Willie McCovey slid into Ryan and broke a finger on his left hand. They hustled him into an ambulance, and a Phillies utility guy came in to catch. Meanwhile, McCarver arrived at the ER (as he described it, holding his right hand up in the air, limp), and the nurse asked, "Are you Mr. Ryan?" And he said, "No, I'm McCarver. Ryan is in the game catching," and at that instant, Mike Ryan walked through the ER doors holding his left hand limply in the air. And they both burst out laughing. Later, on the flight home, Ryan supposedly said to McCarver, "I've been hoping all along you would get hurt so I could play more, and now look at us!"
Meanwhile, the Phillies (a poor club that year anyway), ended up getting through the rest of the season with the immortal Mike Compton, Del Bates and Doc Edwards (who was actually a coach and former catcher whom they activated, for some experience) catching. Compton hit .164/.240./209 the rest of the way, Bates hit .133/.257/.167, and Edwards hit a robust .269/.313/.269. None of them ever played in the majors again.
And of course, McCarver was a key part of the Dick Allen–Curt Flood deal--just about the only part of that trade that worked out for Philadelphia.
And it was only that close because the manager in the Diamondbacks' dugout was doing everything he could to lose it for his club.
I figured he was speaking relatively here. I doubt he was a freakish athlete for a professional jock. He would very much be one surrounded by Primates.
Of course that’s what I meant.
This is a famous story at Dartmouth, which I always thought was apocryphal, until I finally ran into someone who saw it in person. Ausmus never played baseball at Dartmouth - he was recruited to play ball, but then he got drafted and took the contract - but he came anyways and was able to ultimately graduate b/c Dartmouth is on the quarter system. Anyways, it was halftime at a basketball game, people were dicking around on the court (as you were allowed to do, even when I was there about 10 years after him), and he picked up a ball and reverse dunked. As a 5'11 catcher.
Oh, I forgot. He was a freshman and I was a senior.
Did you go to U. City High? My oldest sister spent one year there and then we moved to Chicago. I woulda been there two years later had we stayed.
that was Jim Hutto, who very nearly joined that list of "None of them ever played in the majors again."
he did not play in the bigs in 1971-74, but resurfaced with the Orioles to go 0 for 5 - and that was all she wrote. Go figure - his only start for the Orioles was at catcher.
he appeared in 5 games at C for the 1970 Phillies, no starts, a total of 16 1/3 innings.
12 of his 14 starts for the Phillies were in LF.
Hutto only caught in a total of 11 G in the minors before 1970, but he dabbled in C in 1971-72 and went full-time there in 1973-74. probably was worth a shot....
funny that the 1970 Phillies AAA team had a player by the name of Bob Boone - who played 20 G at 3B, missing most of the season due to wartime military duty. he took up catching the following year.
2091 MLB starts behind the dish later, Boone retired.
My recolllection was a nothing game. Probably 1997, 1998. Bartolo Colon was pitching against the Yankees and with Posada up McCarver mentioned that Colon was nodding twice whenever a fastball was called. He pointed out that only on the fastball do you get two signs (pitch and location) whereas with off speed stuff you just call the pitch. He said POsada as a catcher was well equipped to recognize that and take advantage. A moment later Posada put one into Monument Park.
(Tracer: Looks like This game in 2001)
If you say so. My idea of a "sport" demands high level hand-eye coordination, which leaves out many track events, and for the most part soccer.
Who else doesn't qualify in your opinion? Jockeys? Race car drivers? I've heard plenty of people try to claim that those aren't sports, either. (P. S. They're crazy.)
But more seriously, we've had this discussion before, and anyway, I qualified my response to Hugh in my closing sentence.
My best friend faced Jason Bere in high school. He went 0 for 3, 2 Ks and a 1-3 ground out on a little dribbler. He said the little dribbler was the best at bat of his high school career. He said Bere was completely overwhelming.
Track and field encompasses a lot of weird events but the core events are clearly sports. The decatholon is the definition of a sport. It's the first true sport.
Most people like to include things like bowling and golf and parlor games like pool because they can play them with their buddies and sometimes be quite good at them but these are mostly weekend activities. I play croquet all the time - basically outdoor pool. It's not a sport. How do I know this ? Because I drink a Beer or two while playing and several people smoke/vape.
Good times:
You're kidding right? So standing around doing something that requires no level of measurable fitness, no balance, no anticipation and that I can do whilst smoking is sport, but most things that require running are not sports?
According to the dictionary, your definition is wrong:
an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.
If you don't think that playing 36 holes of golf in a day without a cart, or playing in a pool tournament where matches can go from 9:00 AM to 3:00 AM doesn't involve physical exertion, you're just showing your lack of knowledge.** Obviously all competitive activities that involve running can be considered a "sport", but equally obvious is the fact that some of them (basketball, ice hockey, soccer, etc.) involve a much higher skill level than simple track events that amount to nothing but running.
** Here of course I'm talking about pro level pool, not the sort of rec pool played on bar tables. Playing one match after another for hours on end where a single miss can often be fatal isn't something that can be accomplished without an incredible amount of physical stamina and nonstop concentration. One recently completed championship event had a final round that ended after 10:00 AM after both players had been in action for nearly 24 hours with scarcely a chance to rest. Try it yourself sometime.
And that guy was the next cut below future pro.
Watch players from other sports try to throw the first pitch at a baseball game and you will realize that athletic talent doesn’t always naturally translate across sports. I agree that it usually does to a certain extent. I remember in college when one of our star hockey players (he was a 2nd round NHL draft pick) showed up to play intramural softball — he just roped ridiculous line drives all game.
Anyone remember his great achievement/somewhat dubious accomplishment on July 4, 1976 on the same play?
Also, I think it was Dan Dierdorf to whom Jim Healy referred to as "McDorkster"
** Hand-eye coordination, strength, reflexes, and physical / mental stamina. Take away the second and third of these in any of the more physically active sports and you've got a spectator. Take away the first and last of these in any sport and you've got a second rate amateur at best. (Substitute foot-eye coordination for soccer.)
Good times.
This profile brings up that call but also paints a good picture of what color analysis was like 20 years ago, not to mention men in general.
Yep, a few light hitting CF, at least one other catcher, and some oddities like Mike Hargrove and Carew, although he could fit the middle infielder criteria in the first part of his career.
No, they don't. The ball is not moving in either case. Doesn't mean they're not difficult to be good at, but it's not hand-eye coordination which is required.
No, they don't. The ball is not moving in either case. Doesn't mean they're not difficult to be good at, but it's not hand-eye coordination which is required.
Just why do you see pool players constantly looking first at the object ball and then at the cue ball while taking their warmup strokes? It's to freeze their minds in the correct rhythm that coordinates their hands and their eyes. As in golf, the perfect stroke is just as much a matter of timing as it is for a batter trying to hit a fast moving pitch. The degree of that hand-eye coordination required only varies according to the level of the standards you're requiring.** When a pool player or golfer is said to be "out of stroke", all that means is that his stroke rhythm is a bit off, meaning his hands aren't in perfect sync with his eyes.
What differentiates hitting a Major League pitch from hitting a pool ball or golf ball isn't the degree of hand-eye coordination as much as it is the unworldly reflexes required to hit the former, because of the speed and the spin of the pitch. OTOH hitting a batting practice pitch doesn't require any great athletic skills, and hitting a slow pitched softball requires almost no athletic skill at all.
** The standards required in MLB or the PGA / Pro pool tour are immeasurably higher than those in amateur competition.
Of course. Also, he got a $75,000 bonus up front, equivalent to more than $750,000 today according to the US BLS CPI inflation calculator.
As a judge at several International Plastic Modelers' Society contests, I can assure you that model makers are some of the most competitive people I've ever met. Agreed, there's no direct face-to-face competition when the actual model is being built, but when you get a room with 3,000 models on the tables, as was the case at last year's IPMS Nationals, where every builder is convinced that his or her model deserves first place in its category, it can get heated. I agree that it's not a sport, though...
Okay, I should've realized that there'd be some sort of competition for plastic modeling, which I imagine is kind of like a Science Fair competition. But as you agree, there's no actual face-to-face competition, which puts it into a different category altogether.
But then strictly speaking, there's no head-to-head competition in golf, either, since in golf the player himself controls the position of the ball 100% of the time. Which isn't true in pool, where defensive play often determines the outcome of a match.
Disagree. The eye in pool is projecting spatially the movement of the cue ball based on where it's struck in order to get to the next location, whether that be a bumper or another ball. There is not need to coordinate hands and eyes once the location and speed is determined. The cue ball is not going to move at that point, nor is the target. It's fine motor skill to move the cue at the proper pace over the right distance prior to contact, but it is not eye-hand coordination.
Absolutely false. Hitting a golf ball, which is stationary on the ground or on a tee, is nowhere near the challenge of hitting a baseball moving at a high speed AND changing trajectory in a multi planar fashion. A golf swing requires almost no eye-hand coordination. It is a gross motor skill, the backswing rotating the torso and loading the rear hip then the downswing rotating the torso back and through while initiating hip rotation to transfer weight through the ball, with some finer motor skill to maintain the grip on the club and the orientation of the club face. Once the golfer has addressed the ball and oriented the club face properly they could swing with the eyes closed. Now that wouldn't produce optimal results as the eyes do give us feedback for balance and alignment, but a professional golfer with hundreds of thousands of practice and competition swings under their belt would still make solid contact most of the time. As you said, it's rhythm, which does not require eye-hand coordination.
All I can say to that is that you've never played serious pool.
Absolutely false. Hitting a golf ball, which is stationary on the ground or on a tee, is nowhere near the challenge of hitting a baseball moving at a high speed AND changing trajectory in a multi planar fashion.
Why don't you read what I wrote in #62? But here, I'll spare you the scrolling effort:
There are obviously degrees of difficulty among sports, and degrees of difficulty within each sport. I'd never pretend that the skill required to hit a Major League pitcher isn't far greater than executing a pool stroke or a golf swing, and for the very reason I stated. It's what you might call the "real time" factor that's present only in sports where the ball isn't stationary at the point of contact.
Once the golfer has addressed the ball and oriented the club face properly they could swing with the eyes closed. Now that wouldn't produce optimal results as the eyes do give us feedback for balance and alignment, but a professional golfer with hundreds of thousands of practice and competition swings under their belt would still make solid contact most of the time. As you said, it's rhythm, which does not require eye-hand coordination.
As you're implicitly admitting, you need optimal hand-eye coordination to produce "optimal results". And what good are sub-optimal results?
It's not impossibly hard to achieve a "perfect" practice stroke in golf or pool, but once the ball is on the tee or you're addressing a cue ball while looking at an object ball, all the stroke in the world isn't going to do you any good without near perfect hand-eye coordination. The same could be said for a "perfect" batting stroke---you might be able to train a robot to achieve that.
Xander Schauffele just did basically this 2 weeks ago
"When Xander Schauffele was a kid, his dad would have him hit balls barefoot and with his eyes closed.
"Situations like that don’t really occur on the PGA Tour for the seven-time winner, but when a business partner approached Schauffele about a unique challenge, he had to say yes out of nostalgia.
"Schauffele teamed up with Hyland – his exclusive software partner that works with half the Fortune 100 – to take part in the Hyland X Vision Challenge. The concept was simple in description but difficult in action: play a par-3 blindfolded twice, once with absolutely no help (other than the yardage) and once with assistance. Joined by his father, Stefan, and caddie Austin Kaiser, Schauffele made a comical effort on the first try and then nearly made an ace with his second."
Eddie Taylor could set up and make cross-corner bank shots on a 5 x 10 pool table with his head turned the other way. But then plenty of pros are also proficient at "wing shots", which are shots pocketed with a moving object ball. It's a shot that looks nearly impossible to a casual observer, but some pros can run an entire rack like that in one continuous series of motions.
Flood’s replacement, Willie Montanez, provided some mehish value for the Phils for a few years and a lot of value for netting them Garry Maddox in the trade with SF.
By the time he apparently degenerated into a curmudgeon, I had moved to Honolulu (1989) and was really not watching that much baseball on TV any more due to the time difference, so he never lost his luster for me.
To this I would say I had excellent eye-hand coordination as a kid and a young man, but I was always incompetent on a pool table. Why? Clearly not because I lacked the eye-hand coordination, but I cannot/do not have the ability to visualize and project the geometry of the sport/game, call it what you will.
Yes, there are reflexes and reaction time involved, and they are used to coordinate the hands with the eye. This is the difference in requirement between the two sports. You could have the reflexes required to react in time to hit a baseball, but if you cannot coordinate what the eye is seeing with the hands swinging the bat, they are for naught. There is no such requirement in golf for the reflexes, agreed, but neither is there the requirement for coordinating the hands with the eye to any degree comparable to hitting a moving object. It's simple really. Hand-eye coordination is using the eyes to move the hands (with or without an implement involved) into position to intersect with an object. Clearly if that object is also moving, it is going to be vastly more difficult than if the object is stationary. I find it remarkable that anyone could not see this or would argue to the contrary.
This is a red herring. We are not discussing results, we are discussing the level of hand-eye coordination/skill required by the activities.
Perfect. If you are looking at an object ball while striking a different ball, you are not using hand-eye coordination because your eyes are not coordinating what your hands are doing. If I misunderstood what you were saying, I apologize. But try this experiment for yourself. Go to the batting cage and take 10 cuts with eyes open, then take 10 cuts with eyes closed. You can have someone say go to give you the release time. Note your results. Then go to the driving range and take 10 swings eyes open, then 10 eyes closed and note your results. Go tothe pool hall and hit a shot 10 times eyes open, then the same shot 10 times eyes closed, and note your results. Heck, you could even hit a baseball 10 times off a tee eyes open, then 10 times eyes closed and compare that to eyes closed off a machine. Let me know how this goes.
This is a red herring. We are not discussing results, we are discussing the level of hand-eye coordination/skill required by the activities.
And just how do you measure the level of hand-eye coordination---except by results?
Perfect. If you are looking at an object ball while striking a different ball, you are not using hand-eye coordination because your eyes are not coordinating what your hands are doing. If I misunderstood what you were saying, I apologize.
During your warmup strokes, what you're precisely doing is "coordinating" what your eyes are telling you, with what your hand (or really, your hand and arm) needs to do in order to successfully execute your shot. If you don't want to call this "hand-eye coordination", you're free to do so, but it doesn't negate the substance of what's being described.
But try this experiment for yourself. Go to the batting cage and take 10 cuts with eyes open, then take 10 cuts with eyes closed. You can have someone say go to give you the release time. Note your results. Then go to the driving range and take 10 swings eyes open, then 10 eyes closed and note your results. Go tothe pool hall and hit a shot 10 times eyes open, then the same shot 10 times eyes closed, and note your results. Heck, you could even hit a baseball 10 times off a tee eyes open, then 10 times eyes closed and compare that to eyes closed off a machine. Let me know how this goes.
Again, all this experiment will verify is what anyone can see: It's much harder to hit a moving object than it is to hit a stationary one. I've never argued otherwise.
Difficulty of the task.
What differentiates hitting a Major League pitch from hitting a pool ball or golf ball isn't the degree of hand-eye coordination
Precisely, which is why it clearly requires vastly superior hand-eye coordination to hit a baseball than it does to hit a golf ball or a cue ball. If you haven't been arguing otherwise, I thoroughly and completely misunderstand what it is you are arguing for. See the italics above.
Could you add any more insight into the Willie Montanez Experience? He stuck around for 14 years barely above replacement for that period. If you throw out his rookie year 1.9 WAR he's right at replacement level his entire career. What was going on there?
You can get quite a few years out of one good one -- see Rick Cerone.
Precisely, which is why it clearly requires vastly superior hand-eye coordination to hit a baseball than it does to hit a golf ball or a cue ball. If you haven't been arguing otherwise, I thoroughly and completely misunderstand what it is you are arguing for. See the italics above.
Then you must have completely misunderstood, because never in my life have I ever tried to equate the difficulty of hitting an MLB pitch with hitting a golf ball or a pool ball, even on the pro level.
But that doesn't mean that the skill involved in pro golf or pro pool doesn't also require highly advanced hand-eye coordination. It just means that the requirement for pool and golf is on a lower level of difficulty, because hitting an MLB pitch adds superior reflexes into the requirements.
Something changed in a bad way when he got the National TV forum.
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