Tim McCarver, former standout catcher and famed baseball broadcaster, dies at 81

ST. LOUIS — He had a stellar baseball career, a bulldog of a catcher who won two World Series with the Cardinals in the 1960s and played in three. He had an even more decorated run after his playing days ended, an unparalleled marathon as a network television analyst on the sport’s biggest stage before finishing with a stint in the Cards’ TV booth.

Tim McCarver, the man from Memphis whose touch of a Southern accent was a lifelong trademark, died there Thursday of heart failure. He was 81 and his passing was announced by the Baseball Hall of Fame, in which he was a member as a  broadcaster. 

McCarver had a record 34-year stretch of broadcasting big-league baseball at the highest level. He called 24 of the 29 World Series from 1985-2013, across three networks, wrapping up the unprecedented run with 14 in a row. In one stretch, he called postseason contests for 29 consecutive years. He also did 22 All-Star games, another record for an analyst.

“Tim McCarver was an All-Star, a World Series Champion, a respected teammate, and one of the most influential voices our game has known,” baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “… All of us at Major League Baseball are grateful for Tim’s impact on sports broadcasting and his distinguished career in our national pastime. I extend my deepest condolences to Tim’s family, friends and the generations of fans who learned about our great game from him.”

McCarver was outspoken, not afraid to ruffle feathers and knew some viewers didn’t like his commentary. But that didn’t deter him from speaking his mind. And he could be blunt. In 1992 he was doused in the Braves’ clubhouse with buckets of ice water by two-sport standout Deion Sanders, who was unhappy about critical comments McCarver had made about Sanders leaving the team during a playoff series to play in an NFL game.

“You’re a real man, Deion,” McCarver sarcastically said after being drenched. “You’re a real man.” 

But McCarver was a man’s man, a Civil War history buff and wine connoisseur. And he adroitly could paint a verbal picture of what was unfolding on the field like few others.

The most notable instance of this was when he set up what turned out to be the final play of the 2001 World Series. The Arizona Diamondbacks had the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7, with the score 2-2, and the New York Yankees’ infield was pulled in.

McCarver set the scene on Fox’s telecast by saying Yankees closer Mariano Rivera’s cut fastball broke inside to lefthanded batters, and that often ends up in broken-bat hits to the shallow outfield. On the next pitch, Luis Gonzalez broke his bat on an inside pitch and the ball fell just over the drawn-in infield to drive in the Series-winning run.

Play-by-play announcer Joe Buck, who was in the booth with McCarver at the time, once looked back on that moment, saying:

“I would submit to you and I would bring it to any committee if they said, ‘What’s the best example of first-guessing in the history of sports broadcasting? I defy anybody to tell any analyst who has ever nailed a moment better than that in a key situation — Game 7 on the last pitch with Mariano Rivera blowing a World Series save. That’s just not going to happen.’’

McCarver’s unparalleled run ended with the 2013 Cardinals-Red Sox World Series, as circumstances aligned to have his final national broadcast involve the team with which he began his playing career as an 18-year-old in 1959.

“There will never be another one like him,’’ Buck said that season, their 16th together. “I personally think it’s a tougher analyst job than in the NFL, NHL, NBA. Because of that it’s the hardest role to fill. He’s done it forever, and there’s a reason why — it’s not that easy.’’

Back to St. Louis

McCarver’s days in the national spotlight were over, but he wasn’t done broadcasting. Far from it. He returned to the Cardinals, entering the rotation of analysts for the team’s local telecasts on what now is Bally Sports Midwest to do about 30 games annually. 

“Coming back to St. Louis after starting there some 55 years ago is obviously special,” he said then, in 2014. “It’s fabulous, … it’s wonderful.’’ 

He stayed in the booth for six seasons and was ready to return for a seventh, but the coronavirus pandemic hit in early 2020 and shut down not only baseball but much of the world. When play finally began that summer, all Cardinals games were broadcast from St. Louis — home and away. McCarver was living in Florida and was under doctors’ orders not to travel. It was a St. Louis-only setup again in 2021 for the Cards TV announcers, and his legendary broadcasting career quietly was over.

He thoroughly enjoyed his years back with the Cardinals, and being partnered with Dan McLaughlin.

“I think it’s pretty clear I love my partner, I love working with him,” McCarver said in 2019, his final season in the booth. “I’ve rarely worked with anybody who gives me as much pleasure (looking back) after the game as Dan McLaughlin. He’s one of a kind, a good man in every way.”

McLaughlin said the feeling was mutual.

“To have the chance to work with Tim has been one of the top highlights of my career,” he has said. “In my mind, he’s the best baseball analyst that has ever done that job. He made you think, he was a great story teller, and he was never, ever afraid to say what he thought. He’s the John Madden of baseball and his resumé speaks for itself.”

McCarver had stints in the booths of the Phillies, Mets, Yankees and Giants that were mixed in with or before his national duties, and all of those assignments contributed to him being honored in 2012 with the Ford C. Frick Award — presented annually by the Baseball Hall of Fame for excellence in broadcasting the sport. 

He worked with some of the best to ever call the game, including Jack and Joe Buck, Al Michaels, Bob Costas. McLaughln has said he is proud that he was McCarver’s final broadcast partner, calling it “humbling.

“I truly believe that the games we did together were some of the best TV games that Cards TV has ever had,” McLaughlin said. “I really felt when he was added to the Cardinals games, it was important to bring him back into the family. … It was important to me to draw on his enormous wealth of Cardinals knowledge and experiences and to bring it out in a light that maybe people weren’t accustomed to. I’m really proud that we did that and then some. I thought it was a special pairing.”

On the field

McCarver had 21 seasons as a big-league player, from the time he was called up by the Cardinals in 1959 until wrapping it up by playing in six games for the Phillies in 1980 — making him one of the few to have played in four decades. He was inducted into the Cardinals’ Hall of Fame in 2017.

McCarver was a two-time All-Star and National League MVP runner-up to teammate Orlando Cepeda in the Cardinals’ World Series championship season of 1967, when he hit .295 with 14 homes and 69 RBIs in an MLB season lacking offense while backstopping the pitching staff. In 1966, his 13 triples led the National League.

He famously had a close relationship with Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson. And they loved to joke about each other.

Gibson once told Costas about what he said to McCarver when the catcher ventured to the mound for a consultation:

“What are you doing here? Just give me the ball. The only thing you know about pitching is that it is hard to hit.”  

McCarver had his own zingers.

“Bob Gibson is the luckiest pitcher in baseball,” he once said. “He is always pitching when the other team doesn’t score any runs.”

McCarver was part of the Cards’ historic trade with the Phillies in 1969, in which Curt Flood refused to report to Philadelphia. That paved the way for baseball’s current free-agency system.

With Philadelphia he also had a special relationship with another Hall of Fame pitcher, Steve Carlton, a former Cardinals teammate. McCarver became his personal catcher over the catcher’s two stints with the Phillies, the latter from 1976-79, McCarver caught 90 of Carlton’s starts in a row and Carlton was 48-26 in that stretch according to MLB.com. 

McCarver once was asked about why Carlton trusted him so much, and he said there was a simple answer.

“I called for a slider more than the other catchers,” McCarver said. “I knew that was his special pitch, at a very young time when we played together, beginning in 1967.”

Their bond was tight, just like McCarver’s was with Gibson.

“When Steve and I die, we are going to be buried in the same cemetery, 60-feet 6-inches apart,” McCarver once said.

McCarver also had stints in Montreal and Boston, with a return to St. Louis for the 1973 season and part of the ’74 campaign sandwiched in between, before returning to the Phils in the middle of the 1975 season and stayed with them for the remainder of his playing career, then entered broadcasting with the team.

That was the springboard to his legendary career on the air, and he eloquently summed up his professional life when he signed off his final Fox broadcast.

“Thirty-four years ago my obligation shifted from the field and the players to the booth and to you — the viewers,” McCarver said then, in 2013. “Fairness and accuracy and honesty have always been my goals, along with teaching you something you may not have known about this great game. I hope I’ve achieved those things. Thank you very much.”

From March 2022: Tim McCarver’s unparalleled baseball broadcasting career officially is over

From March 2019: McCarver on Seaver: ‘The only pitcher that I recall who ever retaliated with Gibson’

---