Tim McCarver died yesterday at age 81.
Back in spring 1987, McCarver, a terrific catcher who caught Bob Gibson with the Cardinals and Steve Carlton with the Phillies, and was now a tremendous play-by-play man for the New York Mets, had a book coming out. I wasn’t crazy about the book’s title: Oh, Baby, I Love It! but McCarver was as good a baseball analyst as there was. The Mets had won the 1986 world series in the most exciting post-season in at least ten years, and at Newsweek the editors always preferred a feature to a straight bok review, so I proposed flying to Philadelphia, taking him to lunch, and writing it up.I got the okay.
McCarver, who lived in Gladwin, Pennsylvania, proposed Le Bec Fin, the best French restaurant in Philadephia, for our lunch, and they gave us a private room. It was probably the most expensive lunch I ever charged to the magazine, with wonderful wines, and it lasted three or more hours, with his wife stopping by for a few minutes and a cigar delivered to the room when it was time for espresso. According to my notes I wore a gray blazer with a knit tie and he wore a cashmere sport coat with a blue silk patterned tie and navy trousers.
Along the way he answered my questions and appraised various players and prospects. Tim, who had opinions and wasn’t shy about sharing them, felt that a good sinking fastball made the batter feel as if he were “striking an anvil with sugar cane.” Bob Gibson regarded the pitcher’s mound “as his prIvate office.” Spitballs should be made legal, because “nearly all pitchers throw them.” The “scuff” ball thrown by Mike Scott of the Astros, who gave the ’86 Mets a fit, was “more illegal,” but the Mets made a mistake in obsessing over it. “Of course if I’d been on the team, I would have probably done the same thing.” What was the biggest psychological problem confronting a professional baliplayer? “Fear of failure.” Also, “the hell of being alone.” Tim agreed with Joe DiMaggio about opening day: “It’s lik a birthday party when you were a kid.”
There was a rumor at the time that the Mets had offered Ron Darling and Mookie Wilson for the Dodgers’ Orel Hershiser. “Ain’t ever gonna happen,” Tim said. “Hershiser is one of the great pitchers in the game.” (This was before Hershiser’s Cy Young year when he threw nearly sixty straight innings aithout a run and beat Oakland twice in the World Series, once by shutout.) As a traditionalist, “I hate the designated hitter,” which changes the very nature of the game.
Tim loved Gerswin, Berlin, Cole Porter, when the Mets, who were tired of being loveable losers, started winning games in 1984, Tim hummed Duke Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be” on the air. For sheer talent, no souithpaw could compare with Sandy Koufax. Keith Hernandez was “the most artistic fielding first-baseman” Tim had ever seen. Solidly built, six feet tall, Tim may have been the most artistic play-by-play man this side of Vin Scully.
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Author: The Best American Poetry
