Tim McCarver, Catcher in the Hall of Fame as a Broadcaster, Dies at 81
A multisport star at Christian Brothers Academy in Memphis, a segregated faculty, he was recruited by soccer powerhouses like Notre Dame, Alabama and Tennessee. But he was additionally pursued by the Cardinals, the Giants and the Yankees, and he determined to play baseball as a result of it supplied him the possibility to earn cash immediately.
He signed with the Cards for $75,000 and was simply 17 years outdated when he started his skilled profession within the low minor leagues, in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1959. That September he performed his first big-league video games. He began every of the following two seasons within the minors, showing briefly with the Cardinals in September. By 1963, nevertheless, he was the workforce’s beginning catcher.
McCarver married Anne McDaniel, whom he had met in highschool, in 1964. The marriage led to divorce. They had two daughters, Kelly and Kathy, who survive him, as do two grandchildren. His 4 siblings died earlier than him.
Over the years, McCarver’s prominence supplied him different alternatives. Beyond his game-day appearances, he was host of “The Tim McCarver Show,” a long-running program, first on radio and in a while tv, through which he interviewed athletes and different sports activities celebrities. He was a co-anchor, with Paula Zahn, of the 1992 Winter Olympics for CBS.
His books, written with co-authors, consisted largely of tales from the locker room and the diamond and directions to followers about find out how to watch a ballgame. He was a effective bridge participant who was cited within the bridge column of The New York Times. He appeared in a handful of films, together with “Moneyball,” “Fever Pitch” and “The Naked Gun.” And he even recorded an album, “Tim McCarver Sings Songs From the Great American Songbook.”
But these had been sidelights. In 2012, McCarver obtained the Ford C. Frick Award, primarily a lifetime achievement quotation offered yearly to a broadcaster by the National Baseball Hall of Fame for “major contributions to baseball.”
Four years later, he was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame.
“If you’re going to talk about the best baseball analyst in the history of television,” Dick Enberg, himself a Frick Award winner, stated on that event, “Tim McCarver’s name has to come up immediately.”
