In a baseball and broadcasting career spanning some 57 years, Tim McCarver suited up for the Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, Montreal Expos and Boston Red Sox, and was Fox’s premier network analyst in addition to working New York Mets, Yankees, San Francisco Giants games locally. The 73-year-old McCarver won the prestigious Ford C Frick award for excellence in broadcasting back in 2012 and is calling games this season in St Louis. The Guardian spoke to him about the Cardinals’ season.
Hey Tim, earlier this season, I was sitting on my couch half asleep, heard your voice on the MLB Network and snapped to attention. I thought you retired from national games after you called your 24th World Series in 2013. What gives?
Bob [Costas] asked me if I could do the Padres and Cardinals on 2 July, fortunately I was in St Louis. I love Bob and I love working with him: it was the first time we worked together in 35 years! It’s amazing that both of us are still alive!
So you’ve also called 40 games for the Cardinals this year, and for most of the time they Redbirds were dominant. Now they dropped eight of 11 and here come the Pirates and the Cubs. I thought this was a done deal.
Bob Costas asked me on 2 July, is this a comfortable lead? I said Bob, it’s halfway through the season. Either Chicago or Pittsburgh are certainly capable of catching the Cardinals. And Bob said, ‘Do you really believe that?’ And I said ‘After going through 1964 I believe anything.’
Hang on, are you saying that there is a bit of the Philadelphia Phillies 1964 “Phold” (they blew a 6.5 game lead with 12 games to play) in this Cardinals team?
I’ve lived through stuff like that. Impossible happens. I went through 1964 on the other end of it and I can guarantee you it was no fun for the Phillies. I mean, it was almost as though, when you were playing them, there was sympathy involved. There is little solace in realizing that the Cubs and Pirates have to play each other while the Cardinals play the Cubs and the Pirates three more. It’s paramount that they win the division because in a one-game playoff it would be much tougher for St Louis. The Cardinals can’t make up a bad start with their offense but the Pirates and the Cubs can outscore you.
Let’s step back for a moment and look at that rotation over the course of a season. They lost Adam Wainwright to a torn Achilles back in April and the unit of Michael Wacha (2.96 ERA), Lance Lynn (3.17 ERA) , Carlos Martinez (3.12 ERA), Jamie Garcia (2.33 ERA) and John Lackey (2.89 ERA) have been incredible. Is there a historical value to what they’ve been doing?
I don’t think there’s any question about it, all of them have done well. I had no idea that they could be this good together, particularly with Wainwright down. I can relate to it from 1967 and 1968 with the Cardinals when I was the catcher. Bob Gibson went down in ‘67 with a broken ankle. And he came back and pitched a clincher in Philly in mid-September. I learned then that pitching more than hitting can be very competitive. In other words, we threw 27 shutouts in ‘68. Gibson had 13 of them. If one guy threw a shutout, the other guy said I’ll pitch a shutout but I’ll give up fewer hits. And it was a constant, this competitiveness among these very talented guys. But I think separate and apart they wouldn’t have been as talented if they weren’t bunched together. That I think is happening to the Cardinals this year.
Who surprised you on the starting staff this season the most?
Lackey has been a surprise. The thing about John, he’s ornery enough to think, ‘What do you mean a surprise?’ If he heard that, and if he ever read something like that he’d get mad because he wouldn’t consider himself a surprise.
What’s the latest on Adam Wainwright?
Well, remarkably, as my partner Dan McLaughlin, reported the other night, Wainwright is throwing curve balls off the mound. I thought that in itself was impossible. It’s his landing foot, his left leg the achilles tear, and I thought there was no possible way at all for him to get back and pitch this year. You maybe get three starts from Wainwright, if you can afford them, if you can enough of a pad that it’s not going to bother you on your way to winning the division, which is very important. But how do you get him ready if the Cardinal lead goes to 2.5 or two?
Offensively they lost Matt Holliday and Matt Adams for huge chunks of the season, but scored just enough thanks to their endless supply of solid players that no one ever heard of outside St Louis. It’s almost like an NFL next man in mentality. How do they do it?
One of the marvellous things about this organization is that over the last decade-and-a-half, they’ve continued to not only develop players from the minor league system, with the physical talents of playing in the major leagues, but they’ve developed these players with the mental ability. It’s so important. I mean how many examples are there with any organization, the Yankees included, over the years, you make a comment, ‘Well, you know that guy had the talent to play in the major leagues but there was just something that kept him from being a good player or a great player.’ And that is the mental part of the game. These kids come up now and they expect to play. I mean Piscotty, where would the Cardinals be without Piscotty? I mean, and who would have thought at the beginning of the season, that the Cardinals season from an offensive standpoint would depend on how Steven Piscotty did. I mean, nobody did. Nobody!
This sounds a bit like this “Cardinal Way” we never stop hearing about.
It upsets a lot of people too. I think think the Cardinal Way, I think I could understand if I was on the other side, if I were a baseball fan and I followed the Cubs or the Pirates or the Giants or the Yankees, I would get sick of that term Cardinal Way. It would make me mad. But the reason that a term like that came out of nowhere is because there’s a reason for it. They’ve been in the post-season for 11 of the past 15 years - 11 of 15 years!
Yes, Tim, it’s a little upsetting but you were a part of it, on and off, for a very long time, so please, define “Cardinal Way” for us, once and for all.
I think it’s more bound to tradition. Howie Rose, [New York] Mets broadcaster asked me two years ago, ‘Why is it that the Cardinals are never out of it?’ I said I don’t know. I guess because of the way they play the game. They play the game as much as anybody as it should be played and have for years. Ever since Branch Rickey had the farm teams. I know when I came in, we were trained so well. Of the best things that set me up, the training I got as a broadcaster, was on the field playing for the Cardinals. Because I played for other organizations after that and other organizations didn’t have the minor league connections that the Cardinals have. Restatement is a great way to learn the game. And the Cardinals restated their fundamental way to play the game so many times that it was ingrained in you.
OK, enough with the Cardinals. What players do you enjoy watching these days?
The Cubs have any number of players. This young player Kyle Schwarber. He has the quickest bat that I’ve seen in the National League since Billy Williams in 1961 and I mean it. This guys bat comes out of nowhere. Kris Bryant obviously. Nolan Arenado with the Rockies, phenomenal. His instincts defensively are just staggering, to where you pay to get in to see him play because he does something different all the time.
What about this whole kerfuffle between Matt Harvey, Scott Boras, Sandy Alderson and the Mets. What’s your take on these innings limits?
To me, for an agent to get involved right now, like Scott Boras, and I’m not picking on Scott, you know, to me he should not be shouting anything about the surgeon.
Number one, there has not been any study done on how many pitches a pitcher throws when his arm is going to fall off after Tommy John surgery or elbow problems or straining this or straining that.
Do you know how many innings Tommy John threw after his surgery? He threw 207 innings. Tommy John did! [Hysterical laughter] Wouldn’t you think that some strides had been made since then? I just found that out from an email from Jim Kaat yesterday. Matt Harvey, 40 years after the first Tommy John surgery is told by his surgeon that he has to throw 27 innings fewer after his surgery – and he was the first one!
How about Yoenis Cespedes? He’s putting on quite a show for the Mets right now. Did you ever see anything like?
The only comparison as stark as Cespedes is when Bob ‘Hurricane’ Hazle came up in the late 1950s with the Milwaukee Braves, that had a stuttering offense at the time. In the 60s and 70s, the players in my day, when someone had a good September and picked the team up offensively, they’d say, that sounds like Hurricane Hazel [he posted a 1.126 OPS in 41 games while hitting .403 then helped beat the Yankees in the 1957 World Series]. Bob Hazle was incredible for one month. But for Cespedes to keep it up and do it in the fashion that he’s done it, it’s phenomenal.
Should Pete Rose be removed from the permanently ineligible list?
Yes! He has undergone his self imposed suffering long enough. Allow him back in the good graces of the game.
Looking back, you’ve broadcast a lot of big baseball games. Can you nail down a single moment that you count as the most special?
I can’t nail it down to one moment, but I think it’s an accumulation of moments when you can feel it building. Jack Morris’ no-hitter in 1991 or the, from a personal standpoint, opening with Al Michaels in the 1989 Earthquake, which was terrifying. I think from a pure emotional standpoint, Games 4 and 5 in the 2001 World Series, when Tino Martinez tied it in the 9th in Game 4, and Scott Brosius tied in the 9th in Game 5. Both with two outs. That was probably the most dramatic: particularly with what the country had gone through and the delay in baseball and it being November, and Jeter was Mr November. Then going back to Arizona, Game 7, I mean, my gosh, when Mariano Rivera can not do anything but great things, and has a bad throw to second base, all those things are in my mind. But to boil it down to one thing, I don’t think I can do that.
Looking forward, who is going to win the World Series this season?
Too many things can happen. It is a crapshoot.
Thank you for talking baseball with us Tim.
I enjoyed it, thank you, bye.
