Tim McCarver, who died last week, played 17 games for the Rochester Red Wings in 1959
During a 21-year Major League Baseball career that saw Tim McCarver play for two World Series winning teams and make two All-Star Game appearances, “slugger” would not be how anyone might describe the catcher’s hitting prowess.
Yet on the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 19, 1959, readers of the Democrat and Chronicle turned to page 24 of that day’s edition and read this headline:
“Wings Come Home to 14-4 Defeat; Call up Slugging $75,000 Bonusee.”
The blowout loss at the hands of Montreal saw the Wings slip to seventh place in the eight-team International League, and with their season having long been reduced to playing out the string, the parent St. Louis Cardinals thought it was the right time to bring up McCarver, a 17-year-old bonus baby catcher who had graduated from Christian Brothers High School in Memphis just two months earlier.
When the Cardinals signed McCarver, farm director Walter Shannon Jr. said he was “the greatest young ballplayer we have ever signed.” This was the Cardinals, mind you. A team that had always had a superb farm system, so that was saying something.
But, regardless of what the D&C headline writer thought, McCarver - who passed away last week at the age of 81 of heart failure - was certainly no slugger.
After signing his noteworthy contract he was sent to Class D Keohuk (Iowa) where he immediately proved that he could hit. When the Cardinals decided to rocket launch him past every other level in their farm system and had McCarver join the Triple-A Red Wings, he was leading the Midwest League with a .360 average, but he had hit only three home runs in 304 plate appearances.
McCarver’s Red Wings debut came in a 9-8 loss to Montreal when he struck out as a pinch hitter the same day that headline in the D&C ran.
He sat out the next two games, then made his starting debut at old Offermann Stadium in Buffalo on the night of Aug. 22 and went 3-for-5 with a triple and two RBI and did a flawless job calling the game for winning pitcher Howie Nunn as the Wings blew out the Bisons 12-2.
D&C columnist George Beahon wrote of McCarver, “He looked, at least for one night, like a bargain at $75,000.” Wings manager Clyde King said, “No one could have been more impressive in a first ball game.”
And Nunn, who pitched a complete game five-hitter, said, “He did an outstanding job. I had to shake him off a few times, but only because he couldn’t possibly know the hitters just coming to our league a few days ago.”
McCarver’s time with Rochester was brief, just 17 games before the 1959 International League season concluded. But he certainly made an impression as he hit .357 (25-for-70) with a .384 on-base percentage, eight RBI and he struck out just three times.
That was enough for the Cardinals, also out of playoff contention in the National League, to call him up for a cup of coffee on Sept. 10, making him one of the youngest players to dress in franchise history.
McCarver would spend most of 1960 with Double-A Tulsa, but he never returned to Rochester because the Cardinals and Wings parted ways following 1959, ending an affiliation that had dated back to 1928. Thus, McCarver played at the Triple-A level for San Juan/Charleston (1961) and Atlanta (1962) before finally making it to St. Louis for good in 1963.
While he was always a top notch defender behind the plate, a man who was the personal catcher for two Hall of Famers - Bob Gibson for the Cardinals and Steve Carlton for the Phillies - McCarver never perfected his long ball hitting stroke.
He hit a respectable .272 with an on-base of .337 but he hit only 97 home runs in a big-league career that spanned 1,909 games and 6,206 plate appearances for the Cardinals, Phillies, Red Sox and Expos.
So no, he never did become a slugger. What he did become after he retired from the game in 1980 was one of the finest baseball analysts we’ve had the privilege of listening to.
McCarver had already started his second profession during his last season with the Phillies on their local broadcasts and he was so good that he also was hired to be the analyst on the backup game for NBC’s Saturday Game of the Week.
He would move on to ABC, then CBS, and finally to FOX and from 1996 to 2013 he was paired with Joe Buck, eventually calling 24 World Series and 22 All-Star Games for those three networks. All the while, he was doing local work as an analyst for the Phillies (1980-82), Mets (1983-98), Yankees (1999-2001), Giants (2002) and later for the Cardinals (2014-19).
He was honored in 2012 with the Ford C. Frick Award — presented annually by the Baseball Hall of Fame for excellence in broadcasting the sport.
“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 upon learning of his death. “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’s stint with Rochester in 1959 lasted less than three weeks, but he is just another in a long, long line of famous players who have worn the uniform of the Red Wings.
Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which will come out every Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Tim McCarver broke into Triple-A with Rochester Red Wings
