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James Timothy McCarver
St. Louis Cardinals
Catcher
Born: October 16, 1941, Memphis, TN
Signed: Signed by the St. Louis Cardinals as an amateur free agent, June 8, 1959
Major League Teams: St. Louis Cardinals 1959-1961, 1963-1969; Philadelphia Phillies 1970-1972; Montreal Expos 1972; St. Louis Cardinals 1973-1974; Boston Red Sox 1974-1975; Philadelphia Phillies 1975-1980
World Series Appearances: St. Louis Cardinals 1964, 1967-1968
Died: February 16, 2023, Memphis, TN (age 81)
Tim McCarver enjoyed a 21-year major league career as a catcher, most notably with the Cardinals and Phillies, before embarking on a Hall of Fame career as a broadcaster. McCarver was an All-Star in 1966 and 1967 and the starting catcher for the World Champion Cardinals in 1964 and 1968. He achieved his career-best triple crown in 1967, with a .295 average to go along with 14 home runs and 69 RBIs. McCarver twice led the league in fielding percentage for a catcher (1965 and 1967) and he also led the league with 13 triples in 1966. The long-time personal catcher for Steve Carlton (#477), McCarver later served as Bob Boone's back-up during the Phillies mini-dynasty between 1976 and 1978.
Died: February 16, 2023, Memphis, TN (age 81)
Tim McCarver enjoyed a 21-year major league career as a catcher, most notably with the Cardinals and Phillies, before embarking on a Hall of Fame career as a broadcaster. McCarver was an All-Star in 1966 and 1967 and the starting catcher for the World Champion Cardinals in 1964 and 1968. He achieved his career-best triple crown in 1967, with a .295 average to go along with 14 home runs and 69 RBIs. McCarver twice led the league in fielding percentage for a catcher (1965 and 1967) and he also led the league with 13 triples in 1966. The long-time personal catcher for Steve Carlton (#477), McCarver later served as Bob Boone's back-up during the Phillies mini-dynasty between 1976 and 1978.
After retiring as a player, McCarver began his broadcast career with the Phillies, paired with Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn in 1980. On a local level, he'd work with the Phillies (1980-1982), Mets (1983-1998), Yankees (1999-2001) and Giants (2002). On a national level, McCarver called 23 different World Series and 20 All-Star Games, most frequently for Fox Sports. A broadcaster for over 35 years, McCarver was the recipient of the National Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award in 2012 for broadcasting excellence.
Some text for this post originally appeared on my 1965 Topps blog.
Building the Set / Card #76
February 23, 2023 from Glen Morgan, WV
A few nights after I learned of McCarver's passing, I found his two cards from the 1969 Topps set from eBay seller nflmlb with reasonable Buy It Now prices. The two cards were a combined $11 and arrived a day or two later from Morgan, West Virginia.
February 23, 2023 from Glen Morgan, WV
A few nights after I learned of McCarver's passing, I found his two cards from the 1969 Topps set from eBay seller nflmlb with reasonable Buy It Now prices. The two cards were a combined $11 and arrived a day or two later from Morgan, West Virginia.
My earliest memories of McCarver are as a Phillies broadcaster in the early 1980s, and I met him in the Phillies' broadcast booth the same night I played catch on the Veterans Stadium outfield turf with Bob Dernier. (I need to memorialize that full story at some point, likely over at The Phillies Room.) My strongest memories of McCarver involve by maternal grandfather, my Pop-Pop, tuning in to watch Mets games, just so he could root against the hated Mets and criticize McCarver for his broadcasting style. My Pop-Pop loved the Phillies, never missing a televised game, and he'd sometimes spend an evening flipping channels from the Phillies (Channel 17, then 29), to the Yankees (Channel 11), to the Mets (Channel 9) depending on which game was the most interesting that night. He's the one who first clued me in to the life hack of having the Phillies game on the radio and turning down the volume of the TV set so that he could follow Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn when they moved over to radio for a few innings. I did that throughout the Phillies' entire 2022 playoff and World Series run, never hearing a word of any of the national broadcasters and preferring to listen to Scott Franzke tell me what was going on. In any event, I can't remember any specific reason why my Pop-Pop held McCarver in such low regard, and maybe he's giving McCarver an earful now in that great ballpark in the sky.
#15 is the uniform number McCarver wore the longest with the Cardinals, and his Baseball Reference page shows he wore #51, #9 and #20 with the team early in his career. The back of the card highlights his .478 average in the 1964 World Series and his league-leading 13 triples from 1966.
Accuracy Index: McCarver's card scores a five for showing him in a Cardinals uniform on a photo Topps hadn't used before.
Inserts: McCarver is included as one of the 48 decals in the Topps Decals insert set.
1969 Season
In the final season of his first stint with the Cardinals, McCarver appeared in 138 games, batting .260 with seven home runs and 51 RBIs. He made 136 starts behind the plate, with Joe Torre (#460) moving over from first base to replace McCarver for 16 starts. Dave Ricketts (#232) made seven starts and a young Ted Simmons made three starts after earning a September call-up. With Simmons waiting in the wings and Torre available to take over catching duties, McCarver was swapped to the Phillies as part of a major eight-player trade discussed below.
McCarver first came to the Phillies in an historic trade that ultimately led to the advent of free agency, due to Curt Flood (#540) refusing to report to Philadelphia. On October 7, 1969, the Cardinals traded McCarver, Flood, Byron Browne and Joe Hoerner (#522) to the Phillies for Dick Allen (#350), Jerry Johnson (#253) and Cookie Rojas (#507). Both McCarver and back-up catcher Mike Ryan (#28) were injured in the same game in early May 1970, leading to a season-long catching crisis in Philadelphia. During his first stint with the club, McCarver appeared in 223 games, batting .272. The team dealt him to the Expos on June 14, 1972 for fellow catcher John Bateman (#138).
McCarver returned to the Phillies, this time as a veteran back-up, signing with the club as a free agent on July 1, 1975, a week after being released by the Red Sox. Between 1975 and 1980, he appeared in 405 games, batting .271. In total, during his nine seasons in Philadelphia, McCarver played in 628 games, including a brief return in September 1980 after spending most of that season in the team's broadcast booth. As mentioned above, McCarver would broadcast Phillies games in 1981 and 1982 before departing for his next announcing gig with the Mets.
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First Mainstream Card: 1962 Topps #167
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (19): 1962-1980
Most Recent Mainstream Card: 2022 Topps Heritage Real One Autographs #ROA-TMC
Total Non-Parallel Baseball Cards: 179 in the Beckett online database as of 2/26/23.
Sources:
Baseball Reference / SABR / Wikipedia
National Baseball Hall of Fame
Beckett Database / The Trading Card Database
1965 Topps Blog / The Phillies Room
Beckett Database / The Trading Card Database
1965 Topps Blog / The Phillies Room
#474 Tom Murphy - California Angels / #476 Red Sox Rookie Stars
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