Name association: Tim McCarver.
Two things:
1) In 1966, as the Cardinals’ catcher, he led the NL with 13 triples.
That phrase, “He’s pretty fast for a catcher,” is nothing new. I heard it as a kid, when heavy-legged catchers — Gus Triandos, Earl Battey, Jesse Gonder — routinely were thrown out at first on two-hop line drives to right.
But McCarver, gone Thursday at 81, wasn’t as much fast as he was determined. He was easy to root for in 1966, even before running hard didn’t strike us as unusual or praiseworthy.
2) McCarver, without trying to pull teeth, but with kindness, respect and patience, in 1983 resurrected the cherished career of Ralph Kiner as a Mets TV voice.
By 1982, Kiner had very apparently lost his interest in the games he called. Teamed with Lorn Brown, a good soul, but dull as a cafeteria placemat (he recited players’ minor league stats between pitches), Kiner took on water, straining to stay afloat and awake.
Enter McCarver, off three seasons in the Phillies’ booth. He looked under Kiner’s hood and saw that the old engine was merely in need of a tuneup, some new spark plugs were needed.
He encouraged Kiner to share stories, opinions, observations. They wondered aloud and together why Kevin McReynolds was playing straightaway in left. They swapped stories about Bill Veeck, Bob Gibson and Leo Durocher. Our pleasure was their pleasure.
And for the next 15 years, the Mets’ TV team of McCarver and Kiner became entertaining, thought-provoking, amusing and quotable. They never talked down to us, always kept our heads in the game or The Game.
McCarver made that happen.
I could never figure why McCarver, as Yankees TV and Fox national telecast man, chose to be heard as a know-it-all, a fellow who replaced “maybe” and “perhaps” with spoken facts that often disputed the moving pictures, but was never the same away from Kiner as he was beside him.
McCarver restored Kiner from heirloom to here-and-now appreciation. He was as determined to succeed in that noble enterprise as he was to lead the NL in triples.
Baseball commish lacking in baseball knowledge
The question at some point must be raised and asked loudly: Did Rob Manfred ever play baseball? As a kid, did he ever go to bed with his glove under his pillow or at his side?
Was the World Series must-see TV when he was a kid? Did he care that TV money turned it into too-late-for-kids-to-see TV?
Does he realize that baseball has a soul, a pulse, a heart? Does he understand that baseball now has severe self-inflicted cardiac issues that can’t be cured with annually applied non-curative Band-Aids — the kind that don’t stick?
Does he care that the addition of more and more playoff teams dilutes The Game? Or that more and more inter-league play has rendered the All-Star Game hollow? That his politically pressurized removal of the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver was a capitulation thought by many to be a race-based hoax?
Limiting throws to first to speed up games (perhaps) creates unintended changes to games and strategies. It’s another attempt to eliminate the natural in favor of the artificial.
The unnatural, artificial additive of the 10th-inning automatic runner at second serves as testimony to Manfred’s sense of The Game, his willingness to replace its heart with a clock.
If MLB wants to ensure that its games are played at a logical, appealing pace, it should attack its “modern” self-destructive changes.
Nothing would guarantee shorter games more than further reducing the TV commercial time between half-innings that has grown commensurate with billions in ad revenues extended to team owners, and players who step out of the box after every pitch to adjust their batting gloves — after taking the pitch.
But to even suggest that MLB demand less short-term money in service to the long-term good and welfare of The Game is anathema to Manfred and company. Why else did MLB make a cross-promotional deal with crypto-fraud FTX without even knowing what the heck it is (and now was)?
Does Manfred see what the totally unintended use of replay rules has done to games: three, four, five minutes per challenge, several times per game?
So he keeps butchering The Game, from the inside out, removing essential organs or bypassing them with experimental, wish-driven gadgetry. Surgery performed with fingers crossed and shoulders in full shrug.
Was Manfred ever a baseball fan? It’s hard to believe he was when his sense of best appealing to kids, and selling MLB Network, is to promote gambling and bat-flipping.
Trouble is not new for New Mex. State
Small wonder that New Mexico State University has suspended basketball operations to continue investigating, among several serious misdeeds, a fatal road-trip shooting of a New Mexico student by NMSU player Mike Peake, who was also shot.
The team bus then allegedly fled town before it was pulled over by police. Peake, a 6-foot-7 forward from Chicago, was with his third NCAA team, having transferred to Austin Peay from Georgia before transferring to NMSU.
New Mexico State’s basketball program has long had the rep as a whatever-it-takes bottom-feeder. Late Nets star “Super John” Williamson was recruited by NMSU, then spent two seasons there, making it to his sophomore year despite evidence that he was, at best, semi-literate.
In 2018, NMSU made the NCAA Tournament. Its roster included recruits from France, Australia and Trinidad and Tobago. But the season’s big get was guard Zach Lofton, who averaged 20 points.
Lofton played for three high schools and five colleges, was suspended from one for “misconduct” and arrived at NMSU as a “graduate transfer.” Thus he was a one-and-done at five colleges.
The NMSU athletic director Mario Moccia hit the roof when I wrote that his school’s inclusion in the NCAA Tournament didn’t pass even a minimal stink test. We decided that the future will decide. Last heard from, Lofton left “graduate school” and eventually played in Lebanon. And on Feb. 12, the school canceled the remainder of its season.
The Phoenix Open last week again featured the pandering of CBS and Golf Channel announcers who, off the air, can’t stand the annual drunken, cup-throwing rowdiness beside the par-3 16th, but on the air claim to love it!
So they’d choose to sit among them?
One issue never explored, verbally or visually, is how all the young and inebriated return to where they came from. Do they drive?
But if TV folks ignore the driving habits of Tiger Woods, why not those of PGA galleries?
Analysis of the Week: Reader Pat Esposito nominates ESPN’s condescending know-it-all Jay Bilas — who said, after Auburn hit a 3 in a loss to Alabama, that “Auburn needed to hit some shots to win this game.”
Question for NBC’s Al Roker: Did you really think that Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime performance was terrific? Did it really meet, let alone surpass, your standard of entertainment as witnessed by 113 million men, women and children?
