R.I.P.: Tim McCarver, Longtime Sportscaster, Former MLB Player

Tim McCarver (1941-2023)

Tim McCarver, the man from Memphis whose touch of a Southern accent was a lifelong trademark, died there Thursday of heart failure. He was 81 and his passing was announced by the Baseball Hall of Fame, in which he was a member as a broadcaster, reports stltoday.com.

McCarver had a record 34-year stretch of broadcasting big-league baseball at the highest level. He called 24 of the 29 World Series from 1985-2013, across three networks, wrapping up the unprecedented run with 14 in a row. In one stretch, he called postseason contests for 29 consecutive years. He also did 22 All-Star games, another record for an analyst.

McCarver had stints in the booths of the Phillies, Mets, Yankees and Giants that were mixed in with or before his national duties, and all of those assignments contributed to him being honored in 2012 with the Ford C. Frick Award — presented annually by the Baseball Hall of Fame for excellence in broadcasting the sport.

He worked with some of the best to ever call the game, including Jack and Joe Buck, Al Michaels, Bob Costas. McLaughln has said he is proud that he was McCarver's final broadcast partner, calling it "humbling.

“I truly believe that the games we did together were some of the best TV games that Cards TV has ever had," McLaughlin said. "I really felt when he was added to the Cardinals games, it was important to bring him back into the family. ... It was important to me to draw on his enormous wealth of Cardinals knowledge and experiences and to bring it out in a light that maybe people weren’t accustomed to. I’m really proud that we did that and then some. I thought it was a special pairing.”

McCarver had 21 seasons as a big-league player, from the time he was called up by the Cardinals in 1959 until wrapping it up by playing in six games for the Phillies in 1980 — making him one of the few to have played in four decades. He was inducted into the Cardinals' Hall of Fame in 2017.

McCarver was a two-time All-Star and National League MVP runner-up to teammate Orlando Cepeda in the Cardinals' World Series championship season of 1967, when he hit .295 with 14 homes and 69 RBIs in an MLB season lacking offense while backstopping the pitching staff. In 1966, his 13 triples led the National League.