Reflections on the Passing of Broadcasting Legend--and All-Star Catcher--Tim McCarver

It is natural and common for a sports fan to fervently insist that the golden age of sports coincides with his childhood. My earliest sports memories date back to the mid-1970s, and many of my fondest sports memories are from the 1980s. For me, the period from the mid-1970s through the late-1980s is the golden age of sports, and that time period is memorable not only because of the splendid athletes who were in their primes--including but not limited to Julius Erving, Pete Maravich, George Gervin, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird-Michael Jordan triumvirate, Mario Andretti, Bjorn Borg, Pete Rose, Eric Davis, Reggie Jackson, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Walter Payton, and Bo Jackson--but also because of the insights provided by TV analysts such as Hubie Brown, John Madden, and Tim McCarver. On the play by play side, Al Michaels, Dick Enberg, Dick Stockton, and Marv Albert were the cream of the crop.

Brown coached the Kentucky Colonels to the 1975 ABA title, Madden coached the Oakland Raiders to a win in Super Bowl XI, and McCarver played for two World Series champions in the 1960s. All three understood what it takes to win at the highest level of sport, and all three had the gift of conveying that understanding to viewers within the flow of the game. When Brown, Madden, or McCarver did an NBA, NFL, or MLB game respectively, you knew that it was a big game--and you knew that you were going to be blessed with intelligent analysis.

Brown still occasionally works NBA games for ESPN/ABC, but he has not been a lead analyst for many years. Madden passed away on December 28, 2021. McCarver passed away yesterday. Michaels now does Amazon's Thursday night NFL games and he is still excellent, if perhaps not quite at his peak. Enberg passed away in 2017. Albert and Stockton retired in 2021, though they both appeared as guests during the NBA's 75th Anniversary Celebration Game.

Intelligent sports commentary has never been plentiful, but a gaping void exists in the NBA, NFL, and MLB that may never be filled. That is not to say that there are not some very good commentators working today--but will any of the commentators who are in their primes now be considered all-time greats?

McCarver served as the national TV analyst for a record 24 World Series on three different networks (ABC, CBS, Fox). Joe Buck, McCarver's play by play partner for 18 years, said on Thursday, "I learned really fast that if you were in his inner circle, he would be a fierce defender of you and for you. He taught me how to deal with criticism because he had been criticized his whole broadcast career. And sometimes it was because he was a teacher of the game. If some player or manager didn't manage or play the way he thought the game should be played, he let a national audience know it. He was always the first one in the clubhouse the next day. If that person had something to say back to him, he would engage and stood his ground, but it was fair. He taught me a lot about the game, but he taught me as much or more about how to broadcast on a on a national level." In 2012, McCarver received the Baseball Hall of Fame's prestigious Ford C. Frick award for broadcasting excellence.

McCarver's deep understanding of baseball strategy was always evident during his broadcasts, but perhaps the most famous example of his combination of knowledge and prescience happened during game seven of the 2001 World Series. As the left-handed Arizona batter Luis Gonzalez stepped to the plate to face the Yankees' legendary closer Mariano Rivera, McCarver declared, "The one problem is, Rivera throws inside to left-handers. Left-handers get a lot of broken bat hits into shallow outfield, the shallow part of the outfield. That is the danger of bringing the infield in with a guy like Rivera on the mound." Not long after McCarver uttered those words, Gonzalez won the game--and the World Series--with a bloop hit to the shallow part of the outfield. 

I never understood people who criticized McCarver for talking too much. His job was to explain what was happening on the field, and he did his job very well. I have always followed basketball and football more closely than I followed baseball, but prior to the 1995 baseball strike I was an avid baseball fan who very much enjoyed listening to McCarver's insights (and I still enjoyed listening to McCarver call the World Series after 1995, even though I did not follow MLB as closely as I previously had).

Before McCarver won three Emmys as MLB's premier TV analyst, he earned two All-Star selections, a second place finish in the 1967 NL MVP race, and a pair of World Series rings with the St. Louis Cardinals (1964, 1967). McCarver is the only catcher post-1900 to lead either league in triples (13 in 1966). He was the preferred catcher for two different Hall of Fame pitchers (Bob Gibson with the Cardinals, and Steve Carlton with first the Cardinals and then the Philadelphia Phillies).

McCarver played in four different decades (1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s), and he served as a broadcaster from 1980-2019. He exemplifies the term "baseball lifer."

Journey to the National Master Title, Part 2

No one said that the journey to National Master would be easy. I scored 3/4 in the January 22, 2023 East Market Swiss, finishing tied for second-third but losing 12 rating points to fall to 2002. My only loss happened in the first round, when I was up a Pawn against a much lower rated player and had more than 25 minutes left in a G/45 time control but I inexplicably blundered into mate in one, the latest and most extreme example of the extent to which blundering has been the main obstacle to achieving my goal. Such mistakes are difficult to explain and foolish to excuse: the bottom line is that I have to hold myself to a higher standard, and not lose focus regardless of opponent/game situation/any other circumstance.

I scored 2.5/5 (one win, two draws, one loss, one half point bye) in the U2100 section of the February 4-5, 2023 Cardinal Open, losing 16 rating points; as a result of that subpar performance, I fell below the 2000 rating level for the first time in nearly a year. In the last round of the Cardinal Open, I faced William Stewart (1969), and a win would have not only kept my rating above 2000 but also enabled me to have a small net rating gain for the event.

After Stewart played 33 Rxh6 (see diagram below) I played the correct ...Bxc4+, but after 34 bxc4 I blundered with 34 ...Qb7, mistakenly believing that I had a checkmating attack on the Queenside. I subsequently lost the game after I missed an opportunity to force a draw by perpetual check.

Instead, after 34...gxh6 35.Qh5+ Kg8 36.Qg6+ Kh8 37.Nxg5 fxg5 38.Qxh6+ Qh7 White's attack is over and I am up a Rook for two Pawns. If White tries 37.Rh1 then ...Qh7 forces White to trade Queens or else retreat, again ending the attack in my favor. 

I bounced back from that final round disaster to score 3-0 in the February 11, 2023 DBTHS Swiss, an event run by the revived Dayton Chess Club. That performance pushed my rating back up to 1996. The next day, I scored 3.5/4 to take clear first in the East Market Swiss, gaining 11 rating points to restore my Expert level rating (2007, five points higher than before the Cardinal Open).

I played in four regular rated over the board chess tournaments since I wrote Journey to the National Master Title, Part 1. I scored 10 wins, three draws, and two losses in those tournaments, with two first place finishes. With a rating of 2007 after those tournaments, I suffered a net loss of seven points, and I need to gain 193 points to reach my goal. 

Overall in 2023, I have scored 14 wins, four draws, and three losses in regular rated tournament games with three first place finishes in six events--but the three losses (including two losses to players rated below 1700) were as costly as they were avoidable. Each loss at my rating level represents a 24 point swing (counting the points lost plus the points that would have been gained with a win), so the two lapses in concentration versus significantly lower rated players are the difference between being rated 2055 now and being rated 2007. 

I have two tournaments remaining in February 2023, so I have ample opportunities to demonstrate that I have learned my lesson. Hopefully Part 3 of this series will not include any losses to lower rated players!

Tom Brady Retires After Turbulent Final Season

Tom Brady announced that he has thrown his last NFL pass, and this time there does not seem to be any hesitation or doubt on his part. I placed Brady's career in historical context the first time that he retired, and I wrote about his first game back after his brief retirement, so this article will focus on Brady's final season. Brady did not play poorly in 2022, but his performance dropped off significantly from his 2021 campaign when he finished second in AP NFL MVP voting after leading the league in passing yards (a career-high 5316), passing touchdowns (43), completions (485) and attempts (719). In 2022, Brady again led the league in completions (490) and attempts (733)--setting single season league records in both categories--but his yardage plummeted to 4694, and he threw for a modest (in this passing friendly era) 25 touchdowns. He received no MVP votes, and he was not selected to the Pro Bowl.

Most significantly, Brady's team posted a losing record (8-9) for the first time in his 22 seasons as an NFL starting quarterback (the New England Patriots went 5-11 in Brady's rookie season, but he only appeared briefly in one game during the 2000 season). Brady won a Super Bowl in his first season in Tampa Bay after the team went 11-5 during the regular season, and the Buccaneers improved to 13-4 in 2021 before losing to the eventual Super Bowl champion L.A. Rams in the Divisional Round of the playoffs, but the 2022 Buccaneers were flawed and limited in ways that even prime Tom Brady may not have been able to overcome--and the very good but not consistently great 45 year old Tom Brady was not able to lift this team above .500, though the Buccaneers snuck into the playoffs thanks to winning the divisional title in the league's weakest division.

Did the 2022 season tarnish Brady's legacy? No, not any more than Brady winning a Super Bowl in 2020 tarnished Bill Belichick's legacy. By definition, legacy includes a person's entire body of work viewed in the largest possible context, not one slice of that body of work viewed in a narrow, distorted context. Brady was a brilliant and durable performer for over two decades, and he generally played his best in the games that meant the most, resulting in seven Super Bowl titles--an individual record for NFL titles that not only figures to stand for a long time, but that outpaces the lifetime totals of all NFL franchises except for Green Bay, Chicago, and the New York Giants. Brady's legacy is that he consistently performed at a high level individually while also playing a major role in team success as he led the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl wins and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to one Super Bowl win. Similarly, Belichick's legacy as a championship-winning coach and as a mentor to other highly successful coaches--including, most notably, Nick Saban, one of Belichick's assistant coaches with the Cleveland Browns in the early 1990s--is unaffected by whatever has happened or will happen in the final stages of his long career.

Brady was far from being a stumbling, ineffective player in his final season but even if he had been it would be wrong to say that he would be remembered that way. When we think of Willie Mays, Johnny Unitas, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and other legends who played well past their prime years, we may be aware to some extent that they were not at their best in those last seasons but it would not be true to say that their careers are defined by those seasons: Johnny Unitas as a San Diego Charger is a footnote in the book of his career, not a chapter heading.

Only Brady knows what effect his final season had on his personal life, and only he knows whether or not he regrets not retiring as a champion in 2020, but his football legacy was not impacted in any way by the turbulent waters that he and the Buccaneers navigated in 2022.