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."

John Madden: Style and Substance

John Madden is retiring after 30 stellar years as an NFL commentator for four networks. He started out at CBS in 1979, staying there until that network lost its NFL contract in 1994. He then moved to Fox. In 2002, Madden joined Al Michaels in ABC's Monday Night Football booth and since 2006 he and Michaels have done Sunday Night Football games for NBC.

Depending on your age/predilections, your most vivid image of Madden could be as a Super Bowl winning coach, as a highly animated TV commentator yelling "Boom!" and talking about "turduckens," as the name behind a hugely popular NFL video game--or even as a fixture in Miller Lite commercials:



As a kid, I got a big kick out of those Miller Lite ads. Isn't it something how back then writers knew how to be funny without being crass? Those Miller Lite spots are 100 times funnier than most of the "avant garde" ads from recent years.

I am not quite old enough to remember John Madden's coaching career, though as a student of the game I became quite familiar with it; my earliest recollections of Madden are of him teaming up with Pat Summerall on CBS: it always seemed like they broadcast the biggest games, first featuring the Dallas Cowboys and later featuring teams like the 49ers, Redskins, Bears and Giants. It was a treat listening to Madden talk about what made a young Bill Parcells a good coach or why Walter Payton was so special. Although Madden was always very energetic and enthusiastic during telecasts, if you paid attention to what he was saying you could learn something about the game: he had a keen, quick eye for what was happening on the field and his folksy way of expressing himself should not delude you into forgetting just how much he knows about the sport's strategies.

Madden also understood the human element of the game. Whenever he did Super Bowl telecasts, at the end of the game he would always say something to the effect that for the winning coach this was the greatest feeling in the world, something that no one could ever take away from him.

It was always hilarious to hear Madden carrying on during the annual Thanksgiving game about the "turducken." I first thought that he had just made the whole thing up but there actually is such a thing as a de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck stuffed with a de-boned chicken. Madden obviously had a lot of fun during the broadcasts but I respect the fact that he did his homework thoroughly before games, meeting with the coaches and key players so that he knew exactly what to expect from a strategic standpoint.

The All-Madden teams honored players who Madden felt played the game the right way and it was always interesting to hear his take about that.

It is very important to not let Madden's outsized persona make you forget that he was a great, Super Bowl-winning Hall of Famer who became the Oakland Raiders head coach at just 33 years of age in 1969. He posted a 103-32-7 regular season record and guided the Raiders to seven conference championship game appearances in 10 seasons, including 1976 when the Raiders went 13-1 in the regular season before drilling the Vikings 32-14 in Super Bowl XI. Madden's Raiders won seven division titles, never had a losing season and never finished lower than second in their division.

The Raiders have always been infamous for welcoming all kinds of characters onto their roster but Madden shaped and molded people who others might have considered misfits into winners. Madden often explained that he only required three things of his players:

1) Be on time.
2) Pay attention.
3) Play like hell on Sunday.

Gus Alfieri, the point guard on St. John's 1959 NIT Championship team, once told me that his Hall of Fame basketball Coach Joe Lapchick did not believe in having a lot of rules for his players; Lapchick thought that if he made too many rules then he would paint himself into a corner in terms of having to punish players and thus lose the flexibility to handle situations on a case by case basis. Alfieri noted that Bobby Knight has great respect for Lapchick and that Knight used a similar approach in that regard during his Hall of Fame coaching career (though the mild mannered Lapchick and the foul mouthed Knight had completely opposite demeanors in terms of how they interacted with people). Many coaches get so caught up in regulating minutiae that they lose sight of the fact that their job is not to control every waking moment of their players' lives but simply to lead and inspire their teams to maximize their potential.

John Madden was a winner on the football field and during his three decades as a TV commentator he added immensely to my enjoyment and understanding of pro football. I hope that he has a long and happy retirement.