Tim McCarver, 1941-2023

Tim McCarver was one of the smartest men in baseball. All you had to do was ask him.

Alas, we can no longer do that.

James Timothy McCarver was born on October 16, 1941 in Memphis, Tennessee. Like James Paul McCartney Jr., born 8 months later, this James was best known by his middle name. He played from 1959 to 1980, and is the only baseball player to be thrown out of major league games in 4 different decades.

But he was also the catcher on the 1964 and '67 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals, and Steve Carlton's "personal catcher" on the Philadelphia Phillies. He had also caught Carlton on the '67 Cards, and once joked that he and Steve will be buried 60 feet, 6 inches apart. Although he did not play in the 1980 postseason, and in fact served as a Phils broadcaster during the NLCS, he received a World Series ring when the Phils won.

But he is best known as a broadcaster, for the Mets, including their 1986 World Championship season; the Yankees, including their 1999 and 2000 World Championship seasons; and several networks, and has been awarded the Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford Frick Award for broadcasters. He also wrote several books about baseball, and is a member of the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame.

The weird thing about McCarver is that the ballpark in his hometown, which served as the home of a series of Memphis teams from 1968 to 1999, was renamed Tim McCarver Stadium in 1978, while he was not only still alive, but still active in baseball. It has since been replaced by a more modern facility, and was demolished in 2005. Like Helen Hayes with the 1st Broadway theater named for her, McCarver outlived the "playhouse" named for him.

No wonder that, when James Timothy McCarver joined James Paul McCartney Jr. as a recording artist, and recorded Tim McCarver Sings Songs from the Great American Songbook in 2009, one of the songs he chose was the one that Joe Raposo wrote about Ebbets Field for Frank Sinatra: "There Used to Be a Ballpark."

He married Anne McDaniel, his high school sweetheart, in 1964, although it ended in divorce. They had 2 daughters, Kelly and Kathy, and 2 grandchildren.

He died today, February 16, 2023, of heart failure in his hometown of Memphis. He was 81 years old.

With his death, there are now 14 surviving players from the 1964 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals: Roger Craig, Dick Groat, Bob Skinner, Mike Shannon, Julián Javier, Dal Maxvill, Bill White, Carl Warwick, Gordie Richardson, Ray Washburn, Ron Taylor, Charlie James, Bob Humphreys and Bob Uecker.

And there are 11 surviving players from the 1967 World Champion Cardinals: Shannon, Javier, Maxville, Washburn, Orlando Cepeda, Steve Carlton, Eddie Bressoud, Bobby Tolan, Ed Spiezio, Dick Hughes and Larry Jaster.

Felo Ramírez, 1923-2017

Felo Ramírez and Jaime Jarrín at Marlins Park

There have been 3 voices of Spanish-language baseball in America: Eloy "Buck" Canel and Felo Ramírez on the East Coast, and Jaime Jarrín on the West Coast.

Canel died in 1980. Now, Jarrin is the only one left. And he is 81 years old.

Rafael Ramírez Arias was born on June 22, 1923 in Bayamo, Cuba -- not to be confused with Bayamón, Puerto Rico. He was known as El Orgullo de Bayamo, the Pride of his hometown.

He played 2nd base as a teenager, but admitted he wasn't good enough to play professionally. One day, using a friend's microphone and amplifier, he began describing the game as if he were a professional broadcaster.

"Calling baseball games was my passion since I was a child," he said in 2001. He began his career at Radio Salas in the Cuban capital of Havana in 1945. Even before the Castro revolution took over the island in 1959, he left to seek his fortune elsewhere in the Caribbean, in Puerto Rico and Venezuela. He maintained a home in the former to the end of his life, and remains enormously popular in the latter.

Raul Striker Jr., the Miami Marlins' Spanish TV play-by-play man, said, "You have broadcasters who are Cuban, and they have their Cuban following. And you have Puerto Ricans, who have their Puerto Rican followings. Felo's following was across all countries."

He called games for the 2 most popular teams in Puerto Rico, the Senadores de San Juan and the Cangrejeros de Santurce -- the Senators and the Crabbers, the latter of which produced Roberto Clemente.

The aforementioned Buck Canel was his idol, as pretty much the only man on the radio talking about the American major leagues in Spanish, including on the Spanish version of The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, the English version of which ran on radio from 1942, and on television from 1946, both until 1960. Ramírez would eventually join Canel on the program.

He was the voice of the Caribbean World Series, and the Spanish voice to Spanish ears who wanted to listen to American baseball, including 32 World Series. His highlights include Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, Clemente's 3,000th hit in 1972, and Hank Aaron's 715th home run in 1974.

Along the way, he made it a point to get to the ballpark 3 hours early, and talk to the players, to get a feel for what they were thinking and going through, so he could accurately represent them on the air.

"Felo gave me a great piece of advice at the beginning of my career, when we worked together in Venezuela," said Mike Flores, a journalist and a longtime friend. "He said, 'You will learn more if you arrive early to the games.'"

When the Florida Marlins were founded in 1991, and based in the metropolitan area of Miami, which is America's most familiar Spanish-speaking city (along with Los Angeles, and even more so than New York or any city in Texas), they marketed themselves to the area's huge Caribbean-descended population, and to the Caribbean itself.

Hiring Felo, even though he was approaching age 70, was a natural. And so, when they first took the field at what was then named Joe Robbie Stadium (last I checked, its current name was Hard Rock Stadium) in Miami Gardens on April 5, 1993, Felo Ramírez was the play-by-play voice on Radio Mambi, 710 on the AM dial.

In 1997, and again in 2003, he broadcast postseason runs for the team now known as the Miami Marlins, both of which ended with winning the World Series. While the endings were painful for fans of the Cleveland Indians and the Yankees, respectively, Felo finally got to call an American, rather than Caribbean, World Series win by a team he could call his own.

He never married or had children -- the life of a traveling baseball employee has been hard on many who have, and many families have broken up because it was handled poorly -- but he left a legacy for all radiodifusores to follow.

"He's a master at what he dies," said Luis "Yiky" Quintana, who spent 16 years as his last broadcast partner. "There's never been anybody in Spanish broadcasting who has called as many games as he has. He's dedicated his life to baseball. When the season ended here in the United States, he would go call games in Venezuela, Puerto Rico. He would call winter league games, even juvenile games. His life is baseball, and there isn't a broadcaster in Spanish radio today who isn't influenced by Felo."

In 2001, he followed Canel as only the 2nd Spanish-speaking, and only the 2nd Hispanic, broadcaster awarded the Ford Frick Award by the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2012, when Marlins Park opened on the site of the Orange Bowl, the street to the north, NW 6th Street, was renamed Felo Ramirez Drive. In 2016, a ballfield at Tropical Park in Miami was named Rafael "Felo" Ramírez Field.

On a 2011 roadtrip to San Francisco, he called a group of sportswriters over to the broadcast booth. He had a blackboard with his name, and that of former San Francisco Giants' slugger Barry Bonds. On it, he had written, "Bonds 762 homers, Felo 0." Then he pointed to himself, and said, "Hall of Fame." Then he pointed to Bonds' name, and shrugged his shoulders. Bonds was not yet eligible. Through the elections of 2017, Bonds is still not in.

He announced last year that, like many aging broadcasters before him, he would cut back. But while most of those decided to do only home games, Felo wouldn't even limit himself to that: He said he would limit his travel to East Coast games, thus permitting himself to fly to the Caribbean.

"I think about it sometimes," he said of retirement, "but I adore what I do so much. It's really my life, not just a job."

But this past April 26, as he was getting off the team bus in Philadelphia, he fell, and hit his head on the ground. He was taken to a nearby hospital, and later transferred to one in nearby Wilmington, Delaware that specialized in head injuries. When it became clear that recovery was unlikely, he was released, and allowed to return home to Miami.

Felo Ramírez died on August 21, 2017, at his home in Miami, at age 94. Descansa en Paz.

UPDATE: His final resting place is not publicly known.

Gene Elston, 1922-2015

Sometimes, the man who makes a team a cultural icon is a player. Sometimes, a manager or head coach. Sometimes -- and this usually is not a good thing -- it's the owner.

For many teams, it is the lead broadcaster. The Houston Astros are one of these teams, and Gene Elston was that man.

Robert Gene Elston was born on March 26, 1922, in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He got his start in broadcasting with the NFL's Cleveland Rams, before they moved to Los Angeles in 1946. At the time, the NFL was hardly the big business it is now, and moving on to minor league baseball was seen as a step up.

Gene (who always used his middle name) broadcast in the minors from 1946 to 1953. In 1954, he was hired by the Chicago Cubs, pairing with Bert Wilson (but not Jack Brickhouse). In 1958, the Mutual Broadcasting System (which went out of business in 1999 but included New York's WOR and WHN at various times) hired him to call their Game of the Day with recently retired pitching star Bob Feller.

That got him noticed, and, as Major League Baseball was moving and expanding, it was virtually assured that one of the new or moved teams would hire him. In 1962, he and Loel Passe became the 1st broadcast team of the National League's new Houston Colt .45's. In 1965, the team moved into the Astrodome and were renamed the Houston Astros, and they were joined by another Midwesterner, who'd been broadcasting for the Triple-A Hawaii Islanders: Harry Kalas, later the voice of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Until the age of retractable roofs, most domed stadiums were hitter's parks. The Astrodome, the original, was an exception. So, for their 1st 40 or so years, the Astros were reliant on good pitching, good defense, contact hitting and speed, rather than power hitting. Despite the occasional big hitter such as Jimmy Wynn or Cesar Cedeno, most Astro hitters tended to be contact hitters, such as Jose Cruz Sr.

But they had many good pitchers, and Elston called 11 no-hitters. The 1st was by Sam Jones of the Cubs, against the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 12, 1955, the 1st no-hitter ever pitched by a black man in the major leagues.

Don Nottebart threw the 1st one in Colt/Astro history on May 27, 1963, against the Phillies. A month later, Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants pitched on against them. In 1964, Ken Johnson no-hit the Cincinnati Reds for 9 innings, but lost due to walks and errors. Don Wilson pitched one for the Astros in 1967, and another in 1969, just 1 day after Jim Maloney of the Reds had done it to them.

Larry Dierker, later a broadcast partner of Gene's, and still later the club's best-ever manager, tossed a no-hitter against the Montreal Expos on July 9, 1976. On April 7, 1979, Ken Forsch not only became the pitcher with the earliest no-hitter in the calendar year (a record later tied by Jack Morris), but joined his brother Bob of the St. Louis Cardinals as the only brothers ever to both throw no-hitters.

On September 26, 1981, Houston-area native Nolan Ryan pitched his 5th career no-hitter. against the Los Angeles Dodgers -- the team the Astros beat in a 1-game Playoff for their 1st National League Western Division title the year before, and would soon (due to the strike's setup) lose to in the NL Division Series. Gene Elston called it, deviating from his usual not-so-homerish manner as Dusty Baker grounded out to 3rd base for the final out: 

Two balls and no strikes to Baker. And a ground ball to third! Art Howe... he got it! Nolan Ryan, no-hitter number five!

Elston remained with the Astros through the 1986 season, when they won another NL West title, Mike Scott pitching a no-hitter against the San Francisco Giants to clinch it, and came tantalizingly close to winning their 1st Pennant, but falling short against the Mets.

But after that season, Astro general manager Dick Wagner fired him -- because, it has been rumored, his reaction to Scott's clinching no-hitter wasn't excited enough. With some poetic justice, he was then hired by a former Astro GM, even more influential in the club's development (if not its outreach to the fans). Talbot Merton "Tal" Smith hired him as a consultant and researcher for his company, Tal Smith Enterprises. (Tal would eventually serve as Astro GM twice more.)

Gene still broadcast games until retiring in 1997, doing so for CBS. In 2006, the Baseball Hall of Fame gave him its Ford Frick Award, tantamount to "being elected to the broadcasters' wing of the Hall of Fame." This award had previously been given to Milo Hamilton, a fellow Iowa native who had also broadcast first for the Cubs, then with the Astros, partnering with Gene in 1985 and 1986. (He'd also broadcast for the Atlanta Braves, including Hank Aaron's 715th home run.)

In 2012, as part of the team's 50th Anniversary celebration, the Astros dedicated a Walk of Fame outside their new ballpark, Minute Maid Park. Elston and Hamilton were honored, as were Wynn, Cruz, Dierker and Bob Aspromonte. (Aspromonte was a member of the last Brooklyn Dodgers team in 1957 and the 1st Houston Colt .45's team in 1962, and as a 1971 Met was the last active player to have been a Brooklyn Dodger.)

Elston had been in ill health for a while, before dying on September 5. He was 93 years old.

When the Colt .45's/Astros debuted in 1962, Houston had a decent history as a minor-league town. But a few men worked hard to make it a true major league place. In baseball, those men included team owner Roy Hofheinz, a federal judge and former Mayor who got the Astrodome built; team president Paul Richards and general manager Tal Smith, who pretty much built the organization from scratch; and broadcaster Gene Elston.

If any of them had failed, it is entirely possible that the Astros might have had to move -- they almost did, to Washington, D.C. after the 1991 season, but the National League blocked the move -- and might never have gotten a new team.

Baseball fans in south Texas and southern Louisiana owe Gene Elston a debt they can never repay.

North Texas and northern Louisiana? That's Texas Rangers territory.

UPDATE: Elston was buried in Houston National Cemetery in Houston.