(Updated Sept. 10, 2025)
In the 1950s, Tim McCarver was a standout athlete at Christian Brothers High School in Memphis, receiving football scholarship offers from schools such as Notre Dame and Tennessee, but professional baseball offered an immediate opportunity to earn an income for the catching prospect.
“Money was the deciding factor, plain and simple,” McCarver said in his book “Oh, Baby, I Love It.”
The best baseball offers came from the Yankees, Giants and Cardinals. The scout trying to sign McCarver for the Yankees was Hall of Fame catcher Bill Dickey. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dickey said McCarver is “a Yankees-type player.”
“They were my No. 2 and a very close No. 2 to the Cardinals,” McCarver said to the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
McCarver said the Yankees offered a $60,000 signing bonus and Dickey told him, “If you sign with the Yanks, I’ll take you along with me on a two-week fishing trip. We’ll talk about catching inside and out.”
(In the 2003 book “Few and Chosen,” McCarver recalled, “In those days, Catholics could not eat meat on Fridays. Bill Dickey wasn’t Catholic, but he knew we were, and he would come to our house on Fridays with a load of fish he had caught and give it to my folks.”)
Despite Dickey’s efforts, the Cardinals’ offer of a $75,000 signing bonus and a guaranteed annual salary of $6,000 per year for five years convinced McCarver he should sign with them instead of the Yankees.
“I think I was swayed by the fact the Cardinals were only 290 miles away (from Memphis),” McCarver said to the Commercial Appeal. “That influenced me somewhat. Also, the Cardinals had given me a take-it-or-leave-it deal and that scared me to death. I was 17 years old.”
In “Few and Chosen,” McCarver said, “The Cardinals’ strongest pitch to me was that they were in need of a catcher, and I would have the best chance of making the major leagues more quickly with them than I would with the Giants or the Yankees … The Cardinals had Hal Smith, an excellent receiver, but … no promising young catchers in their organization.”
Super scout
With his parents in attendance, along with Cardinals farm director Walter Shannon and scout Buddy Lewis, McCarver signed the contract at his Memphis home on June 8, 1959. The $75,000 bonus was the largest given by the Cardinals, according to the Post-Dispatch.
The Cardinals “outbid at least nine other clubs for McCarver, whose high school batting average was .412,” the Post-Dispatch reported. McCarver also hit .390 for an American Legion team which won state and regional championships.
Buddy Lewis, a former big-league catcher, scouted McCarver for four years and said, “Tim is the best young catcher I’ve ever seen.”
According to the Post-Dispatch, Lewis relentlessly pursued McCarver and “spent many an afternoon at the McCarver home, talking baseball, catching and lastly, but not least, telling the St. Louis Cardinals story.”
(In “Few and Chosen,” McCarver said, “My earliest baseball recollection is the sound of Harry Caray’s voice, broadcasting St. Louis Cardinals games … Football was my favorite sport when I was a kid, but I was a big baseball fan, too. I wasn’t a Cardinals fan, just a baseball fan, but because of Harry Caray you couldn’t help but follow the Cardinals.”)
After signing the deal in the early morning before his father, a police lieutenant, went to work, McCarver said, “I am too excited for words.”
Quick rise
McCarver was sent to the Cardinals’ Class D farm club at Keokuk, Iowa. He made his professional debut in the second game of a doubleheader at Waterloo, Iowa, on June 14, 1959, according to the Daily Gate City newspaper of Keokuk.
Years later, McCarver told the Commercial Appeal the plate umpire in his professional debut was Brent Musburger, the future sportscaster. However, that wasn’t so. The plate umpire was Bob Thompson and the base umpire was Chuck Wahl, research by the Daily Gate City showed. Musburger was the plate umpire a week later, June 21, 1959, in a game McCarver caught for Keokuk at Michigan City, Ind. Musburger was the umpire in 11 games McCarver played for Keokuk, according to the Daily Gate City.
McCarver was hailed as Keokuk’s best catching prospect since Russ Nixon, who hit .385 for Keokuk in 1955 before embarking on a 12-year playing career in the majors. “The fans will love this kid,” Keokuk manager Frank Calo said. “If they think Russ Nixon had it, wait until they see this kid.”
Unfazed by professional pitching, McCarver hit .360 in 65 games for Keokuk. He committed 14 errors.
When Rochester (N.Y.) catcher Dick Rand dislocated a right index finger, McCarver was promoted to the Class AAA International League club to replace him. He hit .357 for Rochester in 17 games and made no errors.
In September 1959, McCarver, 17, was promoted to the Cardinals and joined the team in Milwaukee.
Major-leaguer
On Sept. 10, 1959, his first day in a big-league uniform, McCarver marveled from the dugout at being in the presence of two of his boyhood heroes, Stan Musial of the Cardinals and Hank Aaron of the Braves.
“So when Hank came to bat for the first time that day,” McCarver said, “I leaped from my perch in the Cardinals’ dugout and did what I always did when I listened to the Braves play the Cardinals. ‘Come on, Henry,’ I yelled. ‘Come on, Henry.’ The action seemed natural to me, but some of my teammates weren’t amused.”
In the ninth inning, with two outs, Bill White on second base and the Cardinals trailing by three, manager Solly Hemus sent McCarver to make his major-league debut as a pinch-hitter for pitcher Marshall Bridges.
“So there I was, younger than Musial’s own son, picking up a bat and advancing to the plate,” McCarver said. “As I stepped in to face Don McMahon, a veteran right-handed relief pitcher with a commanding fastball, my knees literally shook with fear.”
McMahon got two strikes on McCarver. Then the teen swung at a curveball and lifted it to right field, where the game-ending catch was made by none other than Hank Aaron. Boxscore
The next day, Sept. 11, 1959, at Chicago against the Cubs, McCarver got his first big-league start at catcher. Batting in the No. 2 spot, he went 0-for-4 against Bob Anderson. The Cardinals’ starting pitcher was Bob Miller, 20. According to The Sporting News, Miller and McCarver formed the youngest battery in big-league history. Boxscore
To put that into comparative perspective, the combined ages of McCarver and Miller was 37 _ younger than the individual ages of two of their teammates, Musial (38) and George Crowe (38).
On Sept. 13, 1959, McCarver, batting leadoff, got his first big-league hit, a single against the Cubs’ Glen Hobbie. Boxscore
(In “Few and Chosen,” McCarver recalled when he was a youth, “It was my sister, Marilyn, who made me a left-handed hitter. I do everything right-handed except hit a baseball and that was Marilyn’s idea.”)
McCarver played in eight games for the 1959 Cardinals, hitting .167 (4-for-24).
Described by The Sporting News as “one of the finest catching prospects the Cardinals have brought up in many years,” McCarver had stints with St. Louis in 1960 and 1961, then spent all of 1962 in the minor leagues before earning the Cardinals’ starting catcher job in 1963.
At spring training in 1963, McCarver, trying to regain his timing after a stint in Army reserves, had a poor batting practice and was criticized by Branch Rickey, the former general manager who returned to the Cardinals as a consultant.
In a 2014 interview with Cardinals Gameday Magazine, McCarver said, “It ticked me off. To this day, it ticks me off. I’m not a big Branch Rickey fan as a result of that. Later in 1963, I was swinging the bat well and he says, ‘Twenty-five McCarvers will win all the pennants in the world.’ ”
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