In the summer of 1959, a writer from Memphis, David Bloom, visited Rochester, N.Y., and the Triple-A Red Wings to check in on 17-year-old catcher Tim McCarver, who had graduated only two months earlier from Memphis’s Christian Brothers Academy.
“As for McCarver, he’s on a perpetual picnic,” Bloom wrote. “Happiest guy around, full of fun, in the midst of everything the Red Wings do.”
The picnic never ended, at least not until he took his last breath. Tim McCarver died Thursday in his beloved Memphis at the age of 81. A man of immense interests, McCarver enjoyed them with gusto. He wrote five books, read poetry, studied and enjoyed fine wine, recorded an album of American standards, hosted a TV sports interview show, won three sports Emmys, appeared in movies and visited art museums wherever his travels took him.
