The Latest Breaking News from Tim McCarver

Baseball home runs appear to be getting a little extra help from climate change, a new study finds. That's because baseballs can fly farther through air that's made thinner by warmer conditions.

A soul-warming occurrence for something like the last 140 years, baseball's annual return to Pittsburgh this weekend brought with it as required an inevitable portion of nostalgia, sometimes felt in its acute form as plain old sadness.

The snapshot of Tim McCarver penetrating our mind when we heard of his death at the age of 81 Thursday afternoon, was first meeting him while he was standing on the press level of Shea Stadium squinting out at the sun while spitting tobacco juice into a Styrofoam coffee cup.

The longtime catcher and broadcasting legend, who died Thursday at 81, had a deep and prolific impact on the game.

McCarver had a long run as the one of the country's most recognized, incisive and talkative television commentators.

ST. LOUIS — He had a stellar baseball career, a bulldog of a catcher who won two World Series with the Cardinals in the 1960s and played in three. He had an even more decorated run after his playing days ended, an unparalleled marathon as a network television analyst on…

Before his award-winning broadcasting career, he was a two-time World Series champion in St. Louis.

McCarver’s death was announced by the Baseball Hall of Fame, which said he died Thursday morning in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was with his family.

The famed broadcaster and former St. Louis Cardinals star Tim McCarver has died