Lefty and Tim Read online

  “Steve Carlton needed Tim McCarver to reach for the stars. In all my years covering baseball, I’ve never seen a pitcher-catcher relationship quite like theirs. McCarver did more than merely help Carlton rediscover his slider and recapture his greatness. He found a place inside Carlton’s circle of trust that reshaped both of their careers. Kashatus does a beautiful job of delving into what made their bond so special, on and off the field.”

  —Jayson Stark, baseball writer for the Athletic and the Philadelphia Inquirer, 1979–2000, and 2019 J. G. Taylor Spink Award winner

  “Bill Kashatus takes an inside look at a historic baseball brotherhood, revealing in riveting detail how Tim McCarver helped push a pitcher he claimed had an ‘irascible contempt for being human’ to superhuman heights no pitcher may ever reach again.”

  —Tyler Kepner, author of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches

  “It was amazing to play behind Carlton and McCarver. Steve was a fast worker and Tim knew the hitters so well that the Phillies could count on winning every time they started a game. Lefty and Tim tells the story of that winning combination.”

  —Mike Schmidt, Phillies Hall of Fame third baseman, 1972–89

  “Steve Carlton was a special project for me when he came to the Phillies in 1972. He could be strong-willed and stubborn, and we had many battles. But he also became the best pitcher I ever coached. Lefty and Tim reveals how Carlton became a Hall of Famer. It is one of the best books I’ve ever read.”

  —Ray Rippelmeyer, Phillies pitching coach, 1970–78

  Lefty and Tim

  How Steve Carlton and Tim McCarver Became Baseball’s Best Battery

  William C. Kashatus

  Foreword by Larry Christenson

  University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln

  © 2022 by William C. Kashatus

  Foreword © 2022 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

  Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image: Tim McCarver and Steve Carlton, 1977 (Larry Christenson).

  Author photo courtesy of the author.

  Portions of the book previously appeared in Almost a Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the 1980 Phillies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Copyright © 2008 University of Pennsylvania Press. Used with permission.

  All rights reserved

  The University of Nebraska Press is part of a land-grant institution with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples, as well as those of the relocated Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, and Iowa Peoples.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kashatus, William C., 1959– author.

  Title: Lefty and Tim: how Steve Carlton and Tim McCarver became baseball’s best battery / William C. Kashatus; foreword by Larry Christenson.

  Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021043219

  ISBN 9781496226679 (hardback)

  ISBN 9781496232168 (epub)

  ISBN 9781496232175 (pdf)

  Subjects: LCSH: Carlton, Steve, 1944– | McCarver, Tim. | Pitchers (Baseball)—United States—Biography. | Catchers (Baseball)—United States—Biography. | Baseball—United States—History—20th century. | St. Louis Cardinals (Baseball team)—History—20th century. | Philadelphia Phillies (Baseball team)—History—20th century. | BISAC: SPORTS & RECREATION / Baseball / History | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Sports

  Classification: LCC GV865.C317 K37 2022 |DDC 796.357092 [B]—dc23/eng/20211223

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021043219

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For LC, with great appreciation for his MLB career and his friendship

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Foreword by Larry Christenson

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  1. Always a Catcher

  2. Odd Couple

  3. Learning Curve

  4. Moneyball

  5. Reunited

  6. Drinking Coffee with a Fork

  7. Sphinx of the Schuylkill

  8. McCarver’s Pitch

  9. Lefty

  10. Closer Than Sixty Feet, Six Inches

  11. Mastery and Mystery

  12. Cooperstown Bound

  Appendix A: Baseball’s Best Battery

  Appendix B: Steve Carlton’s Career Pitching Statistics

  Appendix C: Tim McCarver’s Career Batting Statistics

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  Spin rotation of Carlton’s pitches

  Mechanics of Carlton’s slider

  Battery percentage of pitcher starts, 1901–2020

  Starts for Carlton/McCarver battery, 1965–79

  Steve Carlton, 1966

  Tim McCarver, 1966

  Gussie Busch Jr.

  Bing Devine

  Tim McCarver and Bob Gibson

  Red Schoendienst

  St. Louis Cardinals, 1967 World Series champions

  Curt Flood

  Carlton as a Phillie, 1972

  Carlton with Phillies general manager Paul Owens

  Ruly Carpenter

  Frank Lucchesi

  Ray Rippelmeyer

  Larry Bowa

  Danny Ozark

  Bob Boone

  Mike Schmidt

  Larry Christenson

  Gus Hoefling

  Tim McCarver, 1976

  Steve Carlton, 1979

  Carlton delivering a pitch, 1980

  Foreword

  Larry Christenson

  Steve Carlton and Tim McCarver are my best friends from Major League Baseball. But fifty years ago I would never have predicted that either one would play such a huge role in my career as a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies.

  I grew up in the small town of Marysville, Washington, about forty miles north of Seattle. Although I played all sports, basketball and baseball were my favorites, and I excelled at both of them. In June 1972 the Phillies made me their top draft pick, and a few days after I graduated from high school the organization flew me and my family to Philadelphia for a weekend visit.

  That Sunday, Steve Carlton introduced himself and congratulated me on being drafted by the Phillies. Later I sat in one of the field boxes and watched him throw a complete-game, three-hit shutout against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The great Roberto Clemente also hit a triple for the Bucs and threw out a base runner at third. Carlton went on to win twenty-seven games for the last-place Phils that season and capture the Cy Young Award.

  The next spring I was invited to Clearwater to train with the Major League club. I pitched so well that first-year manager Danny Ozark told me I had made the team. At age nineteen, I was the youngest player in the Majors in 1973. Steve Carlton, who called me “Kid,” took me under his wing and protected me from the hazing and other vulnerabilities that young players suffer. Two years later Tim McCarver, who had played for the Phils between 1970 and 1972, rejoined the club, and we became fast friends.

  What a great era to have played for the Phillies! We became perennial contenders with Carlton as our ace. Between 1976 and 1983 the Phillies won five division titles, two National League pennants, and the club’s first-ever World Series. I also learned a lot from Lefty and Tim. They taught me to stop talking to opposing hitters so those batters wouldn’t be too comfortable with me when they stepped to the plate in a game. Lefty explained the importance of throwing pitches to the outside part
and edges of the plate and keeping the ball away from the middle part of the strike zone. Tim taught me the importance of pitching inside to intimidate the hitter and not to shake him off when he called for a particular pitch. To this day Tim still reminds me that his advice allowed me to throw three-hit and four-hit shutouts on the only two occasions he caught me.

  It was also a pleasure to watch Lefty and Tim perform as a battery and learn how they worked the various hitters in a lineup. Whenever Tim caught, I was put in charge of preparing three Band-Aids for him so he could wrap them around his fingers before he went to bat. I think I opened more Band-Aids for McCarver than Carter has liver pills. Still, I enjoyed the task since it allowed me to eavesdrop on his discussions with Lefty between innings and learn even more about pitching.

  Lefty, Tim, and I also spent a lot of time together off the field. Although Timmy transitioned to the Phillies’ broadcast booth in 1980, he and Lefty were always there for me. We went out to dinner together and enjoyed good restaurants and fine food. They introduced me to their former teammates from the St. Louis Cardinals, including the great Bob Gibson. Those Cardinals became my friends, too. It’s been more than four decades since Lefty, Tim, and I were teammates, but there is hardly a day that passes that I do not think of these two Hall of Famers. Timmy, who played in four decades, became a broadcaster for another forty years and entered the Hall as a Ford Frick Award winner. When I think of Steve Carlton and Tim McCarver, I think of their impressive legacies with the Cardinals and the Phillies and their many fans. I think of their character, their honesty and integrity, and most of all their trust in each other. I am proud and honored to have been a part of their great careers and grateful for their special friendship, which continues today.

  In this dual biography, Lefty and Tim, baseball historian Bill Kashatus rekindles many wonderful memories. More important, Bill provides special insight into the careers of Carlton and McCarver that allows the reader to understand how they became such special friends as well as the best battery in Major League Baseball between 1976 and 1979 and one of the best pitcher/catcher tandems of all time. Thank you, Bill, for a book that was long overdue!

  Acknowledgments

  This book is dedicated to Larry Christenson, who pitched for the Phillies from 1973 to 1984. Several years ago I asked Larry about the possibility of writing a biography of one of his former teammates and best friends: Phillies Hall of Fame pitcher Steve Carlton. Although LC was very excited about the prospect of such a book, he insisted that Carlton’s story could not be told without including Tim McCarver, Lefty’s personal catcher between 1975 and 1979.

  LC also believed that he could persuade both Carlton and McCarver to do interviews with me, and he approached his former teammates about that possibility on several occasions. McCarver agreed to do three in-depth interviews, but Carlton, after wavering for three years, finally declined, stating that he “chose not to look back on the past, but ahead to the future.” While I greatly appreciate Tim’s willingness to be interviewed, I am sorry that Lefty refused. Instead, I had to rely on his quotations from contemporary newspaper accounts, Dan Stephenson’s brilliant Lefty: The Life and Times of Steve Carlton (1989, on DVD), and three extremely rare interviews Carlton did, with Reggie Jackson in 1989, Roy Firestone in 1993, and Tyler Kepner in 2018.

  At the same time, I am extremely grateful to Larry for his help. Not only did he make the time for insightful conversations, but he also arranged for photographs, reviewed the manuscript, and wrote a foreword. And he did all of this despite a demanding schedule and caring for family members who were ill.

  Special thanks go out to all the individuals who agreed to be interviewed for this book, including Bob Boone, Larry Bowa, Ruly Carpenter, Jerry Crawford, Bill Giles, Gus Hoefling, Larry Jaster, Randy Lerch, Jim Lonborg, Ray Rippelmeyer, Dick Ruthven, Mike Schmidt, Dan Stephenson, Terry Tata, and Bill White. I also relied on interviews I did many years ago while working on other books about the Phillies. Some of those interviews were with Richie Hebner, Tommy Hutton, Greg Luzinski, Sparky Lyle, Larry Shenk, and Rick Wise. Other interviews were with ballplayers, writers, and managers who have since passed away, including Hank Aaron, Gary Carter, Bill Conlin, Darren Daulton, Dallas Green, Frank Lucchesi, Tug McGraw, and Danny Ozark.

  I am also grateful to Tyler Kepner, Mike Schmidt, Jayson Stark, and Ray Rippelmeyer, who reviewed the manuscript and wrote endorsements; John Burkhart, who cross-checked the manuscript for any factual errors; John Horne of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Library, sports artist Dick Perez, and the Phillies’ Dave Buck for providing the permission to reprint photographs; Maureen Bemko, who did a magnificent job in copyediting; and Rob Taylor and the staff at the University of Nebraska Press for their support and editorial guidance.

  Finally, a special thanks is owed to my family. My parents, who passed away while I was working on the book, always took a special pride in my writing. They were my biggest fans and provided the financial and emotional support for me to become a writer. My sons, Tim, Peter, and Ben, have tolerated my twin passions for baseball and writing all their lives and still seem to love me. I hope that, like their mother, Jackie, they will someday understand. Words cannot adequately describe the love and respect I have for her.

  Introduction

  On Saturday, May 1, 1976, Steve “Lefty” Carlton took the mound for the Philadelphia Phillies in the second game of a doubleheader against the Braves at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium. The Phils, battling the Pittsburgh Pirates for first place in the National League East, won the first game, 3–0, to improve their season record to 9-6.

  Winless in his previous three starts, Carlton was struggling to recapture the magic of his extraordinary 1972 campaign. That season Lefty led the NL in wins (27), earned run average (1.97), innings pitched (346.1), and strikeouts (310).1 The six-foot, four-inch southpaw accounted for nearly half of the last-place Phillies’ fifty-nine victories that year. It was one of the most brilliant pitching performances in the history of Major League Baseball, but since that Cy Young Award–winning season Lefty had seemed lost.

  Over the next three years Carlton posted mediocre records of 13-20, 16-13, and 15-14, respectively. He abandoned a devastating slider and began to rely on a 90 mph fastball and a long, looping curve as his ERA ballooned to 3.56.2 Batterymates Bob Boone and Johnny Oates, both talented pitch callers, were unable to help. “When I caught Steve, I felt he was fighting me,” Boone said. “He didn’t trust my calls and because of his negative thoughts, he would throw poorly.”3

  General manager Paul Owens identified the same problem midway through the 1975 season. Owens had a long history of evaluating players. Since 1965 he had been an instrumental figure in the Phillies’ front office. He was either remarkably lucky or extraordinarily smart in signing and trading for talented players. When Owens saw his ace pitcher struggling, he seized the opportunity to reunite Carlton with his old catcher, Tim McCarver, a grizzled, thirty-four-year-old veteran. McCarver, released by the Boston Red Sox in June 1975, was looking for a job in the broadcast booth. Owens told him that the club had no openings there, but he did have one as a backup catcher and pinch hitter. The veteran backstop accepted the position.4

  Carlton and McCarver had been batterymates on the St. Louis Cardinals from 1965 to 1969 and appeared in two World Series for the Redbirds, in 1967 and 1968, earning rings in ’67. McCarver was traded to Philadelphia after the ’69 season, and three years later Carlton joined him in the City of Brotherly Love, if only for half a season. Traded to the Montreal Expos in July 1972, McCarver had the opportunity to watch Lefty from the opposite dugout. He noted that Carlton had abandoned the slider in 1973 and struggled mightily because of it.5 When McCarver returned to the Phillies in ’75, he encouraged Lefty to return to the slider, and Carlton obliged.

  “I had not just the luxury of facing him [with the Cardinals], but being on a team of guys facing him,” McCarver said. “I remember right-handed hitters would come back to the bench an
d say at least he didn’t throw his slider. I tucked that away. I said if I catch him again, that slider is going to be good.”6

  On that May afternoon in Atlanta, Carlton, with McCarver behind the plate, would look like the power pitcher he had been four years earlier. The Phillies gave the left-hander a 1–0 lead in the third when shortstop Terry Harmon drew a walk off Atlanta starter Carl Morton. Carlton sacrificed Harmon to second, and second baseman Dave Cash brought him home with a single to left. The Phils tacked on two more runs in the fourth when left fielder Ollie Brown led off with a double to right. Right fielder Jay Johnstone followed with an infield hit advancing Brown to third. Center fielder Garry Maddox hit a grounder to short, and Johnstone was forced out at second while Brown was held at third, but McCarver followed and singled Brown home. Harmon then singled to left to drive in Maddox, giving Carlton a 3–0 lead and Morton, an early exit from the game.

  Using an effective combination of a high inside fastball followed by a slider low and away, Lefty held the Braves scoreless through five innings. Carlton, who had not been able to go more than six innings in his three previous starts, made only one mistake. After walking Braves left fielder Jimmy Wynn in the sixth, he threw a 3-2 fastball down the middle of the plate to cleanup hitter Earl Williams, who launched the delivery into the left-field bleachers for a two-run homer. That’s all the Braves would get, though.

  Johnstone added an insurance run in the ninth with a solo homer off Atlanta reliever Roger Moret. Carlton, who gave up 6 hits, walked 3, and struck out 7, shut down the Braves in the bottom of the inning to seal a complete game victory, 4–2, his first of the season.7

  Lefty went 20-7 that year, and McCarver caught all but two of his thirty-three starts.8 Those twenty victories paced the Phillies to their first-ever National League East title, as they finished 9 games ahead of the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates and won 101 games, the most in franchise history. The Fightin’ Phils also made their first postseason appearance since 1950, when they won the NL pennant. Although the Phillies lost a trio of games to the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Championship Series, Carlton returned to his winning ways in subsequent seasons.