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McCarve’d Up: Brown-Eyed Handsome Man Edition

Welcome to McCarve’d Up, a segment where our own Timothy Burke takes a look at the on-air miscues and disturbing evidence of psychological unrest that are currently ailing three-time Emmy winner and often-lambasted baseball announcer Tim McCarver.

On our last edition of McCarve’d Up, we sent Fox analyst Tim McCarver back to school. Today we go deeper into the broadcaster’s psyche; we examine Tim McCarver, THE OBSESSION.

To say it was a rough Saturday for McCarver, reunited with longtime partner Joe Buck to call the Cardinals-Cubs matchup, would be redundant; every Saturday is rough for McCarver, as are the other six days of the week if he were to appear on television on any of those days. To his credit, and in a first as far as we could tell, McCarver actually offered up an on-air correction, though to be fully accurate he’d have needed to offer several dozen.

Your video evidence, followed by a breakdown of the dangerous psychological flaws eating away at the erstwhile broadcaster:

Briefly:

* As a former catcher, McCarver insists teams cannot win a pennant without a standout performer behind the plate. On the contrary; teams regularly win the World Series with terrible catchers. Tim Laudner of the 1987 Minnesota Twins (65 OPS+, 24% CS rate, -9 Rot/yr) is waving his arms wildly.

* He claims Cubs manager Mike Quade is doing a “good job.” The Cubs are 43-65 with the 6th-largest payroll in baseball.

* McCarver averaged fewer than 5 homers a season as a player, which makes him an expert on the Cardinals being “a bad home-run hitting team.” The Cardinals have hit 105 home runs, good for 5th in the league.

* Yummy.

* He either suffers from halitosis or goes to great lengths to avoid the condition, per Joe Buck. Either can be a sign of the obsessive-compulsive aspects of bulimia. We’re concerned.

* “Second basemen never make long throws.”

“EVER!”

* Maintains a delusion that “ColoRockies” pitcher Ubaldo Jiménez will “definitely” be a New York Yankee. (Jiménez was traded to the Cleveland Indians.)

* “Atlanta could sneak up on the National League.” The Braves lead the Wild Card race by four games, and only trail the Phillies by six. This thought process is representative of paranoid schizophrenia.

* Implying that in baseball, defense only matters in the infield. This is, of course, wrong but also, again, reflects a blindness to baseball actually existing outside of the infield, either offensively or defensively.

* The Colby Rasmus “corollary,” which is a) not a corollary b) quite possibly defamatory and c) so Oedipal you can cut it wi.. wait, poor choice of words.

* Insisting Matt Holliday‘s slide that took out Starlin Castro was clean because it was “below the waist.” (See previous item.)

* Seriously, he said that, and it’s not even possible he was thinking a cut block in football because that would be the opposite thing.

* “Is the base reachable? Absolutely.” Matt Holliday is not Inspector Gadget.

* David Freese, the “brown-eyed handsome man.” Here McCarver’s obsession with his former employer reaches critical status.

* Dick Groat, greatest baserunner ever, who stole 14 bases in 14 major league seasons. (Yes, there is a difference between base-stealing and baserunning, but one assumes an excellent baserunner would average more than one stolen base a season.)