RIP Willie McCovey

My favorite Peanuts comic.

Damn this sucks. Been hearing stories of him on KNBR. I didn't realize he was basically wheeled into games where he watched on a stretcher. That is a true love of the sport.

RIP Stretch

 

Not to be that guy, but the last couple of times I've seen Willie Mays, he's been in a wheelchair too.

What a team that was in the 60s. Seems like they finished second for like five years straight. Candlestick may have been the difference.

Been a tough offseason for the Giants. First Hank Greenwald, now Stretch. RIP.

 

The thing that might have hurt that Giants team most was that the league expanded but the playoffs didn’t. If there had been divisions, they might have had a chance to knock off the Cardinals or Phillies in short series.

 

Way back in '71 0r '72 my first experience in team sports was Tee Ball and my team name was Willie McCovey. I had no idea who he was but I soon learned and he always was special because of that connection. RIP to the namesake of the 2nd place Tee Ball team of my youth (the highlight of my baseball "career").

 

Willie's got to be pushing or past 90, right? Being in a wheelchair for public appearances would not be surprising, or necessarily a sign of total deterioration of health.

 

He'll be 88 in May.

 

Mays is the 3rd-oldest living Hall of Famer, after Tommy Lasorda (91) and Whitey Ford (90).

Hank Aaron will be 85 in February.

 

Well, I think it's time for me to get off the board and watch Matlock now.

 

Wanna feel older? There an online explainer about what Matlock was so that young people watching old Simpsons episodes can get the Matlock jokes.

 

I appreciated a lot of the stuff written about McCovey the last couple days, because I had no concept of him as a player. I knew he was great, but he was overshadowed by Mays and so many others of his generation. He was the guy who hit a lot of home runs and had a cove named after him for someone my age.

Posnanski is still great for these sorts of things.

Baseball 89: Willie McCovey - Joe Posnanski

And he linked to a Ray Ratto piece that was great, too.

Ratto: McCovey was baseball's last word-of-mouth superstar

 

If you grew up as a Dodgers fan, you hated McCovey ... the ultimate sign of respect.
RIP to a great one.