Willie McCovey
When I was in Viet Nam I got hit in the arm and had to spend a few days in the walking wounded ward at the base hospital. Most of the guys there were baseball fans so we talked a lot of ball. One of the doctors was a Giants fan and would join us for a few minutes when he made his rounds. He kept talking about how much he was impressed by “Willie” and of course we all presumed he meant Mays. It took a couple of days to figure out he was a big fan of Willie McCovey.
Let’s be honest here, no one ever wanted McCovey for his glove. “Stretch” played because he could pound the ball harder than anyone in captivity, including teammate Mays. He was a pure power hitter, a run producer, and has slipped out of the conversations about baseball today.
Over a 22-year career, mostly with the Giants, McCovey personified pure raw power. At the height of a great pitching era, he led the National League in slugging, and home runs three times each, in RBIs twice, and in home run percentage five times. And he wasn’t doing it with only 25 homers a year.
Personally, I will never forget the first time I saw the famous 1962 World Series play where Bobby Richardson snagged McCoyey’s drive to end the Series. I’m still surprised Richardson’s glove didn’t end up in right field. Actually, I’m surprised his entire left arm didn’t end up somewhere out around where Roger Maris was playing. Maybe it’s part of McCovey’s perception problem that his most famous play was an out.
McCovey came up in 1959 at age 21. He played quite a bit, but not full-time at first base through 1961. In 1962 the Giants got the great idea of putting him in left field. Not a brilliant move, but not as bad as some people thought it was going to be. The problem was the Giants had two big power hitting first basemen who were, to be charitable about it, mediocre glove men: McCovey and Orlando Cepeda. The idea was to get both in the lineup at the same time. For you kiddies, this is back in the pre-Designated Hitter age of baseball, so the current solution wasn’t possible. After a couple of seasons it became obvious that something had to be done. They chose to trade “Cha Cha” to the Cardinals in 1966 (he’d been hurt in 1965). That made McCovey the regular first baseman through 1973. His career on the downside, he went to San Diego, then to Oakland, and finally back to the Giants in 1977. It was his last big year. He hung on into 1980, finally retiring tied with Ted Williams in career home runs and setting a NL record with 18 grand slams.
A great misconception about the 1960s is that pitching absolutely dominated. No question pitching was paramount, but take a look at McCovey in the 1960s. He played 130 or more games seven seasons in the decade (1963-1969). he hit 249 home runs and drove in 666 runs. My guess is that a lot of pitchers kept trying to figure out why they weren’t being dominant as McCovey (or Aaron or Mays for that matter) circled the bases.
I do love McCovey’s walk-strikeout ratio. In 22 years he struck out exactly 205 more than he walked. Not great, but not bad for a modern power hitter. After he left the Giants in 1974 he struck out 126 more times than he walked. So it you study only his beginning and prime Giants years he struck out only 79 more times than he walked, for an average of 5.27 per season. That’s exceptional in the modern age of all or nothing swings.
But he’s still gotten relegated to the backbench of Hall of Fame players. My guess is there are a number of reasons. First, he played in the shadow of Willie Mays for his great years (despite winning the 1969 MVP award). Secondly, his team never won. With all the firepower that was McCovey, Mays, Cepeda, Felipe Alou, and the staff that was Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry, the Giants won exactly one NL pennant (1962) and one divisional title (1971). They were always in the shadow of the Dodgers or the Cardinals (or the Miracle Mets) the reasoning seems to go that if you couldn’t beat the banjo hitting Dodgers or the so-so Cardinals how good could the players (aside from Mays) actually be? Finally, it has just been a while since Willie McCovey played. Most of the people who read this will have never seen him play. That’s a shame. You really missed a heck of a player.
Tags: Felipe Alou, Gaylord Perry, Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey
Verdun2's Blog 
April 23, 2014 at 9:40 am
Thanks for this…it was really good. McCovey is still revered in San Francisco. Even named a cove after him.
April 23, 2014 at 9:46 am
I’d forgotten the cove. Thanks for reminding me. Top that, Willie Mays. 🙂
v
April 23, 2014 at 10:24 am
Well, he kind of did….the front of the ballpark is Willie Mays plaza. McCovey once again takes a back seat.
April 23, 2014 at 10:24 am
Bummer
v
April 23, 2014 at 10:06 am
Great tribute to a player who as you say is often overlooked. This ripples some memories of my own. A friend of mine’s father played in the Giant’s minor league system. His dad was quiet except when it came to baseball. He used to chain smoke camels and watch our games in high school and at night watch the mlb on TV.
Bill told us that he was standing on first base as a runner when McCovey hit a line drive that whizzed past his ear and you know where it landed? Over the fence.
The only year this could have happened was 1960 when both Bill and Willie were in the minors, but Willie was on the Pacific Coast League AAA Tacoma and Bill was in the Midwest D League-Quincy.
Musta been in spring training, but the story matches what people say about McCovey hitting balls that left parks in less than 4 seconds.
April 23, 2014 at 10:28 am
Nice one, V. So many of those classic players I wish I could have seen play. And you’re right, he’s certainly overlooked by most modern fans.
-Bill
April 23, 2014 at 5:13 pm
Reblogged this on The On Deck Circle and commented:
Verdun2 Hits this one out of the park! Great stuff.
April 23, 2014 at 8:33 pm
Yes. McCovey sure could hit.
April 25, 2014 at 5:50 pm
Well, I certainly am old enough to see him play. In fact, the one game in which I was at Candlestick Park (this was 1977, in McCovey’s SECOND time around with the Giants after coming back from San Diego), he hit a home run right near to where I sat. (If you surmised that this was in right field (although I don’t think it was a pulled home run, for once, because I don’t think that I was sitting in right field. I do remember someone sitting near me ragging on outfielder Terry Whitfield, so wherever Whitfield was playing in that game, that’s where we sat. When I say “we”, I don’t mean Terry Whitfield. HE didn’t sit. He stood. In the outfield.
I remember his FIRST time around with the Giants when I became a Met fan around 1969 and 1970. I didn’t get to see the Giants on TV very often, however, because they were out on the coast and I was in the east coast. But I saw him during day games, along with Tito Fuentes at second base (best remembered as a hot dog kind of player, and a very colorful one at that), Dick Dietz at catcher, Chris Speir (did I spell that right?) just getting his career started at shortstop, Willie Mays, the underrated Ken Henderson (yes, he really WAS underrated during his couple of fine-hitting years with the Giants), and Willie McCovey. Pitchers are less clear in my memory, but I remember Ron Bryant, with a bullpen of Frank Linzy and others.
Not only do I REMEMBER Willie McCovey, but when I was but a little tiny tot, even though I didn’t pay any attention to baseball back then, “Willie McCovey” was an often-mentioned name, even in New York. I remember I used to refer to him as “Willie McCubbyhole, as I was in Kindergarten at the time, and we were all assigned a “cubby hole” in which to keep our coats, mittens, and things like that.
So Willie McCovey (along with Tim McCarver, who did so well against the Yankees in the 1964 world series) and Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were the first baseball names I heard as a little, little kid. (Again, I didn’t know what they actually DID; I just heard the name on the TV and the radio at the time. I know it couldn’t have been in the newspapers, because I couldn’t read, as of yet.
As far as “underrated”, I’ll have to disagree. The media talked and talked about Willie McCovey like his name was going out of style. At least that was MY experience. I think that since he RETIRED, however, he has not been in the media limelight too often. He was a GREAT player.
With the mention of your Vietnam experience towards the beginning of the article, I just want to thank you for serving our country, V.
Glen
April 26, 2014 at 9:46 am
Glad to see you back, Glen.
v
April 28, 2014 at 7:49 am
Youo know what I’ll always remember about McCovey, nobody–and I mean nobody–wore the high-cutout stirrups like he did. I look at the guys today who show nothing but colored sock all the way to the knee or wear their pants cuffs all the way down to the shoetops and it’s almost enough to make a man cry.