McCovey’s legend stretched across generations

Water near Giants’ park bears his name in honour of his long home runs Willie McCovey won three home-run titles and hit 521 home runs in his career.

SAN FRANCISCO— Willie McCovey, the Giants first baseman who terrorized pitchers with his majestic home runs and charmed fans with his easy grace, died Wednesday. He was 80.

One of the most beloved Giants of all-time, McCovey slugged 521 home runs over the course of a career that spanned four decades. He will be best remembered as Willie Mays’ tag-team partner in San Francisco’s formidable lineups of the 1960s.

“San Francisco and the entire baseball community lost a true gentleman and legend, and our collective hearts are broken,” Giants president and CEO Larry Baer said Wednesday. “Willie was a beloved figure throughout his playing days and in retirement. He will be deeply missed by the many people he touched. For more than six decades, he gave his heart and soul to the Giants — as one of the greatest players of all time, as a quiet leader in the clubhouse, as a mentor to the Giants who followed in his footsteps, as an inspiration to our Junior Giants, and as a fan cheering on the team from his booth.”

While Mays brought the theatrics, McCovey was the reliable straight man and the most feared left-handed hitter of his era. Listed at six-foot-four and wiry strong at 198 pounds, McCovey had a sweeping swing that blasted balls into orbit.

His famously long home runs inspired the water beyond the right-field field fence AT&T Park to be named in his honour — McCovey Cove.

“If you pitch to him, he’ll ruin a baseball,” rival manager Sparky Anderson once said. “There’s no comparison between McCovey and anybody else in the league.”

He was the National League rookie of the year in 1959, the league’s MVP in 1969 and the comeback player of the year in 1977. In all, McCovey was a sixtime all-star whose career home run total ties him with Ted Williams for 18th on the all-time list. Before Barry Bonds passed him, McCovey had more home runs than any other left-handed hitter in NL history.

McCovey’s total includes 18 grand slams, a figure topped by only three players. He was inducted into Cooperstown on his first ballot, in 1986.

McCovey was the only player to hit a baseball over the upper deck beyond the right-field fence at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. And long before there was a McCovey Cove, he hit balls into the community pool beyond the outfield fences at Jarry Park in Montreal.

One of McCovey’s most famous swings, however, resulted in a ball that never left the infield. With the potential winning runs on base, McCovey hit a searing liner that New York Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson snagged for the final out of Game 7 of the 1962 World Series. It haunted McCovey, and San Francisco fans, for years. No less an authority than Charlie Brown once screamed into the sky: “Why couldn’t McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher?”

Primarily a first baseman, McCovey had the wingspan of a condor and when he reached in any direction in search of a throw. He became known as Stretch.

A native of Mobile, Ala., McCovey led the NL in home runs three times, including in 1968 and 1969 when he became just the fifth player in baseball history to capture back-to-back home run and RBI titles. Mays and McCovey homered in the same game 68 times, a feat topped among teammates only by Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews (75 times) and Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth (73).

McCovey proved so revered that the Giants established the Willie Mac Award in 1980 to honour the player who “best exemplifies the spirit and leadership consistently shown by McCovey throughout his career.” The Giants announced on Sept. 19 that McCovey had been hospitalized from complications stemming from an infection.

“I am grateful that my father passed peacefully surrounded by his family and friends while listening to his favourite sports channel,” said McCovey’s daughter Allison McCovey.

“Every moment he will be terribly missed. He was my best friend and husband. Living life without him will never be the same,” said McCovey’s wife Estella McCovey.

McCovey is also survived by his sister Frances and brothers Clauzell and Cleon.