He was catcher for the Cardinals and Phillies, longtime announcer for the Mets, and then, these last several years, a regular visitor to the booth for his old team, the Cardinals.
I remember one day my father left a note for me on the kitchen table. I think it was shortly after the season was over, to the effect that the Cardinals had traded McCarver, reliever Joe Hoerner, and CF Curt Flood to the Phillies for Richie Allen, Cookie Rojas, and a pack of chewing gum. That trade ended up making baseball history, because Philly was an awful place for black ballplayers, Flood didn't want to go there, he held out, he took MLB to court and lost, but as a result of the legal fight, the so-called "Reserve Clause," which pretty much prevented players from becoming free agents after their contracts were out, would be obliterated. The Cardinals had to give up Willie Montanez to complete the trade. Allen spent only a year in St. Louis and was traded to the Dodgers for 2B Ted Sizemore, and the Cardinals tried to force Rojas to play 3B, and he was a complete flameout and nervous wreck, so they unloaded him too. It was a disastrous trade for them, but probably good for McCarver, who ended up, after the Cardinals made another bonehead trade with the Phillies, back with his buddy Steve Carlton, and they became one of the greatest P-C batteries of all time.
Baseball Reference has McCarver as the 48th best C of all time, which is underrated, I think. McCarver had brains, and that showed up on the field and in the press box. When you put McCarver, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez together in one place to talk about baseball and comment on a game, you had more smarts in a single booth than you'd get putting half the managers and general managers in baseball together. I don't know anything about his personal life, but he seemed to be a good guy.
McCarver (like his onetime teammate Bob Uecker, and like the old St Louis boy Joe Garagiola) was a great raconteur. My favorite is the story he told about his good friend Bob Gibson, a regular raging fire on the mound. One time, Tim started to approach the mound to have a conference with Gibson, but Bob yelled at him in rather colorful terms, and told him to get the #&^$! behind the plate, because "the only thing you know about pitching is that you can't hit it!"