Fox's Tim McCarver Will Retire After Season Making This the Saddest Day Ever

Tim McCarver is retiring, taking with him a legacy of bizarre rants and obvious observations. Simply, we will have to look elsewhere for explanations on the finer points of a "double play."

Multiple outlets reported on Wednesday afternoon that Tim McCarver would be retiring from Fox at the end of 2013. Here is a tweet from Bleacher Report on the network's announcement. 

The news reportedly came from a conference call for media. Here is a statement from McCarver via The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. 

"

I’ve informed Fox Sports that I will not seek to extend my contract to broadcast baseball past the 2013 season. Although I am neither tired of broadcasting baseball nor have I in any way lost my interest in baseball, with which I have been associated as a player and broadcaster for 55 years, it’s time to cut back. Since 1996, my time with Joe Buck has been filled with some of the most memorable moments in the game’s magnificent history. I am very proud to have been a part of all the things that make this game so special for all of us who follow it day-to-day, week-to-week and year-to-year. Finally, to the gifted men and women at Fox with whom I’ve worked with over the last 17 years, your work has been exemplary and unmatched. You’re the best in the business and it has been a privilege.

"

And so begins a retirement tour of sorts. 

The man who felt it necessary to explain even the most blatant part of games spent 28 postseasons in the booth and called a record 23 World Series behind the microphone, via Yahoo! Sports. 

Oh, and he also played the game.

It's easy to forget the 71-year-old spent 21 seasons in the bigs and managed a .271 batting average with 97 home runs because for decades he has been the most polarizing broadcaster in the majors. 

Taking a page from McCarver, let me show you what you already know. Here are some tweets following the announcement. 

Oh, and McCarver was also featured in an episode of Family Guy. 

This tweet from Awful Announcing reminds us of the most famed moment in McCarver's career—a dust-up with Deion Sanders that ended with the then-Braves player dousing McCarver with ice water.

Still, there are those who will miss the guy when he officially calls it quits at the end of 2013, and I am among them. 

Yes, I am going to miss McCarver, like I miss the pain of unrequited love or the time I dropped my burrito I had been craving all day. 

You miss the pain. 

One day we will have Joe Buck calling games next to Joe Nobody and it just won't be the same. The pace of the game is what makes baseball great, and I have grown accustomed to the syncopated sting of my own expletives filling friends' living rooms as we wonder what it is this guy is talking about. 

You take the emotion out of the game and you just get a talking head, which is what we have come down to: Joe Buck. 

Goodbye, McCarver. Our summers will never be the same, for good and bad. It's because of you that I not only know what a curveball means, but what the incessant explanation of said pitch can do to a baseball loving nation. 

You were good, kid. You were good. 

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