Remembering Willie McCovey

Willie McCovey batting against fellow Hall of Famer Jim Bunning

In a birthday note that surely will make baby boomers feel really old, the late, great Willie McCovey would have turned 86 today.

National League pitchers in the 1960s fear they would never reach their 60s if they are drilled with a line drive hit up the middle by the 6-foot-4 McCovey.

Fortunately for them, McCovey is more interested in hitting the ball higher and farther – like well over the fence, which he does 521 times during a Hall of Fame career that plays out long before baseball’s scandalous steroid era.

“Even during my career, when I read all those great things about me,” McCovey later says, “it’s almost like I was reading about someone else. It’s almost like there was another person.”

Willie McCovey with some of those scribes who write “great things” about him