Dr. Austin (Mac) McCarthy of Willmar, Minn., a retired surgeon and former star baseball pitcher for St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., honed his baseball skills with his brother, former U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy.
Austin McCarthy, who served several hospitals in and around Willmar, died June 18 at his Willmar home. He was 90. He had suffered from congestive heart failure.
Sen. McCarthy, whose run for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination and stand against the Vietnam War toppled Lyndon Johnson's White House, grew up in Watkins, Minn., where he and his brother played a lot of baseball.
Sen. McCarthy, who died in 2005, wrote a poem called "My Brother" that referred to their playing catch together. The two played hockey and baseball together at Litchfield High School and at St. John's.
Dr. McCarthy's daughter, Mary Beth Yarrow of Willmar, said he once said his senator brother "was the smartest man I ever knew."
McCarthy was sought by the Detroit Tigers as a pitcher, but stayed the course to become a doctor. He played semi-professional baseball in Minnesota cities such as Warroad, Watertown and Little Falls, and in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to earn money for medical school.
He helped St. John's win two conference championships in the mid-1930s, said his daughter, a documentary filmmaker and the former wife of Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary fame.
McCarthy graduated from St. John's, where he studied philosophy and chemistry, in 1938, and from the University of Minnesota School of Medicine in 1942.
