A Visit with “Mr. Baseball” Bob Uecker

Ever since Babe Ruth waddled around the bases, dire predictions have been made about baseball’s future: that time has moved on to the national pastime, too leisurely, too bucolic. Television ratings for last year’s World Series and this season’s batting averages both hit 50-year lows. Baseball, they say, is dying.

But never mind the current World Series between two of the game’s stalwarts, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Want to feel better about the health of baseball? Just go to a Milwaukee Brewers game.

Out there in Major League Baseball’s smallest market, cheese curds sweat in the spotlight, ice cream rolls in batting helmets, Miller’s hometown flows, and the stadium’s second level lies Milwaukee’s most authentic touch: the broadcaster they call “Mr. Baseball.” “.

In six undistinguished seasons as a catcher in the majors, Bob Uecker never played a single inning for the Brewers. But during a half-century as the team’s play-by-play announcer, he became equal parts mayor and mascot in his hometown, while declining offers from bigger markets — taking away fields, for so to speak.

In the 1980s, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner attempted to recruit Uecker. “Steinbrenner sent a few people to talk to me about joining the Yankees,” he said, “but I loved Milwaukee. I was born and raised here!”

Uecker began his major league career in 1962 with the Milwaukee Braves before the franchise moved to Atlanta. “I was the first player from Milwaukee to be signed by the Braves,” he said. “I was also the first Milwaukee native sent to the minor leagues by the Braves!”

If Uecker’s inadequacies on the field hampered his play career, they provided some of his best material in a long and lucrative second career as an actor and comedian. Using a dry wit, he made more than 40 appearances on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”

He said, “I did ‘Tonight Shows,’ you know, when they wanted it. I’d leave here on a Sunday afternoon, fly out to Los Angeles, do the Monday night show , I was making red eyes here and I was there for the Tuesday game.

Johnny Carson: “Give me, as quickly as possible, all the teams you played with.”
Uecker: “Braves, Cardinals, Phillies and the Braves again. Then, in June, I was with…”

Carson’s guest spots led to a series of notable television commercials, as well as a starring role in a sitcom, and perhaps most memorably as Harry Doyle, the perpetually blitzed announcer in the films of the ” Major League.” Last summer, at American Family Field in Milwaukee, “Harry Doyle Bobblehead Night” brought the Uecker faithful together in force.

When asked his “favorite Bob Uecker line,” he replied: “‘Yuuuuust a little outside. This is where my wife put me several times!”

Before serving 16 years as baseball commissioner, Bud Selig owned the Brewers, and in 1971 he hired Uecker, mistakenly, as a scout. Selig said it was “legitimately true” that Uecker wasn’t cut out to be a scout. “There was crap on that damn scouting report. I couldn’t read it. He couldn’t read it,” he said.

So, Selig moved Uecker to the Brewers broadcast booth later that year.

Today there is even a statue in honor of Uecker, where else? In the very last row of the upper deck, behind a post.

But for all the fame, all the gigs and gags, the late-night laughs at his own expense, Uecker still considers himself a gamer, says Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff: “He tells us about his wrestling days. He’s the ‘one of us.’ He’s part of the team. And I think that’s why we appreciate him so much, is that he’s with us on this adventure. “

According to Uecker, he has a connection with the players on the field: “I played the match. So, I know how difficult it is. I know how difficult it is to play this match. game, when we win, it’s a big part, man, to be able to walk into that clubhouse and be with them.”

But baseball is cruel, and in Milwaukee, the celebrations are short-lived. Earlier this month, with the Brewers just two outs away from winning the National League Wild Card Series, the New York Mets came from behind on a spectacular home run.

On the radio, Uecker made no secret of his injury: “I tell you, that one… had a sting on it.”

The Brewers’ first World Series title will have to wait.

Some speculate that this heartbreaking loss could have marked Uecker’s final game as an announcer. But as his 91st birthday approaches, the man we call “Mr. Baseball” told us he doesn’t want to imagine life without him.

“I don’t know what I would do, you know, without more. If I stopped thinking about baseball for myself, I don’t know what that would be like, you know?” Uecker said. “I left high school and joined the army. And I signed a baseball contract. That’s really it!”

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Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Lauren Barnello.