I want to take a few minutes to tell you about my good friend, Bob Uecker. I should preface these remarks by noting that my personal interactions with Bob were very, very limited, and he likely did not remember any of them. But that does not matter, because he and I spent countless hours together…just apart.
I am 52-years old. Bob did play-by-play for the Brewers for 54-seasons. That means I have never known a time where he was not the “Voice of the Brewers”. I definitely remember his serving as second-fiddle to Merle Harmon until 1979. But after Harmon left for a network job, Brewers games became the Bob Uecker Show.
Remember, this was a time when few, if any, Brewers games were on TV. Channel 26, then an independent station that never seemed to come in that well using the rabbit ears on the old Zenith set, would carry maybe 50-games a year, all on the road. So when you were a baseball-obsessed kid, you needed to listen to the vast majority of the games on the radio. Don’t tell my parents, but the small, silver transistor radio they got me one of those Christmases (the one with the pull-out antenna, white ear-piece and flimsy cord) would be tuned to many a night game after the 8:30 mandatory bedtime on school nights (or the 9:00 mandatory bedtime in the summer) came before the Crew wrapped up.
The 1980’s was still a glorious time for listening to baseball on the radio. That little transistor on a clear summer night could pick up White Sox games on WMAQ, the Cubs on WGN with Harry Caray, Cardinals games on KMOX with Jack Buck, Tigers games on WJR with Ernie Harwell, Reds games on WLW with Marty Brenneman, Indians games on WWWE with Herb Score, Twins games on WCCO with Herb Carneal, and on really good nights, the Yankees with Phil Rizzuto on WABC and even a few Rangers games on WBAP. A veritable Hall of Fame of broadcasters all on the dial at the same time, and with them every night was Bob Uecker.
But not every game was listened to on that little transistor. There were long rides in the pickup coming home from up north with my Dad on a summer Sunday afternoon where the Brewers and Bob helped pass the time. There were the games on in the garage while burgers were being made on the grill, or Dad and I were playing catch in the yard or shooting hoops in the driveway.
Games were also listened to on the combination AM-FM-Weather Band-Police and Fire radio that my grandfather owned. Every summer, my sister and I would spend a few weekends at my grandparents’ place in Green Bay. My grandma loved baseball dating back to the Milwaukee Braves, and she and my grandfather listened to Ueck call games while enjoying the coolness of the breezeway between their garage and the house itself. Grandma would also let me stay up late to watch Johnny Carson with her, and it was always a highlight when Bob would be a guest on the Tonight Show, cracking up Johnny and Ed. For my birthday, she got me the paperback copy of Bob’s book: “Catcher in the Wry”, and as I laughed at the outrageous stories it contained, she would always ask me to read her the passages so we could laugh together.
Baseball announcers enjoy a special place in the hearts of sports fans. The sheer number of games means you are welcoming them into your home as many as 162-times a year. The pace and nature of the game allows the announcers to weave stories into the descriptions of the action. The equally-legendary Vin Scully was a master at drawing upon the memories of his decades with the Dodgers franchise to tell tales of the experiences of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, Sandy Koufax twirling perfect games or the oddball fans that packed Ebbets Field. While Bob could talk about his Hall of Fame teammates like Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, or Bob Gibson, the best tales were always about his own proclivities to fail at baseball, or old country Germans that he grew up with in Milwaukee, or stuff that may never have actually happened–but Ueck made you think twice that it might have. (A couple of opening days ago, Bob was talking about some of the miserably cold openers at County Stadium and he had me laughing out loud when he said that fans would set their cars on fire in the parking lots to stay warm. “It made for a rough trip home after the game.”)
Speaking of the cold, was there anything better than when you could listen to a Brewers spring training game in March back in the miserable, pre-climate change winters in the Upper Midwest? It was like a small beam of warm sunlight giving you hope that you could make it through the next snow-filled month or two.
Bob Uecker was an inspiration to me. I am where I am today because of him. When I was a kid, I would provide the same enthusiastic play-by-play of pickup games with my friends or imaginary contests featuring entire teams that I made up by just tossing a ball in the air and hitting it. My grandma thought I was going to be the next Bob Uecker. Well, I fell a bit short of that lofty goal, but I certainly found my true calling and passion. And I know Grandma was just as happy hearing me on the radio as she was hearing Bob.
And I am not alone in finding that inspiration. My social media feeds yesterday were full of Wisconsin and national broadcasters from this state that all said they wanted to call sports because of Bob Uecker, and took from him the lessons of self-deprecation, humility, and storytelling.
Thursday was a very difficult day for a lot of us. When I joined Ben Cominos to provide first word of Bob’s passing, I was fighting back tears. It was the same during this segment on Your News Now last night when I played Bob’s final sign-off following October’s bitter loss to the New York Mets in the Wildcard Round. It’s clear now that Bob knew that night he was never going to be in the ballpark or in the broadcast booth again, but it was the optimist in all of us at that time that we were 100% sure that he would be there for Opening Day 2025, because we didn’t know a world where he hadn’t. Coming to that realization last night was really hard.
At last year’s Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame induction dinner, I had the chance to talk to Matt Lepay, the Voice of the Wisconsin Badgers, and his wife during the cocktail hour. I mentioned to them my favorite thing is that so many of the happiest times of my life: Rose Bowl wins, rushing yardage records, Final Four trips, and March Madness buzzer beaters, featured Matt on the call. And that was the way it was with Bob Uecker. But those were not just memories about on-field exploits like no-hitters, walk-off home runs, or division-clinching strikeouts, but rather those times spent with those I love the most, and Bob on in the background. That friend who was there so many days and nights.
Good bye, old friend.
