For those trained in the art of self-deprecation, death must be no great surprise. Bob Uecker died today at the age of 90. A veteran of two heart surgeries, he had been battling lung cancer for over a year, and had dramatically reduced his workload as the radio voice of the Milwaukee Brewers. So while his passing was certainly not unexpected, it leaves a gaping hole in the baseball and entertainment landscape, if only because we knew Uecker, were he alive to see it, would have something hilarious to say about his own death. Maybe something like “Sure, David Lynch overshadowed my death, but he overshadowed a lot his films, too.”
No baseball player has ever done more with less than Uecker. He played in the majors for six years, but he never exactly blossomed into a star. “In 1962, I was named minor league player of the year. It was my second season in the bigs,” he quipped. He broke in with his hometown Milwaukee Braves, then won a World Series as a backup catcher for the 1965 St. Louis Cardinals. He got into 53 games that year and hit .228. In 1967, he led the league in passed balls (he referred to himself as a “chaser,” not a catcher), largely because he served as the personal catcher for knuckleballer Phil Niekro. “The easiest way to catch a knuckleball was to wait until it stopped rolling and just pick it up,” he would say.
He spent much of his baseball career on the bench, but he made up for it in his post-playing career. In 1971, he began broadcasting games for the Milwaukee Brewers, who were created two years after the Braves split town for Atlanta. That same year, he made his first appearance on The Tonight Show, where he dazzled the crowd with his endless one-liners. His first joke, delivered in perfect deadpan, was a humdinger: “When the word baseball is mentioned, I guess my name would automatically come to mind.” Later in the segment, Johnny Carson held up a photo of Uecker celebrating the Cardinals’ championship by having a beer poured down his throat. “This is actually a picture of me getting ready for a game.”
Appreciating Uecker’s wit and professionalism, Carson had Uecker as a guest over 100 times. As a nod to Uecker’s first joke, he bestowed him with the moniker “Mr. Baseball,” and Uecker used the platform to launch a legitimate career in Hollywood. In 1985, he hosted Bob Uecker’s Wacky World of Sports (which still exists as The Lighter Side of Sports hosted by Mike Golic), a sort of sports-themed Saturday Night Live, in which Uecker would star in skits and interview a different fictional athlete every week. For some reason, they also showed music videos. His career expanded into sitcoms with Mr. Belvedere, which ran for six seasons and starred Uecker as the patriarch of a family that brought on an effete British butler that clashed with the family’s working-class attitudes. Uecker’s character was a construction worker in the pilot, but they quickly changed it to a sportswriter who becomes a play-by-play announcer. Dramatic range was not his strong suit.
His major, lasting contribution to the culture came, however, when he was cast as Harry Doyle, the beleaguered announcer for the Cleveland Indians in the 1989 comedy Major League. Known for his sarcasm and his propensity to get plastered during tough losses, Doyle represented a revolution in the portrayal of sports announcers in movies. In previous films, their only job was to set the scene by waxing poetic about the beauty of the game and its heroes. Sometimes they would act as the foil to the player or manager, using their pulpit to criticize the team. Harry Doyle changed all that. Subsequently, Rookie of the Year, Necessary Roughness, and Little Big League—not to mention Brockmire—mined their broadcaster characters for laughs. Director David S. Ward saw in Doyle an opportunity to cram in more comedy, and casting Uecker was a masterstroke. Although Uecker largely stuck to the dialogue on the page, he was granted leeway to improvise on the inflection. “Just a bit outside” became “juuuuuuuust a bit outside,” which every real-life announcer has since incorporated into at least one broadcast. His barbs in the film have also become great fodder for social media posts. “One hit? That’s all we got? One goddamnit hit?” is a particularly useful line when your team gets nearly no-hit.
Generous with his gifts, Uecker was known to mentor many up-and-coming broadcasters, particularly those in Milwaukee, but his influence can be felt all over the game. It’s easy to draw a straight line from Uecker and his fictional counterpart Harry Doyle to today’s more colorful broadcasters, including SNY’s Keith Hernandez, who also had a role in a sitcom (albeit in one episode) and injects as much comedy into the game as he does baseball insight. Even without the humor, Uecker was a great broadcaster, and was honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame with its Ford C. Frick Wward for excellence in broadcasting. But his real legacy is in the game’s broader shift in tone away from piety to a looser, more jocular presentation. His fingerprints are all over the marketing of the game, from ESPN’s deadpan “This is Sportscenter” ads to the wacky social media posts that teams put out regularly. Uecker reminded us that baseball was a game and that it need not be taken seriously.
Despite his shocking success in Hollywood, Uecker never betrayed his roots, continuing to call games for the Brewers through last year’s division-winning season. He is a classic Midwestern figure whose career mirrors the character of his hometown team, which makes the most of its talents while never quite reaching the echelon reserved for those with preternatural gifts, connections, or high payrolls. Like the Brewers, Uecker stands out as a guy who isn’t supposed to be at the party but finagled his way in from juuuuust a bit outside through gumption and talent. A rare human being who made the absolute most of his talents, on and off (mostly off) the field.
Noah Gittell (@noahgittell) is a culture critic from Connecticut who loves alliteration. His work can be found at The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Ringer, Washington City Paper, LA Review of Books, and others. His book, Baseball: The Movie, is currently available wherever you buy books.
