‘Mr. Baseball’s Major League star was outstanding

On By Littum

It is not enough to simply call Bob Uecker an original, “1 of 1” or the last of his kind.

Uecker was both the OG and the parody, a man whose friendly on-air voice reflected the folksy announcing tropes that permeated baseball for more than a century while also somehow sending them up.

That he was an even better person only made his death at the age of 90, announced on Thursday, an even greater wound.

Fitting that his final act on the national stage was as the inspirational core of his beloved Milwaukee Brewerswhose stunning exit from the playoffs last season was compounded by the postgame realization that this was likely the last major league game Uecker would see.

Uecker’s family revealed Thursday that he had been battling small cell lung cancer since 2023, and Brewers veterans like Christian Yelich couldn’t put on a poker face after the game to hide the fact that Uecker’s time with them was missing.

It’s a stunning tribute to Uecker’s ability to connect that he moved among these young Brewers like an old friend, neither the hood ornament of a franchise nor the entitled sage who demanded that the kids these days kiss his ring, if he deserved to go down to their clubhouse.

No, he was simply Ueck, a classic baseball moniker given the culture’s unstoppable commitment to name contraction. Yet he ironically and proudly wore the “Mr. Baseball” crown, which first served as a wink and a nod to his .200 batting average—take that, Mario Mendoza! – but then become a fitting label for a man whose most important legacy may be to remind us never to take the game, the industry, life too seriously.

Now consider this: Uecker solidified his modern image in 1984, when his most epic of many Miller Lite star turns — “I gotta be in the front rooooow,” repeated incessantly by kids of all ages that summer and forever — first aired.

In 1989, “Major League” came to the cinema, and Uecker’s Harry Doyle immortalized him.

Yelich would not be born until 1991.

Jackson Chourio, the Brewers’ budding superstar center fielder? He was born almost half a century after Uecker made his professional debut in 1956.

And yet.

This universal, multi-generational worship is a tribute to getting what you give. Not many in his industry were as free with his time and love as Uecker, be it time and respect for those who follow in your humble footsteps in this game, to talk to stadium workers and franchise support staff and other media as if they all were long-time friends – many were.

There is a bit of irony in the fact that a man with such humble origins as a footballer would set a standard in broadcasting and, let’s face it, entertainment, it was impossible to replicate.

The 1980s might have been the height of our monoculture, where everyone watched the same three channels, Michael Jackson’s Thriller skipped so long that the Billboard charts cried uncle, and knew exactly what you meant when you asked, “Where is the beef?”

Uecker carved out his own significant niche in this cultural jungle, just before it became so overgrown that we struggled to connect with anything.

We’ve all seen a ballgame at one point or another where a pitcher loses control and unleashes a pitch so wide off the plate it’s comical. Inevitably, there would be a mildly awkward silence, and the speaker couldn’t help himself: “Juuuuust a little outside,” they said with a laugh and a humble nod to Uecker’s Doyle.

It was an almost immediate recognition from the announcer that they were overmatched, that one could try to descriptively or comically distill how bad that pitch was, but why bother? Uecker had it on lock.

For decades to come, broadcast personalities would gain some form of fame by punctuating their highlights with a catchphrase, probably a line from a movie or a bar from a song. Yet these pieces of flair were more like images of a picture, at least one degree removed from the real thing.

Uecker made it look so easy to be fresh, funny and kind all at once.

It probably helped that the game humiliated him so. Talk to a manager or player about someone going through a struggle at the plate, on the mound or in the field, and they will inevitably, but also fairly, remark, “The game looks pretty easy up there.”

But years later, that player or manager can ascend to the broadcast level and forget that very concept, throw daggers from the booth, or go on about how awful the game is across the league, forgetting that Bad Baseball has existed in every era of the game. .

Uecker had a bird’s eye view of such a significant swath of it. Of course, he got his national flowers, via Miller Lite and Major League stops in the broadcast booth for national broadcast networks.

It still can’t take away that he spent 54 years – 54 years! – as the voice, or at least significant, of the Milwaukee Brewers. He never got too big for the game’s smallest market.

That meant an incessant parade of day game after night game, rain delays in the less climate-controlled corners of the Great Lakes and East Coast, and yes, at times unspeakably bad baseball. My first glimpse of this came as a virtual kid, not long out of college, “borrowing” a friend’s credentials for an overwhelmingly insignificant Brewers-A’s clash in 1996.

After batting practice, an elevator sprang up and there stood Ueck, bag in hand, the weight of 40 years in the game and the painful insignificance of Game 66 that year etched on his face.

I was surprised as I had forgotten he was still on the call for the Brewers after so many years of celebrity. That he would post for a match between two matches that went nowhere played in front of 8,000 fans just as surely as he would be there for the big national broadcast hits.

He sensed my mood and gave me a weary look that said, “This is Game 4 of a wraparound series with a 12:15 start. Don’t ask me about Mr. Belvedereplease.”

Understood.

Certainly, as he advanced in years, his broadcast presence diminished. Still, his enthusiasm never waned, and while it could be seen as being a “great ambassador for the Brewers and baseball,” from the outside it looked like Ueck was simply showing up and being himself.

There is probably a lesson in that, a commitment both to the grind and to our better selves. Uecker made it look so easy, even though replacing him is simply impossible.

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