Bob Uecker, clubhouse turned popular sportscaster, dies at 90

Bob Uecker, the clubhouse humorist who turned his tales of insignificance as a major league catcher into a comic narrative that animated his second career as a sportscaster and commercial pitchman, died Thursday. He was 90.

His family announced the death in a statement released by Milwaukee Brewerswho said he had been treated for small cell lung cancer since early 2023. The statement did not say where he died.

Uecker proved he was no different during his six seasons as a big leaguer in the 1960s. He got a career batting average of just .197hit 14 home runs and drove in 74 runs. As a career reliever, he never started more than 62 games in a season for Milwaukee and the Atlanta Braves, St. Louis Cardinals or the Philadelphia Phillies.

“To last as long as I did with the skills I had was a triumph of the human spirit,” Uecker wrote in “Catcher in the Wry” (1982), his memoir with Mickey Herskowitz.

He told self-deprecating stories – some true, some not – as if he had only played baseball to gather material for a stand-up comedy routine.

“I was once named minor league player of the year,” he said. “Unfortunately, I had been in the major for two years at that point.”

But Uecker’s deep knowledge of the game, derived mostly from dugout benches and bullpens, was evident during his radio broadcasts for the Brewers, starting in 1971 as the play-by-play voice.

Uecker was beloved in Milwaukee, but he was best known nationally for his comedic turns in the popular Miller Lite beer ad campaign in the 1980s and his role as Harry Doyle, the fictional voice of the former Cleveland Indians, in the “Major League” cartoon. ” (1989).

The Miller Lite commercials were built around a debate about whether low-calorie beer tasted good or were less filling and featured many sports celebrities.

In his most famous adUecker made his way to a box seat at a ballpark. But when an officer interrupted him to say he was in the wrong seat, Uecker replied, “Oh, I must be in the front row!” He was instead taken to a seat in a remote part of the stadium.

“Good seats, huh, mate?” he shouted amid a sea of ​​empty seats.

The sight of Uecker sitting at such a distance became so much a part of his image that in 2014 a statue of him was installed far away in the upper deck of the Brewers’ stadium.

In addition to calling Brewers games for 54 years, he worked as an analyst for ABC Sports in 1976 on their Monday Night Baseball franchise, where he remained until 1982.

A full obituary will appear soon.