Check out his famous quote from the movie

On By Littum

Bob Uecker had the kind of career statistics that would be sad if they weren’t so funny. But fun is what would ultimately cement his legacy.

Uecker, who died Jan. 16 at age 90, was a career .200 hitter across six seasons in Major League Baseball. Ultimately, he embraced his own ineptitude and often mocked himself for his lack of ability on the diamond.

Uecker took his schtick and ran with it, all the way to Hollywood. Nicknamed “Mr. Baseball,” he was a frequent, stomach-churning guest on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” for years after he retired. He appeared in several well-known Miller Lite commercials, in which he poked fun at himself by declaring, “I must be in the front row” after an usher at a game informs him that he is in the wrong seats . He parlayed those efforts into a starring role on the small screen, playing George Owens on the ABC sitcom “Mr. Belvedere,” which ran for six seasons from 1985 to 1990.

But all this may have just been a prologue to what seems like a casting job that was as natural as a tailor-made 4-6-3 double play. In the 1989 hit movie “Major League,” Uecker played Cleveland play-by-play announcer Harry Doyle, whose knowledge would often serve as cover for how terrible the team was, only to be caught in the crossfire when the team starts winning.

(There is profanity in the clip below.)

“Juuuust a little outside,” he says casually early in the film, stretching the word “just” when Charlie Sheen’s Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn throws a pitch more than a few feet from home plate during the team’s first game. It is one of the film’s best and most memorable lines.

Doyle is also fallen when he trying to amplify the sound of the crowd on opening day and gets ugly when he swears in the air.

“Don’t worry. Nobody’s listening anyway,” he says.

It’s fun, but it may also have been groundbreaking.

“Uecker’s irreverence brought to life a character — the play-by-play announcer — that had long been taken for granted in baseball movies,” Noah Gittell wrote in the 2024 book “Baseball: The Movie.”

“Typically, their role was to set the stage for the film’s climactic play with flowery prose or … act as a foil for the players or the manager. (Director and Writer David S.) Ward and Uecker collaborated on a true reinvention of the genre, turning this archetype into a comic Greek chorus that punctuated the clownish action on the field with perfectly delivered pingers. It was a breath of fresh air for the baseball movie, which had perhaps become too solemn in the 80s with ‘The Natural’, ‘Field of Dreams’ and ‘Eight Men Out’.”

Bob Uecker in "Major League."
Bob Uecker (left) as Harry Doyle in “Major League.”YouTube

Uecker, who spent 54 seasons as the radio play-by-play man for the Milwaukee Brewers, reprized the role in “Major League II.” He wasn’t just a perfect fit as Harry Doyle though. He also provided a template for those who came after him.

“There isn’t a play-by-play announcer in the game who hasn’t once hailed the movie by mimicking Uecker’s delivery of that line,” Gittell added of how Uecker said, “Juuuust a little off.”

It wasn’t just speakers either. If you’ve ever played Wiffle ball in your backyard, tuned in to a baseball game, or, heck, even tried archery and missed a target by 10 feet, you’ve probably said, “Yuuuust a little off.”

Uecker had an uncanny talent for putting a smile on people’s faces, whether it was in a studio audience or in a movie theater.

“The funniest guy I’ve ever met, off camera and on,” “Mr. Belvedere” co-star Rob Stone once said of Uecker.

Baseball and movies are known for their characters – movies for the characters in them, baseball for characters that add personality to the game. Uecker was a character, all right, and his portrayal of an important supporting role resonates today as fans will miss him more than “juuuust a bit.”