RIP Bob Uecker, legendary baseball announcer and Major League actor

Bob Uecker is dead. Although he’s best known for his legendary stint as play-by-play radio announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers — a job he held for 54 years, continuing into the 2024 season — Uecker was also something of a sports-based renaissance man. Regardless of whether he serves as an actor (in projects such as Mr. Belvedere and Major League), regular talk show guest (as a perennial favorite of Johnny Carson, who dubbed him “Mr. Baseball” for his numerous appearances on The Tonight Show), or commercial pitchman, Uecker was known for bringing humor and enthusiastic wit to all walks of life in his performing life. Sore New York Timesthe man known as “Ueck” to generations of Brewers fans died Thursday in his native Wisconsin. Uecker was 90.

Uecker famously began his sports career on the other side of the microphone: After a stint in the Army, he began playing minor, then major, baseball for Milwaukee in the 1950s. His own mediocrity as a player was a frequent subject of Uecker’s comedy: Although he was technically a world champion (with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964), it was for a season in which his team barely played him and he would spend the rest of his performing life good-naturedly pokes fun at his failings as both catcher and batter. Far more successful off the field and into the dugout, his powerful voice became synonymous with Milwaukee baseball after he began serving as the team’s radio play-by-play man in 1971. He also quickly caught the attention of Carson, and soon began making what would eventually be about 100 Show tonight appearances; Watching them now, we’re struck by how well Uecker commanded the comedic deadpan, calmly delivering absurd observations about the athlete’s life to the ever-in-the-game host.

Even for generations that never listened to a baseball game on the radio — or watched the many televised games Uecker served as color commentator for — the speaker’s appearance in the 1989s Major League (and its two sequels) helped cement Uecker’s old “Mr. Baseball” moniker. The joy of his character in the trilogy, the speaker Harry Doyle, comes in the way he combined Uecker’s two public personas: on the one hand, he is the consummate radio man who wildly overlooks his team’s mistakes with such lines as the famous “Juuust a”. a little outside” to describe a massively wild pitch. Meanwhile, without a microphone, he’s an endless and inveterate shit-talker, playing the more sarcastic side of Uecker’s comedy that was often highlighted in his long stint as a commercial star for Miller Lite. (Doyle is certainly a much more enjoyably gruff presence than the sarcastic but well-intentioned sitcom Father Uecker played for five seasons of Mr. Belvedere.) Watching the film again, it’s clear that Uecker isn’t just a sports announcer who happened to be cast in a movie: He’s a true comedic force who also happens also being one of the most experienced sportscasters in the game.



Uecker’s death was commemorated Thursday by the team he devoted so much of his life to, calling him “the light of the Brewers” in an exuberant tribute to the long-time announcer.