Bob Uecker, the Hall of Fame announcer known by so many as “Mr. Baseball”, died yesterday at the age of 90. Born to Swiss immigrant parents in 1934, he served in the Army before signing with the Milwaukee Braves. His telling of that moment, like so many others in his life, came with a self-deprecating joke.

“’You know, I signed with the Milwaukee Braves for $3,000,’ Uecker once said. ‘That bothered my dad at the time because he didn’t have that kind of dough to pay out. But eventually, he scraped it up.’”

Uecker had, to put it mildly, a modest big league career. But it got him into baseball and provided a treasure trove of stories. He talked about those modest accomplishments, among the biggest being his three home runs off of three Hall of Fame pitchers—Gaylord Perry, Ferguson Jenkins, and Sandy Koufax—as was being intentionally walked by Koufax.

When it came to that intentional walk, he joked, “I was pretty proud of that until I heard that the commissioner wrote Koufax a letter telling him the next time something like that happened, he’d be fined for damaging the image of the game.”

“I hit a homer off Sandy Koufax,” Uecker said in an interview with his NBC broadcast partner Bob Costas. “Each time I see him, I apologize. I was worried that it’d keep him out of the Hall of Fame.”

In addition to his five decades as one of baseball’s best and most unique announcers, Uecker was well known in pop culture. He was the humorous broadcaster from the movie “Major League” . . .

an iconic pitchman for Miller Lite commercials . . .

(NOTE: The first one below was filmed at Dodger Stadium, where Uecker is told by an usher that he is in the wrong seat. “I must be in the front rowwww,” Uecker cooed. But the next scene shows Uecker sitting in the last row of the upper deck. Decades later, the Brewers installed a statue of Uecker in the last row of the upper deck at American Family Field amid what the club calls the “Uecker seats.” It’s one of two Uecker statues on the stadium grounds today.) The second is a classic where Ueck stars with Rodney Dangerfield and a host of other big-name stars.)

and a frequent guest on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”

Uecker could make anything funny. He was traded in 1964 to the St. Louis Cardinals, and as he points out in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, when he won the Ford Frick Award for Announcers, the Cards immediately won the World Series.

Those Cardinals did come from 11 games back to win the pennant, but Ueck did not play in the World Series.

“’I was on the disabled list,’ he told Bob Costas and Joe Morgan in the booth during Game 6 of the 1995 World Series.

Costas: Fouled to the screen. Why were you on the disabled list?

Uecker: I got hepatitis.

Costas: Swing and a miss. How did you get hepatitis?

Uecker: The trainer injected me with it.”

That Hall of Fame speech is 18 minutes of unscripted joy. Seeing Willie Mays, Reggie Jackson, and so many baseball greats wiping their eyes as Uecker deadpanned his way through the talk is priceless. Of course, he did have one quibble about his induction.

“You know, of all of the things that I’ve done, this has always been number one: Baseball. The commercials, the films, the television series, I could never wait for everything to get over to get back to baseball. I still, and this is not sour grapes by any means, still think I should have gone in as a player.”

Bob Uecker, Hall of Fame Induction Speech (line begins at around the 10:45 mark)

Here’s how Joe Posnanski described that moment yesterday in a loving tribute.

“Bob Uecker followed up that line, that incredible line, the funniest line ever uttered in any Hall of Fame speech—which, by the way, he ad-libbed along with the rest of the speech—with eight seconds of deadpan silence and let the laughter build all around him. That’s how it was his whole life. Laughter always built around him.”

Go read Posnanski’s farewell to Mr. Baseball. He includes some classic moments, such as the famous team photograph the Cardinals took in ’64, which they had to discard because Ueck and Bob Gibson are holding hands and smiling as if they’re a couple.

Will Sammon also has a terrific appreciation in The Athletic, and Adam McCalvy touches on a number of Uecker highlights for MLB. Go to YouTube, type in Uecker’s name, and go down a rabbit hole.

I’ll end with one of my favorite Ueck stories, which was his famous advice about catching the knuckleball. He told this after he’d allowed a record 25 passed balls and 31 wild pitches in just 48 starts, most of them with Phil Niekro on the mound.

“The best way,” he said, “is to wait for it to stop rolling and then pick it up.”

Thanks for the love and laughter, Mr. Baseball. Rest in peace.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo credit: MLB.com