Mr. Baseball has passed away at 90, RIP to a legend
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It’s a sad day for baseball fans as all of us mourn the passing of one of the very best to ever call a baseball game, Bob Uecker. The voice of the Milwaukee Brewers has passed away at 90, ten days shy of his 91st birthday.
As I type this I’m watching Uecker call what I can only hope is a Brewers win against the St. Louis Cardinals from 2014 on MLB Network. I refuse to cheat and look ahead. I’d rather see the game as it unfolded that day and Lord knows I have no idea who won this game a decade ago. I admit it always weirds me out to see Aramis Ramirez as a Brewer.
More on Uecker and his legendary career after some tunes.
There’s really only one song I felt was appropriate to talk about today, Wild Thing by The Troggs:
Wild Thing is a great song, but like many songs from the 60’s it wasn’t written by the Troggs, it was merely popularized by them. The song was written by an American band called the Wild Ones (they were clearly devoted to the bit) but the Troggs gave us the version we know today. It’s got a classic late 60’s beat, a strong guitar riff and the type of lyrics that stay in your head for a while:
Wild thing, you make my heart sing
You make everything groovy, wild thing
Wild thing, I think I love you
But I wanna know for sure
Come on and hold me tight
I love you
But for baseball fans of a certain age it’s impossible to not associate Wild Thing with one of the most iconic movies of our time: Major League. In that classic baseball comedy closer Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn walks out to the song, and well, let’s hear it called by the one and only Bob Uecker (I suspect Al might give us a pass on the game thread words this one time):
It’s not Uecker’s shining moment in a film franchise where he delivers time and time again, but it is a perfect call. Uecker calls the pitching change to the phenom closer and then lets the crowd sing. Literally. Sing, chant, bang the drums and dance on the roof of the Yankees dugout. He does all of it without interruption, exactly as an elite play-by-play man should. It’s a baseball scene and honestly, captures one of my favorite things in baseball: the wipeout closer walkout song that brings the crowd to a frenzy.
Bob Uecker called Brewers games for 54-years. During that time he earned the moniker Mr. Baseball. There are a handful of visiting voices I often turn away from the Cubs broadcast to hear, and Uecker was one I never wanted to miss.
While it’s always worth remembering that even the worst players on an MLB diamond are among the most elite baseball players in the history of the game, Uecker did not have a memorable playing career. Grant Brisbee summed it up perfectly for The Athletic:
Baseball is a beautiful sport. It’s an elegant sport. It’s a sport that pays off like a slot machine, where you can put in coin after coin without much happening, but you’re guaranteed an eventual jackpot of tension and excitement. But it’s also a very silly sport, no way around it. It’s a sport where you watch grown men in pajamas fail, over and over again. Sometimes an older man will waddle out to the field, and he’ll also be wearing pajamas for some reason. It can be the least important thing in the world and the most important thing in the world at the same time, a quantum superposition we take for granted.
Uecker was a baseball icon and pop culture figure because of all of the above. His persona fit the Harry Doyle character in “Major League” perfectly, but not just because he could sell the line “juuuuuust a bit outside” and turn it into something that’s still referenced a million times every baseball season. That character worked because his arc was similar to one that every baseball fan could identify with, from frustration to dismissiveness to renewed interest to celebration to elation. When Doyle celebrates Cleveland’s pennant (spoiler), he’s earned that celebration, and you’ve watched him build up to that progressive jackpot. The sport wasn’t serious until it was. Baseball’s just a game until it isn’t.
You should read the whole piece. I particularly enjoyed the story about how Uecker wound up with a .1997264022 batting average after failing to get a hit in his last at bat. An at bat that could have put his career batting average just over the Mendoza line at .201, but instead resulted in a batting average at exactly .200 — after you round up.
Because the thing about Uecker that led to his moment in Cooperstown as the 2003 Ford C. Frick Award winner is that he was a Hall of Fame announcer at least partially because he was a Hall of Fame fan. To hear Uecker call a Brewers game was to hear a hometown kid calling his very favorite thing in the world. You should listen his Cooperstown acceptance speech in its entirety below:
It is no exaggeration to say that Uecker might have been the funniest guy to ever call a baseball game.
When I was far too young to be watching the TV premiere of Major League I found myself in my brother’s bedroom with the neighborhood kids on a night our parents had all gotten together. There was a 19-inch TV that happened to be hooked up to HBO. The adults were all downstairs doing whatever it was adults did back then and we found a movie that was about baseball. We all loved baseball and unanimously decided we were going to watch Major League.
I won’t speak for the older kiddos in the neighborhood but there was a lot I didn’t really get until much, much later. But we all laughed hysterically through the whole movie and I was astounded that the guy from Mr. Belvedere really knew baseball and was cracking me up.
Take for example this iconic scene from where Harry Doyle calls Ricky Vaughn’s first big league appearance (okay, I might need to apologize for game thread words more than once today):
Everything Uecker does in this clip is comedic genius. From pouring a drink, to covering his mic when he thanks God Keltner is out of the game. The part everyone remembers is “Juuuuuuust a bit outside” but honestly “he tried the corner and missed” is the real zinger here. And he follows it up with “ball four…ball eight…low and Vaughn has walked the bases on 12 straight pitches…how can these guys lay off pitches that close?!” Which is honestly almost as funny as “he tried the corner and missed.”
In a quirk of fate only the universe could imagine, I was writing this paragraph as Uecker discussed this very scene with Bob Costas 25 years later in 2014. It’s the type of comedic timing that only Bob Uecker could pull off, and he’s apparently still pulling it off from behind the veil.
MLB Network put together this clip of highlights from Uecker’s contemporaries and life to honor him, including a clip from Cubs Hall of Famer and a Ford C. Frick Award winner in his own right, Pat Hughes. Hughes got his start calling games with Uecker in Milwaukee, and if you’ve ever wondered where Pat got his knack for telling great stories in a blowout, wonder no more:
MLB Network mourns the passing of Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Uecker. pic.twitter.com/wpt3EKZvtN
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) January 16, 2025
It wasn’t just baseball, however. Uecker’s comedic talents were recognized on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson at least 100 times. He also hosted Saturday Night Live in 1984. Including a skit optioning his own son to the neighbor’s house after an error and this monologue:
Brewers games will not be the same without being able to flip to Uecker’s innings for a laugh. But tonight, BCB After Dark, I ask you to share your favorite memory of one of the best to ever call a game.