This Time, Uecker’s Call The Real Deal

Life imitates art. Bob Uecker said that. And tonight, he shows us why he said it when he and broadcast partner Bob Costas work Game 3 of the Mariners-Indians American League playoff for NBC.

Remember the avant garde cult classics, “Major League” and its sequel, in which Uecker portrays the befuddled voice of the Cleveland Indians as they go from the cellar to World Series in a single season?

“Players from all around baseball love those movies, and they often quote lines from them, but especially the Indians players,” Costas said. “The other night, Uecker walks up to the batting cage in Cleveland, and Sandy Alomar, without even a hello, says, ‘He swings and crushes one toward South America.’

“And they all say, ‘Juuuust a little outside.”’

Costas and Uecker did the call on the Red Sox-Indians wild card series for NBC and, tonight, NBC once again takes over postseason from ABC for Games 3, 4 and 5 of the A.L. playoffs.

“Ueck just loves it,” Costas said. “He’s a guy who’s so comfortable with himself. He knows who he is and is amused by the ride he’s gotten in life.”

Uecker spent five years as a major-league catcher, mostly with the Milwaukee Braves and St. Louis Cardinals, compiling some pretty impressive statistics - like a career batting average of .200 with no triples or stolen bases. He spent a short time calling baseball for NBC in the old days, made about 70 appearances on Johnny Carson, and became voice of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Then, he became a movie star, and the rest, as they say, is cinematic history.

“On the opening of a Red Sox-Indians show one night, I mentioned the different histories of the two franchises,” Costas said. “The Red Sox tantalize, frustrate and break hearts, whereas Cleveland, in our lifetime, was never any good at all.

“Now, there are many ways to express this … but perhaps the best way is the fact that Bob Uecker’s two epic films are based on the premise of the Cleveland Indians suddenly winning the pennant, which seems like the most far-fetched baseball scenario any screen writer could concoct.”

There is another irony in Uecker’s trip to Cleveland that is lesser known. Besides being home of the Indians, Cleveland also is home of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

“I was really impressed that Ueck went there, until I heard he confused Keith Moon with Wally Moon,” Costas said.

Bad move

The Baseball Network’s regionalization of the playoffs gives us yet another axiom of TV production: It doesn’t work to cut back and forth between live action of two baseball games.

“I’ll give you a good for-instance,” said Rick Gentile, who oversaw the creative end of the last televised World Series in 1993 as a senior vice president at CBS Sports.

“A pitching change can be covered in a dramatic way on television. You cut between cameras, show the faces of the players, the fans, and for the viewer, it’s a way to take a deep breath and get ready to go again. But if you’re not involved in the game and you come from nowhere to a pitching change, it means nothing to you.”