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Bob Uecker, announcer who was the comic bard of baseball, dies at 90

Former Major League Baseball player Bob Uecker waves to the fans as he walks out to mound to throw out the ceremonial first pitch prior to the Milwaukee Brewers playing the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 3 of the National League Divisional Series at Miller Park on Oct. 4, 2008, in Milwaukee, Wis.  (Pool)
By Matt Schudel Washington Post

Bob Uecker, who transformed his futility as a baseball player into a successful second career as a baseball broadcaster, humorist and comic actor in television, film and commercials, died Jan. 16 at 90.

The Milwaukee Brewers, for whom he was a longtime radio announcer, announced the death. In a statement released by the club, Uecker’s family said he had battled small cell lung cancer since early 2023.

Before he was known for two enduring catchphrases – “I must be in the front row!” from a Miller Lite commercial and “Just a bit outside” from the movie “Major League” – Uecker spent six years in the major leagues as a backup catcher and first-string clubhouse comedian. Among a long list of baseball jokers, he is widely considered the funniest.

Referring to his lowly career batting average of .200, Uecker said he was so hopeless at the plate that his manager would “send me up there without a bat and tell me to try for a walk.”

In a best-selling 1982 autobiography, “Catcher in the Wry” (written with Mickey Herskowitz), Uecker described the secret of his success, such as it was: “Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.”

He played for the Milwaukee Braves, St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies and Atlanta Braves. He never appeared in more than 80 games a season, but he did share a moment of glory as a member of the World Series-winning Cardinals in 1964.

“People don’t know this, but I helped the Cardinals win the pennant,” he later said. “I came down with hepatitis. The trainer injected me with it.”

In reality, Uecker was considered a valuable clubhouse presence, with his lighthearted banter and his humorous running monologues in the bullpen. Before the first game of the 1964 World Series, he picked up a sousaphone left on the field by a musician and used it to shag flyballs.

If he was the definition of major league mediocrity, he found unlikely success against one of the game’s best pitchers, Sandy Koufax, once hitting a home run off the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Hall of Fame left-hander. (It was one of only 14 home runs Uecker had in the majors.)

During his final season in 1967, he was the personal catcher of Atlanta Braves knuckleball pitcher Phil Niekro. That year, Uecker led the National League in passed balls (pitches he should have caught but missed) – “and I did that without playing every game,” he boasted.

He described his method of catching the fluttering, unpredictable knuckleball: “Wait until it stopped rolling and then pick it up.”

In fact, Niekro credited his Hall of Fame success to his catcher, writing in his autobiography that Uecker “ingrained in my mind that I shouldn’t be afraid to throw the knuckler. What happened to it after it left my hand was not my responsibility, but instead his.”

After his playing career, Uecker dabbled in broadcasting for the Braves and spoke at banquets, where he began to reshape his baseball experiences into a comedy act, with himself as the butt of the joke. Al Hirt, a popular trumpeter of the era, heard him at a nightclub in 1969 and recommended him to his agent. Uecker soon made the first of more than 100 appearances on the “Tonight” show, with host Johnny Carson dubbing him “Mr. Baseball.”

Back in the big leagues

In 1970, Milwaukee acquired a new baseball team, the Brewers, after an expansion franchise moved from Seattle. The owner, businessman Bud Selig, hired Uecker as a scout.

“Worst scout I ever had,” Selig, who later became commissioner of baseball, told the New York Times in 2010. When Uecker turned in a scouting report on a potential player, it “was smeared with gravy and mashed potatoes.”

Uecker moved to the team’s radio booth as an analyst in 1971 and, during the next season, he began to do play-by-play announcing. He would remain the voice of the Brewers for more than 50 years. During much of that time, he was also on the field before the games, throwing batting practice to the players.

In the broadcast booth, he relied on his inside knowledge of the sport as he described the action. He had a clear, distinctive voice and developed a well-known home run call: “Get up! Get up! Get outta here! Gone!” He seldom resorted to comedy, except when the Brewers were far behind.

From 1976 to 1982, Uecker was part of ABC’s “Monday Night Baseball” broadcasting team, often jousting good-naturedly with Howard Cosell, known for his large vocabulary and sometimes pompous manner. Once, when Cosell used the word “truculent,” he asked Uecker if he knew what it meant.

“Sure I do,” Uecker replied. “If you had a truck, and I borrowed it, that would be a truck-you-lent.”

In the 1970s and 1980s, Uecker was among many retired athletes who appeared in Miller Lite commercials. He cultivated the persona of the lovable loser, unperturbed by snubs and insults.

“You know, one of the best things about being an ex-big-leaguer is getting freebies to the game,” he says in one commercial, pulling a ticket from his pocket. “Call the front office, and bingo!”

An usher approaches, saying, “You’re in the wrong seat, buddy, come on.”

Uecker confidently says, “I must be in the front row!”

In the commercial’s final scene, he is sitting by himself at the top of the stadium, ever ebullient as he declares to no one, “Good seats, hey, buddy?”

The commercials led to an acting career, including an appearance as guest host of “Saturday Night Live.” From 1985 to 1990, Uecker starred in the ABC sitcom “Mr. Belvedere” as a sportswriter who hires a prissy English butler to manage his household.

Uecker also played Harry Doyle, a whiskey-drinking broadcaster in the 1989 baseball comedy “Major League.” When a pitcher, played by Charlie Sheen, throws a wild pitch that bounces off the backstop, Uecker – in an improvised line – says, “Ju-u-u-u-st a bit outside.”

The film became a cult classic, and generations of fans and players repeated the line, imitating Uecker’s cheery inflection. While appearing in two “Major League” sequels, he continued to announce for the Brewers and helped cover the World Series with Bob Costas for NBC in the 1990s.

Uecker often joked about being overlooked year after year by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

“It finally got to the point,” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “where I had to say, ‘Hey, I don’t need it.’ I can bronze my own glove and hang it on a nail in my garage.”

But in 2003, Uecker gained a permanent place in Cooperstown, when he received the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting. His acceptance speech was a variation on his well-polished comedy act.

“All the television stuff, the movies, the sitcoms, the commercials, that’s all fun,” he said that year. “All I wanted to do is come back to Milwaukee every spring to do baseball.” Robert George Uecker was born Jan. 26, 1934, in Milwaukee. His father, who had played soccer in his native Switzerland, was an auto mechanic. His mother was a homemaker.

He later joked about his childhood as the child of immigrants, adapting to American ways. When his father bought a football, “we tried to pass it and throw it and kick it,” Uecker said in his Hall of Fame speech, “and we couldn’t do it, and it was very discouraging for him and for me. We almost quit. And finally … a neighbor came over and put some air in it. And what a difference.”

After high school, Uecker joined the Army, playing on baseball teams at bases in Missouri and Northern Virginia. He signed a minor league contract in 1956 with the Milwaukee Braves, his then-hometown team, for a $3,000 bonus.

He spent six years in the minor leagues – once hitting .332 with 21 home runs for a Class C team in Idaho – before getting called up to the major league club in 1962. His teammates included Hall of Famers Niekro, Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn of the Braves and, in St. Louis, Bob Gibson and Lou Brock.

In addition to his baseball broadcasting and acting, Uecker occasionally announced major professional wrestling matches and was named to the WWE Hall of Fame.

His first two marriages ended in divorce. Two children from his first marriage, Steven Uecker and Leann Uecker Ziemer, died in 2012 and 2022, respectively. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

Uecker had numerous health scares through the years, including heart surgery and cancer, and he stopped traveling to Brewers road games in his 80s. Still, he remained steadfastly behind the radio microphone in Milwaukee as he approached his 90th birthday.

There are two statues of Uecker at Milwaukee’s baseball stadium. One is in front of the stadium, where he shares pride of place with Hall of Fame players. The other is high in the upper deck, behind obstructing pillars – the “Uecker seats” that could not be farther from the front row.

“Everything I’ve done,” Uecker once said, “no matter how weird or ignorant it seems, people like it.”