Mister Baseball
Photo by Steve Paluch, CC BY-SA 3.0
There’s no doubt that Bob Uecker was a very funny man. We saw it in his Miller Light ad.
We saw it in the film Major League.
We saw it on the Tonight Show, where Johnny Carson dubbed him “Mister Baseball”.
And we saw it in the funniest Hall of Fame speech ever. (The whole thing in unbroken deadpan.)
What’s perhaps less celebrated is what a nice man he was. When Uecker was on the Cardinals, he was Bob Gibson’s best friend on the team. (Here’s the two of them ruining a team picture by holding hands.) On the Phillies, he was Dick Allen’s best friend. When the Brewers lost their Wild Card game last year, the team was naturally disappointed, but the overwhelming feeling was sadness because that would be Ueck’s last game. You can also judge by how many bad things you’ve ever read about him. None.
But what should be obvious is that Bob Uecker loved baseball. He spent six years enduring fleabag motels and long bus rides in the minors before getting his chance at the majors at age 28. After six years in MLB, he became a scout and then a broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers, and remained their voice for over fifty years. He’s gone now, at the age of 90. It’s hard to count the ways in which he’ll be missed.
