Bob Uecker, the clubhouse wit who turned his tales of inferiority as a serious league catcher into a comic book narrative that animated his second profession as a sportscaster and industrial pitchman, died on Thursday at his dwelling in Menomonee Falls, Wis. He was 90.
His household introduced the loss of life in a press release launched by the Milwaukee Brewers, for whom he had lengthy been a broadcaster. The assertion mentioned he had been handled for small-cell lung most cancers since early 2023.
Uecker proved himself undistinguished throughout his six seasons as a serious leaguer within the Sixties. He eked out a profession batting common of .200, hit 14 dwelling runs and drove in 74 runs. A profession reserve participant, he by no means began greater than 62 video games in a season for the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves, the St. Louis Cardinals or the Philadelphia Phillies.
“To final so long as I did, with the talents I had, was a triumph of the human spirit,” Uecker mentioned in his memoir, “Catcher within the Wry” (1982), written with Mickey Herskowitz.
He instructed self-deprecating tales — some true, some not — as if he had performed baseball solely to collect materials for a stand-up comedy routine.
“I used to be as soon as named minor league participant of the 12 months,” he mentioned. “Sadly, I had been within the majors for 2 years on the time.”
All that point, idling on dugout benches and in bullpens imbued Uecker with a deep information of baseball. That was obvious throughout his radio broadcasts for the Brewers, the place he began in 1971 because the play-by-play voice and continued via final season.
Uecker acknowledged {that a} shut sport didn’t want a lot of his wit, however a blowout begged for it.
“If we’re not doing nicely, you need to do one thing to maintain individuals listening,” he instructed MLB Community in 2015. In these moments, he added, “I used to speak about Pete Vuckovich’s nostril hairs on daily basis he was right here,” referring to a longtime Milwaukee pitcher.
Uecker was a beloved determine in Milwaukee — “the sunshine of the Brewers” and the “laughter in our hearts,” the workforce mentioned in a press release — and he turned nationally recognized for his comedian turns in a preferred promoting marketing campaign for Miller Lite beer within the Nineteen Eighties, and for his position as Harry Doyle, the fictional voice of the previous Cleveland Indians, within the hit film comedy “Main League” (1989).
The Miller Lite marketing campaign, constructed round a debate over whether or not the low-calorie beer tasted nice or was much less filling, featured many sports activities celebrities.
In his best-known industrial, Uecker threaded his solution to a field seat at a ballpark. However when an usher interrupted him to say he was within the flawed seat, Uecker responded, “Oh, I should be within the entrance row!” He was led as an alternative to a seat in a distant a part of the stadium.
“Good seats, eh, buddy?” he shouted amid a sea of empty seats.
The sight of Uecker perched at such a distance turned a lot part of his picture that, in 2014, a statue of him was put in within the faraway reaches of the higher deck of Miller Park in Milwaukee.
“I believe once I lastly go, I’d need to go like that,” he mentioned on the day the statue was devoted. “Seated and above floor.”
Remarkably, it was the second statue of Uecker to be put in on the ballpark. Two years earlier, the Brewers had unveiled one exterior the stadium, close to these of the Corridor of Fame gamers Henry Aaron and Robin Yount.
“In case you hear carefully, you may hear Henry’s statue begging to be relocated,” the sportscaster Bob Costas, a good friend and colleague of Uecker’s, mentioned on the dedication.
Robert George Uecker was born in Milwaukee on Jan. 26, 1934. His father, August, a Swiss immigrant, was a instrument and die maker, and his mom, Mary (Schultz) Uecker, ran the house. The Ueckers lived close to Borchert Area, the house of an earlier minor-league iteration of the Brewers. Younger Bob and his associates usually sneaked in to observe video games.
One in every of Uecker’s customary jokes was about his father’s offended response to the Braves’ provide to signal him for $3,000.
“We have been a poor household and, frankly, he didn’t have that form of money,” Uecker mentioned. “Lastly he scraped it up and bought me to depart dwelling once more.”
Uecker hit for energy and common within the Braves’ minor league system. Earlier than the 1961 season, he thought he had made the Braves’ major-league roster, however the supervisor, Chuck Dressen, despatched him all the way down to the Louisville minor-league workforce with a warning.
“There isn’t any room in baseball for a clown,” Uecker recalled Dressen telling him.
Apparently, although, there was. He joined the Braves in 1962 however performed sparingly, as he did once more in 1963, when he spent a part of the season within the minor leagues.
He was traded to the Cardinals in 1964, to the Phillies in 1965 and again to the Braves (who had moved to Atlanta) in 1967. In a profession with little to brag about, he was proudest that the 2 dwelling runs he hit in 1965 have been each in opposition to future Corridor of Fame pitchers, Sandy Koufax and Gaylord Perry.
“Perry mentioned it was the worst day of his life,” Uecker instructed MLB Community, feigning shock. “Not simply his baseball life. His entire life.”
Uecker claimed {that a} Cardinal coach had injected him with the hepatitis virus to stop him from enjoying within the 1964 World Collection, wherein the Cardinals beat the Yankees in seven video games. He was on the workforce’s roster however didn’t enter any of these video games — the first-string catcher, Tim McCarver, performed each inning, hitting .478.
Of all Uecker’s statistics, one stands out probably the most: He led the main leagues in handed balls in 1967. Permitting 27 pitches to bounce, roll or skitter previous him in simply 76 video games behind the plate was a unprecedented feat — one of many worst defensive performances for a catcher in trendy baseball historical past.
However these failures have been, partly, comprehensible. Most of these uncaught pitches have been fluttery knuckleballs thrown by Braves’ Phil Niekro. For Niekro, 1967 was a breakout season, and he later credited Uecker with encouraging him to throw nothing however the knuckler.
“Ueck instructed me if I used to be ever going to be a winner, to throw the knuckleball always, and he would attempt to catch it,” Niekro instructed The Oklahoman in 1988.
Uecker’s expertise with Niekro’s hard-to-catch pitch impressed one among his most frequently quoted strains.
“The way in which to catch a knuckleball,” he mentioned, “is to attend till it stops rolling after which decide it up.”
Uecker’s enjoying days ended mercifully when the Braves launched him in 1968, after he had hit .146 the earlier season.
He didn’t recede into hard-earned obscurity. He labored for the Braves within the group’s audio system bureau and on their tv broadcasts. His pure comedic timing and boisterous persona additionally made him a preferred speaker at banquets, which led to a friendship with the trumpeter Al Hirt, who booked him at his Atlanta nightclub in 1969.
Hirt then helped Uecker get on “The Tonight Present Starring Johnny Carson,” the place in dozens of appearances Carson giggled at Uecker’s deadpan yarns.
After his first look on the present, Uecker recalled that Carson and his sidekick, Ed McMahon, expressed doubt about whether or not his baseball tales have been true.
“I walked away and I hear Johnny say to Ed, ‘Did that man actually play baseball?’” Uecker mentioned in a 2016 interview on “Feherty,” the golf analyst David Feherty’s collection on the Golf Channel. “And Ed says, ‘I believe so.’ Neither of them believed I’d performed ball.”
His broadcasting profession with the Brewers started with a detour. He was employed by Bud Selig, the workforce’s proprietor and a future commissioner of Main League Baseball, as a scout. However Selig known as Uecker the “worst scout I ever had,” most notably for delivering his first scouting experiences smeared with mashed potatoes and gravy from his dinner.
Along with calling Brewers video games for 54 years, Uecker labored as an analyst for ABC Sports activities in 1976 on its “Monday Night time Baseball” franchise, the place he stayed till 1982. One night time, throughout a sport he was calling with Al Michaels and Howard Cosell, Uecker corrected Cosell on a strategic level that was clearly flawed.
“Uecky, I get your level,” Cosell mentioned, in line with Michaels’s autobiography. “However you don’t need to be so truculent. You do know what truculent means, don’t you?”
The fast-witted Uecker responded: “In fact, Howard. In case you had a truck and I borrowed it, it will be a truck-you-lent.”
Uecker returned to community asserting within the Nineties for NBC, however he all the time stored his job with the Brewers.
As Harry Doyle in “Main League,” which starred Charlie Sheen and Tom Berenger as gamers on a moribund fictional model of the Cleveland Indians, Uecker performed an inebriated, say-anything extension of himself. He ad-libbed all his strains, together with what might be his greatest recognized.
When the Sheen character throws a pitch a number of ft from the strike zone, Doyle says, “Juuuuuuust a bit exterior,” and provides, as an apart, “Tried the nook and missed.”
It was not Doyle’s most outrageous line, however it turned synonymous with any wildly errant pitch thrown, whether or not by Little Leaguers or main leaguers. Uecker reprised the character in “Main League” sequels in 1994 and 1998.
Uecker additionally performed George Owens, a sportswriter, on “Mr. Belvedere,” a sitcom a couple of British butler working for an American household, seen on ABC from 1985 to 1990.
When Uecker accepted the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting excellence from the Baseball Corridor of Fame in 2003, he expressed one remorse.
“I nonetheless — and this isn’t bitter grapes by any means — assume I ought to have gone in as a participant,” he mentioned, because the Corridor of Famers seated behind him laughed.
He was additionally inducted into the WWE Corridor of Fame for his two appearances as an announcer at Wrestlemania occasions within the late Nineteen Eighties. At one, in 1988, Uecker was choked briefly by André the Big, who took offense to Uecker’s calling his huge hand a foot.
Uecker is survived by his longtime companion, Judy Uecker, from whom he was divorced however with whom he had reunited; his daughter, Sue Uecker; a son, Bob Jr.; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. One other son, Steve, died in 2012 from issues of San Joaquin Valley fever; one other daughter, Leann Uecker Ziemer, died of A.L.S. in 2022. His marriage to Joyce Jahn resulted in divorce.
Whereas Uecker didn’t play within the 1964 World Collection, he nonetheless had a memorable on-field second. Earlier than Recreation 2 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, he picked up a tuba that was mendacity idle within the outfield whereas a marching band took a break.
“I put it on and went out within the outfield and beginning shagging fly balls with it,” he instructed The Chicago Tribune in 1995. “I didn’t catch all of them. Some made dents within the tuba, however I caught a pair.”
The Cardinals weren’t amused by his prank. The workforce deducted $260 for the harm to the tuba from his World Collection winner’s verify of $8,622.