Bob Uecker has died. Although best known for his legendary stint as the play-by-play radio announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers—a job he held for 54 years, continuing into the 2024 season—Uecker was also a sort of sports-based renaissance man. Whether serving as an actor (in projects like Mr. Belvedere and Major League), regular talk show guest (as a perennial favorite of Johnny Carson, who dubbed him “Mr. Baseball” for his numerous appearances on The Tonight Show), or commercial pitchman, Uecker was known for bringing humor and enthusiastic wit to all walks of his performing life. Per The New York Times, the man known simply as “Ueck” to generations of Brewers fans died on Thursday, in his native Wisconsin. Uecker was 90.
Uecker famously began his sports career on the other side of the microphone: After a stint in the Army, he began playing minor, and then major, league baseball for Milwaukee in the 1950s. His own mediocrity as a player was a frequent topic of Uecker’s comedy: Although he was technically a World Series champion (with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964), it was for a season where his team barely played him, and he’d spend the rest of his performing life poking good-natured fun at his failings as both a catcher and a batter. He was far more successful once he get off the field and into the booth, with his powerful voice becoming synonymous with Milwaukee baseball after he began serving as the team’s radio play-by-play man in 1971. He quickly caught Carson’s notice, too, and soon began making what would ultimately be roughly 100 Tonight Show appearances; watching them now, we’re struck by how well Uecker had command of the comedic deadpan, calmly lobbing absurd observations of the sportsman’s life at the ever-game host.
Even for generations who never listened to a baseball game on the radio—or watched the many TV games Uecker served as a color commentator for—the announcer’s appearance in 1989’s Major League (and its two sequels) helped cement Uecker’s old “Mr. Baseball” name. The joy of his character in the trilogy, announcer Harry Doyle, comes in the way he combined Uecker’s two public personas: On the one hand, he’s the consummate radio man, gamely glossing over his team’s failings with such lines as the famous “Juuust a bit outside” to describe a massively wild pitch. Meanwhile, off-mic, he’s an endless and inveterate shit-talker, playing up the more sarcastic side of Uecker’s comedy that often got highlighted in his long stint as a commercial star for Miller Lite. (Certainly, Doyle’s a much more enjoyably crass presence than the sarcastic but well-meaning sitcom dad Uecker played for five seasons of Mr. Belvedere.) Re-watching the film, it’s clear Uecker’s not just a sports announcer who lucked into getting cast in a movie: He’s a genuine comic force who just also happens to also be one of the most experienced sports broadcasters in the game.
Uecker’s death was memorialized on Thursday by the team he devoted so much of his life to, who called him “the light of the Brewers” in an effusive tribute to the long-time announcer.
