'Mr. Baseball' Bob Uecker passes away at 90

Bob Uecker brought the Brewers to life for generations of fans. And that was just the start of a second career in entertainment that reached far beyond the ballpark.

Uecker, the backup catcher turned Hollywood star, and the legendary radio voice of his hometown team for more than five decades, has died. He was 90.

Uecker was a career .200 hitter but gained fame thanks to his quick wit. Nicknamed “Mr. Baseball” by “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson during one of Uecker’s 100 or so appearances on late-night TV, he starred in a popular series of Miller Lite commercials, then in the ABC sitcom “Mr. Belvedere” and in the “Major League” film trilogy. He authored two books, hosted “Saturday Night Live” and WrestleMania, and famously graced the pages of Sports Illustrated as a septuagenarian in a speedo.

But Uecker’s first love was baseball, and that never changed. Following six seasons in the Major Leagues with the Braves, Cardinals and Phillies, then a failed stint as a Brewers scout, Uecker’s voice became one of the sounds of summer in the Midwest. He joined the Brewers radio team in 1971 and launched a second career in broadcasting that led to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame, the Radio Hall of Fame, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame, the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and the National Baseball Hall of Fame as the 2003 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award.

That’s how a .200 hitter gets into Cooperstown.

“Bob became incredibly popular, incredibly recognizable, but his favorite environment was always the clubhouse,” said Hall of Famer Paul Molitor. “He never changed. With everything that came his way, he never forgot his roots.”

No matter what other sources tell you, Robert George Uecker was born in Milwaukee on Jan. 26, 1934. Throughout his playing career, the back of Uecker’s baseball cards said he was born in 1935. Uecker never cared enough to fix the mistake until 2014, when he finally set the record straight on his 80th birthday.

Uecker’s father, August, was a Swiss immigrant who worked as a tool-and-die maker and mechanic. His mother, Mary Schultz, was born in Michigan and had a brother, Bernard, who played professional baseball in the Tigers organization. August and Mary settled on Milwaukee’s near north side and had three children who grew up surrounded by baseball. At St. Boniface grade school, Uecker was within walking distance of Borchert Field, home to the original iteration of the Milwaukee Brewers, a Minor League team that played from 1902-52.

Never much for the classroom, Uecker worked odd jobs with his dad, drove a truck at 15 for an uncle in Eagle River, Wis., and cut Christmas trees. More and more, baseball was his calling. He was an accomplished pitcher in Milwaukee’s youth leagues but eventually settled in behind the plate and got his big break in 1956 when he signed with his hometown Braves. Contrary to his reputation in retirement, Uecker was actually a good power hitter in the Minors, including a 22-homer season in 1958. In the Majors, though, he was a career backup for the Braves, Cardinals, Phillies and Braves again, this time in Atlanta.

In Milwaukee, Uecker was teammates with Hall of Famers Warren Spahn, Eddie Mathews and Henry Aaron, who became a lifelong friend. In St. Louis, Uecker played 40 regular-season games for the 1964 World Series champion Cardinals but didn’t appear in the Fall Classic and insisted he was iced out because of “the tuba incident.” You see, there were three dixie bands playing in the outfield during batting practice before one of the games, and Uecker had donned a tuba and used it to shag fly balls. Management didn’t appreciate the show. Uecker, meanwhile, was slapped with a $260 bill for a dented tuba.

“I make fun of everything I did because it makes people laugh. But it’s still a pretty good thing to be a big leaguer,” Uecker once said. “I was still in a World Series. When I got on the field, there was no messing around. I played hard.”

Here’s a bit of trivia: Uecker hit 14 home runs in the Majors off 13 pitchers. Three went to the Hall of Fame: Fergie Jenkins, Sandy Koufax and Gaylord Perry. The only pitcher Uecker touched twice, Roy Sadecki, won 20 games for the Cardinals during the World Series season in ’64.

But Uecker never batted better than .250 and never appeared in more than 80 games in a season. That was in his final season, 1967, when he hit .150 for the Phillies and Braves and led National League catchers with 11 errors and 27 passed balls. Braves knuckleballer Phil Niekro played a significant part in Uecker’s defensive numbers that season. Later, someone asked Uecker the best way to handle a knuckleball.

“Wait until it stops rolling,” he said. “Then go to the backstop and pick it up.”

He was just getting started.

Uecker might not be remembered for his statistics, but his one-liners -- always delivered with a straight face -- became the stuff of legend.

• On his hitting prowess: “A .200 lifetime batting average in the Major Leagues tied me with another sports great averaging 200 or better in a 10-year period -- Don Carter, one of our top bowlers.”
• On awards: “You know, I was once named Minor League Player of the Year. Unfortunately, I had been in the Majors for two years at the time.”

• On signing with the Braves for $3,000: “That bothered my dad at the time because he didn't have that kind of dough to pay out. But he eventually scraped it up.”

Uecker's wit and deadpan delivery made its way into pop culture. In one of the star-studded Miller Lite commercials, filmed at Dodger Stadium, Uecker is told by an usher that he is in the wrong seat. “I must be in the front rowwww,” Uecker cooed. But the next scene shows Uecker sitting in the last row of the upper deck. Decades later, the Brewers installed a statue of Uecker in the last row of the upper deck at American Family Field amid what the club calls the “Uecker seats.” It’s one of two Uecker statues on the stadium grounds today.

Another famous line is his home run call -- “Get up, get up, get out of here … gone!” -- which is in lights at the home of the Brewers. But arguably Uecker’s most well-known one-liner came from the first installment of “Major League.” When Rick Vaughn (played by Charlie Sheen) throws a pitch clear to the backstop, the radio broadcaster (Uecker, as whiskey-swigging Harry Doyle) describes it as “Juuuuust a bit outside.”

Uecker’s real broadcasting career began sometime during the 1971 season in Milwaukee. Selig had led a group that bought the Seattle Pilots out of bankruptcy and moved them to County Stadium days before the 1970 season. Later he hired Uecker as a scout, but quickly scrapped that plan when a report arrived in the mail smothered in mashed potatoes and gravy. Selig swears that tale is true.

So Selig moved Uecker to the radio booth with veteran broadcasters Merle Harmon and Tom Collins. Uecker started by providing color analysis, and as time went on, the two veterans urged him to expand his comfort zone. Uecker believes his first inning of solo play-by-play was at Yankee Stadium, when Harmon and Collins abruptly stood and walked out of the booth in the fifth inning. Uecker held down the cough button and begged them to come back. They told him to call the game. Eventually, Uecker turned to the engineer and asked what he should do.

“I don’t know, but you’d better start talking,” came the response. “There’s one out.”

The rest is broadcasting history. Uecker eventually assumed play-by-play duties and became the mentor to many an up-and-coming broadcaster in Milwaukee, from Pat Hughes to Jim Powell to Cory Provus to Joe Block before they all graduated to more prominent jobs. That ushered in the arrival of Uecker’s most recent partners: Jeff Levering, Lane Grindle and Josh Maurer. Uecker also had a television career, calling national games for ABC and NBC, including several World Series.

“Think about the Uecker tree,” said Powell, Uecker’s partner from 1996-2008 who went on to be the lead radio voice of the Atlanta Braves. “We are all these disciples, and we’re spread out all over Major League Baseball. We all have these unique experiences with ‘Ueck.’

“I’m not aware of any other tree like that. You think about the other iconic broadcasters, and it’s not like a bunch spawned from Ernie Harwell. It’s not like a bunch spawned from Vin Scully. But Uecker uses his partner so well. Bob is never the whole show.”

Powell paused and added with a laugh, “Sometimes I have a hard time coming up with Uecker stories that I can talk about in public.”

For many fans, the Brewers’ worst games presented the best times to tune in. Uecker made a point to call the game straight if it was tight.

But when things got out of hand, it was time to have fun.

“When you spend a lot of time with Ueck, you really wish that you wrote everything down,” said former Brewers manager Craig Counsell, who grew up in greater Milwaukee and was in grade school when he first met Uecker. “That’s what I always wish. I wish I wrote it all down.”

• Archive: ‘Ueck’ carrying legacy into Crew's playoff run

Nineteen full-time and interim Brewers managers sat with Uecker for the daily pregame radio show, from Dave Bristol to Pat Murphy. Uecker curtailed his travel beginning in 2014 and eventually worked only home games, including in 2024, when, at age 90, he’d earned the right to come and go as he pleased while the rest of the team’s broadcast crew filled in around him. That included in the 2024 National League Wild Card Series, when Uecker was at the stadium for all three games against the Mets but opted only to call Game 3, a heartbreaker of a loss that flipped on Pete Alonso’s home run off Milwaukee closer Devin Williams with two outs in the ninth inning.

“I'm telling you,” Uecker said before signing off that night, “that one had some sting on it.”

But even as his workload waned, he remained as much a part of the team as any player. In 2018, after the Brewers’ season ended with a loss to the Dodgers in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, it was director of team travel Dan Larrea’s duty to call his longtime friend and inform Uecker that the players had voted him a full playoff share.

That year, it was worth $122,957.13. Uecker donated the money to his favorite charities.

“He almost came to tears when I told him,” Larrea said.

The tradition repeated when the Brewers made the postseason again in 2019, ’20, ’21, ’23 and ’24, according to sources. In 2021, the Brewers threw a celebration to mark Uecker’s 50th anniversary in the booth, complete with a pregame ceremony. Players made him custom Nikes with an “Air Uecker” logo.

Another baseball man might have picked that time to hang ’em up, but Uecker called three more seasons through 2024, when the Brewers briefly delayed celebrating a second consecutive division title in order to give Uecker time to join them from the radio booth. Two weeks later, when the season abruptly ended on Alonso’s stunning home run, Uecker gave the first hints that he had called his last inning. He circled the clubhouse to share goodbyes and laughs with the likes of Christian Yelich, who said through tears, “It’s special every time he’s around. You shouldn’t take it for granted.”

“When I met him, I was 18 and he was a little more than that, but he hadn’t reached teenage mentality yet,” said Robin Yount, the Hall of Famer who played all 20 of his big-league seasons for the Brewers. “But the connection that he creates with players, the camaraderie that he brings to the clubhouse, I’m sure it’s the same today. He was always accepted as one of us.”

Uecker’s sense of humor endured through his share of health scares over the years, leading to at least 14 surgeries. In 1991, when he was still throwing batting practice every day for the Brewers, he developed lower back pain and needed surgery for an aortal aneurysm in his abdominal area -- a potentially life-threating condition. In 2009, doctors found tumors on his pancreas, which they removed. Uecker was insulin-dependent for the rest of his life. In 2010, his 40th year in the Brewers’ booth, he temporarily lost his vision while calling a game with then-partner Provus at Wrigley Field. An examination revealed a worsening of a leaky heart valve, which required a six-hour open-heart surgery. That fall, Uecker needed another open-heart surgery for a serious staph infection.

He had three surgeries in the 2021-22 offseason alone, first a replacement of a previous knee replacement, then two procedures for cancerous spots on his back. He also fought through a serious case of COVID-19 that winter but was back in the booth on Opening Day.

Then there was 2017, when Uecker was changing a light bulb in an outdoor fixture at his home in Arizona and was bitten on the leg by a brown recluse spider. He needed a procedure to cut away the affected flesh, and the wound had to remain open to heal. Naturally, Uecker took photos with his cell phone to show friends with strong stomachs.

“We were laughing about it on the air,” Uecker said. “I said the spider didn’t ‘recluse’ himself from biting me. That was a good one.”

No matter the situation, Uecker always found a way to laugh.

Bud Selig once put Uecker’s impact like this: “The baseball announcer becomes a link to their fans. You go to Harry Caray, or Bob Prince in Pittsburgh, Mel Allen in New York. Vin Scully is legendary, a classic. That’s Bob Uecker here.”

There’s a lesson for everyone in Uecker’s charmed life.

“When I started [broadcasting], it was in the Major Leagues and I was scared to death. But that’s the way we did it, and it worked,” Uecker said at his 90th birthday. “The television stuff, the movie stuff, the different appearances, every time I did something, it was a first for me. It was fun. I had a good time and I met a lot of different people in baseball and show business.

“Sometimes you say yes to something and then you ask yourself later, ‘Why did I do this?’ But when you really think about the times you thought about saying no but you said yes, it turned out to be something pretty good. Everything I’ve done has been pretty good.”