Major league catcher, broadcaster, and entertainer Bob Uecker has passed away at the age of 90
Bob Uecker, the former major league catcher who, after his playing days, had an incredibly successful career as a broadcaster, actor, comedian, and all around entertainer, has passed away, per an announcement from the Milwaukee Brewers. Uecker was 90.
Uecker spent parts of six seasons in the majors, from 1962-67. He initially broke into the majors with the Milwaukee Braves, spending two seasons with them before being traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. He spent a two seasons with the Cardinals before being traded to the Philadelphia Phillies after the 1965 season. In the middle of the 1967 season, he was traded back to the Braves, who by that point had relocated to Atlanta, and finished the year with them before being released at the end of the season.
After retiring, Uecker became a broadcaster for the Braves, then joined the Milwaukee Brewers’ radio broadcast team in 1971, a position maintained through the 2024 season. He was a popular speaker, due to his self-deprecating sense of humor and his amusing anecdotes from his playing days. He ended up getting booked for an appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1971 — you can check out that first appearance here.
Uecker impressed Carson, who reportedly asked a producer after Uecker’s set, “This guy was really a baseball player?”, and ended up making over 100 appearances on the show. Much of Uecker’s comedy centered around his purported incompetence as a player. He was knuckleballer Phil Niekro’s primary catcher for a while, and one of his most famous lines has to do with his advice as to the best way to catch a knuckleball — wait until it stops rolling and then walk over and pick it up.
Uecker became a regular member of the cast of sports characters who appeared in Miller Lite commercials in the 1980s, which tended to play on his “Rodney Dangerfield of Sports” persona. One of those commercials featured Uecker in a stadium moving past people towards what he thought was his seat, only to be told that he was to be seated elsewhere. Uecker’s response — “I must be in the front row!” — became a catchphrase.
Uecker also had a successful acting career. He spent a half-decade playing sportswriter George Owens in the sitcom Mr. Belvedere, and had a scene-stealing role as Cleveland announcer Harry Doyle in Major League movies. An early scene, where Uecker reacts to the realization that Cleveland only had one hit in the game, features another line that has become a catchphrase.
I was first exposed to Uecker when, as an adolescent, I was given his autobiography, “Catcher in the Wry.” As a young baseball fan who, at the time, had not read Ball Four or other such works, reading and re-reading his book was a fascinating experience, though it did lead to an awkward exchange with my parents. In his book, he referred to he and his teammates using rubbers as water balloons and dropping them from hotel windows on people, and I innocently asked what those were, since I hadn’t heard the term before.
Uecker was a unique individual, someone who made his mark on baseball, and culture in general. Baseball is better because Bob Uecker was part of it the game for those many decades.
Uecker had a friendship with Norm MacDonald, who passed away in 2021. I would like to think that, right now, Norm is having a beer with Bob. I will leave you with this clip of Norm MacDonald telling a Bob Uecker story to Dave Letterman: