By Bill Trott
(Reuters) – Bob Uecker, whose self-deprecating wit helped him turn a mediocre baseball career into stardom as a television host, actor and brewer from his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, died on Thursday at the age of 90, the Milwaukee Brewers said.
Uecker, who will celebrate his 50th anniversary of calling Brewers games in his hometown in 2021, has become a beloved figure in town with two statues of him at the ballpark. His family said he had been battling lung cancer.
Uecker often joked about his six years as a major league player. His wit was far more influential than his bat and catcher’s mitt, and he led the league in laughs. “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson nicknamed him “Mr. Baseball” and had him on NBC TV’s late-night show about 100 times after he retired as a player.
Commercials that Uecker shot for Miller Lite beer in the 1970s and ’80s became a fixture during the breaks of televised sports events. The ads made him a national celebrity, and he parlayed his fame into other acting jobs, including a role on the TV sitcom “Mr. Belvedere (WA:)” and three Hollywood films “Major League”.
Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred called Uecker “one of the most beloved figures in the game during his 70-year baseball career.” He noted that during his 54 years of broadcasting games, “Bob’s wit became a staple of television and movies. Even with considerable success in Hollywood, Bob remained fiercely loyal to baseball and Milwaukee.”
Manfred said Uecker was “the real deal: always the funniest person in any room he was in, and always an outstanding ambassador for our national pastime.”
Uecker, or “Uke” as he was known, joked that his shots lasted until winter and that sporting goods companies paid him not to advertise their products. The only way he could catch the pitcher’s elusive ball, he said, was to wait for it to stop rolling.
Sports Illustrated once called him “the lovable snook of baseball.” Yet even as his fame as an entertainer grew, he remained devoted to baseball.
“Bob became incredibly popular, incredibly recognizable, but his favorite environment was always the clubhouse,” Brewers Hall of Famer Paul Molitor said. “He never changed. With everything that came his way, he never forgot his roots.”
Uecker was born on January 26, 1934 and was a high school baseball star. But he was never more than a backup catcher in the major leagues.
His major league career began in 1962 with the Milwaukee Braves and lasted just six seasons. He played in the World Series championship with St. Louis Cardinals as well as the Philadelphia Phillies before ending his career with the Braves after they moved to Atlanta.
He was a good defensive catcher, but his career batting average was an abysmal .200, with only 14 home runs and 74 strikeouts.
“Anyone with the ability can play in the big leagues,” Uecker wrote in his memoir, “Catcher in the Wry.” “To last as long as I did with the skills I had, with the numbers I produced, was a triumph of the human spirit.”
After the Braves moved to Atlanta, Milwaukee was without a major league team until the Seattle Pilots moved there and became the Brewers in 1970. Uecker joined the Milwaukee Brewers radio broadcast team in 1971 and took on side acting jobs.
His beer commercials in the 1970s brought him into American living rooms as a chatty but slightly dense version of himself, completely devoid of self-awareness.
‘FIRST ROWWWW’
In one ad, he brags about his fame, which has allowed him to get priority seating at games just before a stadium bouncer tells him he’s in the wrong place and has to move. He shouts that he will probably be escorted to the “front rowwww”, but in the next clip he is seen sitting alone in the upper part of the stadium and shouting at the referee.
In 1985, he was cast in the TV sitcom “Mr. Belvedere”, playing sports journalist/sports announcer George Owens, who has a troubled relationship with his butler.
Uecker had a key role in the “Major League” films, a comedy trilogy starting in 1989 about a team of misfit baseball players. Uecker played faithful broadcaster Harry Doyle, who tried to put the best face on the team’s awful performances, such as when he declared a pitcher’s wildly errant throw “yuuuust a little out there.”
Uecker, who was married twice, also worked six years on ABC’s Monday Night Baseball games, hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 1984 and starred in “Bob Uecker’s Wacky World of Sports,” a compilation of sports gaffes and sketches from in the 1980s.
“I loved doing all these other things, but baseball is No. 1,” Uecker told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2019. “Always has been and always will be.”
As a broadcaster, Uecker was so popular in Milwaukee that Brewers Stadium now has two statues of him – one standing outside and the other sitting in the upper part of the stadium as an homage to his “front rowwww” commercial. The second statue includes a free seat next to Uecker so fans can take a selfie sitting next to the statue.
Brewers players took the rare step of giving Uecker a $123,000 playing bonus when the team qualified for the playoffs in 2018. Uecker donated the money to charity. That same season, they honored him one day by dressing him in the plaid sport coats and loud shirts that Uecker was known for.
In recent years, Uecker has shortened his broadcast schedule and has done mostly home games. During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, he had to do his broadcasting job remotely because he and other non-players were denied access to the stadium under health protocols established by MLB.
After the 2020 season ended, Uecker signed his first contract with the Brewers, ending a half century of contracts with the team. The reason was health insurance. The Screen Actors Guild cut his benefits, so he signed with the Brewers to be included in the team’s insurance plan.
When the 2021 season began, Uecker, then 87, received a COVID vaccination and said he felt great to be back in the ballpark.
“It’s amazing how you take everything for granted,” he told MLB.com. “Being down in the field, shooting the bull. Then when you can’t do it, it’s bad. You really lose that.”
