Bob Uecker, who turned what was, by his own admission, a mediocre baseball career into a 54-year broadcasting gig with the Milwaukee Brewers that earned him a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame and featured roles in commercials, a 1980s television series and in the popular “Major League” film trilogy, died Thursday. He was 90.
Uecker, a light-hitting catcher for three teams during a six-year major league playing career, including stints with his hometown Milwaukee Braves and the 1964 world-champion St. Louis Cardinals, was known more for spouting one-liners than hitting line drives. And usually those barbs were aimed at his own undistinguished playing career. He hit .200 in 297 major league games and once led the league in passed balls.
“And I didn’t even play in all the games,” he said proudly.
Uecker recalled signing with the Braves organization in 1956 for a $3,000 bonus.
“That bothered my dad at the time because he didn’t have that kind of dough,” Uecker said. “But he eventually scraped it up.”
Uecker rose to fame beyond baseball after his friend, trumpeter Al Hirt, recommended him to late-night television show host Johnny Carson as a possible guest. Soon Uecker was a frequent guest on Carson’s popular show and it was Carson who dubbed Uecker “Mr. Baseball.”
Uecker made more than 100 appearances on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” during the 1970s, 80s and 90s and it was those guest spots, in which Uecker’s deadpan, self-deprecating humor was on full display, that opened all kinds of doors.
“Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues,” he said. “But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.”
While probably best known now for his role as the somewhat inebriated play-by-play man Harry Doyle in the “Major League” films, Uecker rose to fame initially in TV commercials for Miller Lite primarily featuring a band of ex big-league athletes, the Miller Lite All-Stars, including John Madden, Tommy Heinsohn, Bubba Smith, and Billy Martin, among others.
In those ads, Uecker was portrayed as the odd man out, his career not quite good enough to allow entry into that exclusive group. In the most famous of his ads, however Uecker worked alone.
While extolling the virtues of being a celebrity and “the freebies” he got from the team while walking through the stands at a ballgame, Uecker makes his way to the box seats. But just as he sits down an usher tells him he’s in the wrong seat. A smiling Uecker gets up and says “I must be in the front r-o-o-o-w.” The commercial cuts to Uecker sitting in one of the last rows of the stadium’s otherwise nearly empty upper deck from where he yells “He missed the tag. He missed the tag.”
Robert George Uecker was born in Milwaukee, Wis. on Jan. 26, 1934 to August and Marie Uecker, the only son and eldest of three children. His father was a tool and die maker who had emigrated from Switzerland. Uecker starred in baseball and basketball at Milwaukee Technical High School and somewhere along the way made the transition from pitcher to catcher.
“My first game, my parents and everybody was there, my friends, and the manager came out to take me out of the game,” Uecker recalled. “I didn’t want to come out because I was embarrassed. I said, ‘Let me face this guy one more time, because I struck him out the first time I faced him.’ The manager said, ‘I know, but it’s the same inning. I’ve got to get you out of here.’ And that was my move to catching.”
Uecker never finished high school but, after enlisting in the army at the age of 20, that didn’t stop him from saying he pitched for Marquette University’s baseball team when he tried to land a spot playing for one of the military baseball teams. Those coveted assignments, which would keep him from being stationed overseas, were usually reserved for players who had played either in college or the minor leagues.
But no one bothered to check and find out that Marquette, located in Uecker’s hometown of Milwaukee, didn’t have a baseball team. Uecker stayed stateside and played baseball on bases in Virginia and Missouri.
After his discharge he signed with the Braves and bounced around the minors for six seasons before making the major league team out of spring training in 1961. But he was quickly sent back to the minors with Milwaukee manager Charlie Dressen telling Uecker: “There’s no room in baseball for clowns.”
The clown reached the majors to stay in 1962 and while it was a nondescript playing career, Uecker served a purpose by keeping his teammates loose. In 1964, with Uecker as the backup to Tim McCarver, his Cardinals won a tight National League pennant race by coming from 10 games back and then beat the Yankees in a seven-game World Series.
“If Bob Uecker had not been on the Cardinals, then it’s questionable whether we could have beaten the Yankees,” said McCarver who, like Uecker, later became a Hall of Fame broadcaster.
Despite leading the league in passed balls in 1967, Uecker was widely recognized as a fine defensive catcher and finished his career with a .981 fielding percentage despite having to catch knuckleballer Phil Niekro one season.
“There was a game … when Phil Niekro’s brother [Joe] and he were pitching against each other in Atlanta,” Uecker said. “Their parents were sitting right behind home plate. I saw their folks that day more than they did the whole weekend.”
Following his release from the team in 1968, Uecker became an ambassador for the Braves and also joined their television broadcasts. A few years later, Bud Selig, then the owner of the Brewers — the Braves had moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta after the 1965 season — hired Uecker as a scout and later moved him into his team’s radio booth. It did not come naturally.
“I had everything to learn and I spent 10 years learning it,” he told People magazine. “I didn’t try to wisecrack my way through it.”
A master storyteller, Uecker received the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003. He has been memorialized at the Brewers’ home ballpark with a pair of statues — one outside the stadium and one inside — in the last row of the upper deck in left field, a nod to that Miller Lite commercial.
“Ueck was the light of the Brewers, the soundtrack of our summers, the laughter in our hearts, and his passing is a profound loss,” the Brewers said in a statement. “He was the heart and soul of Wisconsin and a dear friend. Bob loved people; his presence warmed every room and he had a way of welcoming all of us into his world as if we were lifelong friends.
“Saying goodbye to Bob shakes us all. He was so much more than a Milwaukee Brewers icon. He was a national treasure. Bob entertained us with his words and storytelling, so it is no surprise that his passing now leaves us at a loss for our own words.”
From 1985-90, Uecker had a featured role in the TV sitcom “Mr. Belvedere,” in which he played sportswriter George Owens. He also had a recurring role in the “Major League” films as Cleveland play-by-play man Harry Doyle, known to take a sip or two while on the air and for the phrase “J-u-u-u-st a bit outside” to describe a pitch that was nowhere near home plate.
Uecker is survived by son Bob Jr. and daughter Sue Anne. He was predeceased by a son, Steve, and a daughter, Leann.
“It’s been great,” Uecker said during a 2005 ceremony at the Brewers ballpark marking his 50 years in baseball, “I’d like to do this again 50 years from now when I get to 100. Wherever I am, dig me up. Bring me back here. A couple times around the warning track and take me back to the hole where you picked me up.”