In Memoriam
Truly the greatest color man in the business.
You wouldn’t think he would have been on the schedule if you know how I feel about sports. Inasmuch as I am not, generally speaking, a fan. Oh, he seemed nice enough, but “nice” is not actually a criterion for being on the schedule. There are a lot of people in my day-to-day life who are nice. But they’re not, generally speaking, going to appear in Celebrating the Living because few of my friends have done anything worth discussing on a pop culture-centered site. Those that do, I’ll just pester for an interview. And it is true that Bob Uecker was first and foremost known for sports. But I watch a movie he’s in every year, and I watched a sitcom he was on now and again as a kid.
Uecker was an actual baseball player. He played in the Army. Then, when he got out, he signed with the then-Milwaukee Braves. He played for teams in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Boise, Idaho, I guess Minor League teams associated with the Braves. He then played for the Braves, then was traded to St. Louis. He was on their World Series-winning team in 1964. Then they traded him to the Phillies. The Phillies traded him back to the Braves, which were in Atlanta by then. By all accounts he was a decent catcher and a kind of lousy batter, but you couldn’t prove it by me.
After his baseball career ended, he started working as an announcer. He worked in Atlanta, then returned home to Milwaukee. He spent 54 years as announcer to the Milwaukee Brewers, most of them without a real contract. (He only got one quite recently, when SAG-AFTRA wasn’t covering his health insurance, which is a depressing Only In America story.) He mentored a bunch of guys I’m assuming you’d know if you knew more about baseball than I do. He also did some announcing for hockey and professional wrestling and generic sports shows, and he did beer commercials as well, playing on his announcing persona.
Which is what got him cast as Harry Doyle in Major League. Wherein he steals every single scene he’s in. He starts the movie knowing exactly what kind of team he’s announcing for and absolutely certain that no one’s listening to a word he says, even the guy next to him in the booth. It’s not even certain how much he cares. He’s getting paid, and that’s the important bit. And then as the team gets better, he starts caring more. And then there’s that killer punchline of “the greatest color man in the business” that even I get. It’s fantastic.
Why is he the dad in Mr. Belvedere? No idea. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe someone was a Brewers fan. Maybe his reputation for being a funny guy was what it took. His autobiography was called Catcher in the Wry, which proves that he’s someone who definitely understood the assignment when it comes to naming a celebrity autobiography. Even for such a relatively minor celebrity as Bob Uecker.
About the writer
Gillian Nelson
Gillian Nelson is a forty-something bipolar woman living in the Pacific Northwest after growing up in Los Angeles County. She and her boyfriend have one son and one daughter, and she gave a child up for adoption. She fills her days by chasing around her kids, watching a lot of movies, and reading. She particularly enjoys pre-Code films, blaxploitation, and live-action Disney movies of the '60s and '70s. She has a Patreon account.
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I have been to many baseball games in the last 35 years and seen even more on TV, and there is an opportunity to break out “juuuust a bit outside” in almost all of them.
The deadpan delivery he uses in Major League is perfect, and I’m aware he used it a lot for real baseball games, too. Also, yes, I did count how many U’s I used so it was the same for Patreon and here!
My guess is he got a sitcom because Webster was a hit, but I don’t know how Alex Karras got a sitcom.
I’m tempted to go with my old stand-by, “Cocaine is a hell of a drug.” Not that I’m saying Bob Uecker or Alex Karras were on cocaine, but certainly the executives all were!
Karras not know either. Karras only pawn in game of life.
I never watched Belvedere with any regularity, but I do remember one very funny joke. The teenage son is in a band called the Young Savages, and someone (I think it was Uecker) is worried because they’re going to play a concert at the house. Eventually we get to the concert, and the band is a bunch of the absolute most gormless white-bread geeks you’ve ever seen. Uecker says “these are the Young Savages?” And the mom says, “Sure, there’s Kevin, David, and Bobby Savage. And the drummer is Michael Young!”
That’s fantastic. I laughed out loud. At a Mr. Belvedere joke.
I found a script for Major League online and the “best color man in the league” line wasn’t in it. I wonder if Uecker came up with the idea for that exchange, or how much he improvised. What a funny dude.
Naturally, he plays the announcer in Futurama‘s “A Leela of Their Own” as well. (As himself, as a head in a jar, of course.) “Man, I haven’t seen play this bad since the days of Bob Uecker!”