Bushville Loses Its Voice
Bob Uecker was a celebration of Milwaukee and Middle America, and of the possibilities America rarely affords her residents anymore.
When the New York Mets knocked the Milwaukee Brewers out from postseason play last October, it was a gut punch for Brewers fans. But what was odd wasn’t that the Brewers got eliminated in heartbreaking fashion; we’re used to and love to hate expecting that at this point.
Yes, it was a particularly shocking implosion in its own un-shocking way. An excerpt from the BtB group chat from October 4, 2024:
Me at 8:33 PM: Airbender.
Me at 8:37 PM: Delivery not nearly as crisp as last night.
*snip*
8:43 PM: [A flurry of messages from the guys that cannot be posted on a family website]
JP at 8:46 PM: Classic
JP at 8:46 PM: Classic brewers
That was par for the course. No, what was distinctly odd was how somber everyone looked and sounded afterward. A particularly muted locker room, punctuated by a distraught Christian Yelich, who had been crying prior to talking with reporters.
It was a different look for a guy whose passion can often be obscured by his California cool.
Prior to that were Bob Uecker’s final on-air comments for the season:
At the time, I noted to friends and family how this was such a departure for someone like Uecker — the timbre, the difficulty getting the words out. This season ended not like a season finale, but a series finale. These are words that carried conclusion with them.
I thought Uecker was going to retire, a seemingly absurd thought about a guy who carried on for years about how they’d have to wheel him out from the broadcast booth.
But everything about Uecker’s final broadcast and his passing Thursday at the age of 90 is straight from the theater of the absurd: Ueck didn’t get to end with “…that one had some sting on it,” about as devastating a mic drop moment as there could be from a broadcaster. No, he closed things out on October 4 by rattling off the familiar list of sponsors for the Brewers Radio Network. Miller Lite! YOU-zingers Famous Sausage! Cedar Crest Ice Cream. Speedy Metals. West Bend, The Silver Lining…
And now, he is ushered from his seat one more time: January 16, 2025 will be more widely remembered as the day filmmaker David Lynch died. One of these two American icons got a breaking news alert from The New York Times. It wasn’t Mr. Baseball.
Uecker sounded better in these last few seasons than he had for a while. I recall listening to 2007 Brewers broadcasts on XM Radio from Tallahassee, Florida, thinking his voice sounded frail and wondering how much longer he could realistically keep doing this. There were times in more recent years when he didn’t seem that crisp, senior moments increasing as he stopped calling road games and started limiting his home broadcasting schedule.
In these last two or three years, though, that voice of 54 seasons calling Brewers baseball was back, part-time, but clear as ever. Calls as sharp as they were with Pat Hughes and Jim Powell, give or take a few Miller Lites in his prime.
We were lulled into a sense that he could do this forever — after all, he had done this forever already.
Jane Leavy, long-time sportswriter and author of The Big Fella (Babe Ruth), The Last Boy (Mickey Mantle), Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, amongst numerous other works, told SABR’s Ken Keltner Chapter in a 2020 Zoom Q&A what we flyover folks don’t care to admit: the coasts just don’t care about Midwestern stories. They won’t sell, she said, a digital bucket of cold water on a group of Wisconsinite homers, an off key struck in what was otherwise a fascinating time spent with an accomplished, cordial writer.
He played in the major leagues. Worked as a scout. Landed in the broadcast booth, first in Milwaukee, then adding national broadcasts. Johnny Carson. Miller Lite ads. The Olympics. WrestleMania. Mr. Belvedere. Major League, which Alex Rodriguez apparently thinks was a documentary.
Bob Uecker was unapologetically and quintessentially Milwaukee, especially mid-century Milwaukee. Peak Milwaukee, one might say.
People from the Upper Midwest and Wisconsin find fame, notoriety or success, but they leave here in order to do so. Harry Houdini. Orson Welles. Spencer Tracy. Gene Wilder. Liberace. Allen Ludden. Chris Farley. Willem Dafoe. Tony Shalhoub. Mark Ruffalo. The price of fame is to scrub your origins, remaking yourself anew amongst the glut of marine life in the bigger fishbowls in New York or Los Angeles. Bushville lives on in spirit, if not in name.
On the other hand, Uecker managed to be from here, of here and stayed here and never pretended he wasn’t. Even as his national star rose through the 1970s and 80s, he kept his hometown and his adopted Brewers at the center of his universe, defying conventions, just as he had playing the tuba in the outfield, or holding hands with Bob Gibson in a St. Louis Cardinals team photo.
The acting and comedy and hob-nobbing with A-listers and his celebrity was all secondary, especially as the national appearances started to wane and, perhaps more to the point, as the quality of Milwaukee baseball improved in the Mark Attanasio era.
After all, Carson was gone. Uecker’s myriad appearances on The Tonight Show gave way Norm Macdonald and Artie Lange’s less-flattering on-air anecdotes, along with a handful of others that have circled around Wisconsin and online over the years. Jim Powell has hinted at more colorful stories, but chooses discretion as the better part of valor.
It’s one thing to be self-deprecating; nobody deprecates — or, at least, that’s not the word we use for it.
Uecker also represented opportunity for those willing to put in the work. There aren’t many former pro players with the ability or desire to move to play-by-play, they typically transition into color commentary, where there is more latitude and margin for error (and opportunities to talk about how you caught Juan Nieves’ no-hitter). Frank Gifford and Pat Summerall come to mind, but the list doesn’t extend much farther down than those three.
The Hollywood gigs — in many ways, Uecker wasn’t acting: like many pro wrestling characters, he took one aspect of himself and simply amplified it.
More to the point, have you tried changing careers anytime in the last 20 years? Do you think Bob Uecker’s resume from 1970 would get him past an digital HR platform for a broadcasting gig, or to write for a sitcom?
Part of the marvel isn’t just that Uecker did all these things, it’s that few, if any of us have Craig Counsell’s chance in the Don Money lot of being able to move so adeptly from career to career, especially in the humdrum of midwestern normality.
The radio booth will be in more-than-capable hands next season, with the hope that Jeff Levering takes up the mantle. No doubt those who grew on the Uecker broadcast tree will return to broadcasts and pay their respects: Pat Hughes, Len Kasper, Powell, Cory Provus, Joe Block. It will be appointment radio, and Ueck would probably hate all this attention being on him rather than on the game.
Because the game gave him this extraordinary life and, at the end of it all, Bob Uecker just wanted to be a part of it.
Brent Sirvio is a co-founder of Bronx to Bushville. He writes semi-regularly at brentsirvio.substack.com.