A Tribute To Mr. Baseball, Bob Uecker

By Hal McCoy

Baseball lost the biggest slice of humor it ever had this week. Mr. Baseball passed away.

And every baseball fans knows who Mr. Baseball was. It’s Bob Uecker, baseball’s all-time best deadpan humorist, a guy whose humor was always self-deprecating. He was 90 years old, but 20 years old in his baseball-shaped heart.

And I was fortunate to be a friend and we always sat and chatted when he came to Cincinnati as the Milwaukee Brewers radio play-by-play guy. We did the same thing when I was in Milwaukee.

He was an intelligent guy and just as funny sitting in the media dining room as he was on TV or in the movies.

He once asked me my proudest moment as an amateur baseball player. I don’t remember what I told him, maybe the game-winning grand slam I hit for Akron American Legion Post 209. Then he said, “I’ll tell you mine.”

And with the straight face he always kept when telling stories about himself, he said, “The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parent threw things at our car and swore at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was so proud.”

That’s the first time I heard him tell that one, then about a month later he was on Johnny Carson and repeated it. Guess I was a good sounding board. But everything he said had me laughing so hard I had to squeeze my buttocks.

In 2003, Uecker and I were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame at the same time, he as a broadcaster and me as a writer.

The event was televised and the day before the ceremony ESPN held a meeting and said, “Bob, you’ll go first and Hal you’ll go second.”

I quickly raised my hand and said, “No, no, no. If I have to follow Uecker I’m just going to say, ‘I agree with everything he just said.’”

Fortunately, they let me precede Uecker. After my acceptance speech, Uecker got up and did a 30-minite stand-up comedy act, mostly making fun of himself.

He opened his speech by saying, “Unlike Hal McCoy, I was asked to leave many places.” He had the Hall of Famers seated on the stage behind him falling off their chairs with laughter, tears streaming down their cheeks.

Charlie Sheen was the star of the baseball movie ‘Major League,’ but Uecker, portraying broadcaster Harry Doyle, stole the show. And most of his lines were not in the script. The ever-clever Uecker ad-libbed most of them, including his famous line, “Juuuuuuust a bit outside.”

About batter Heywood, portrayed by former major league pitcher Pete Vukovich, “Heywood leads the league in most offensive categories, including nose hair. When this guy sneezes, he looks like a party favor.”

And, “Just a reminder to you fans. Comin’ up is our ‘Die-Hard Night’ here at the stadium. Free admission to anyone who was actually alive the last time the Indians won a pennant.”

He was a TV star, appearing often with Johnny Carson and he had his own show, ‘Mr. Belvedere.’

And who among us octogenarians can ever forget his hilarious Miller Lite commercials — “I must be in the front row.” Then it showed him sitting by himself in the top row of the upper deck saying, “Great seats. huh?”

Somebody remembered. Mere hours after he died, somebody placed a can of Miller Lite at the bottom of his statue in Milwaukee.

And so many of his self-deprecating one-liners about his baseball career have appeared in my blogs.

Some examples:

“The easiest way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and pick it up.”

“We had a big inning going and the bases loaded and my manager looked at me and said, ‘Grab a bat and stop this rally.’”

“I once came to bat in the ninth inning of a tie game with two outs and the bases loaded. I looked into the opposing dugout and they were all dressed in street clothes.”

“I once helped the St. Louis Cardinals win the pennant. I came down with hepatitis. Our team trainer injected me with it.”

Bob Uecker, an absolute treasure.