Perhaps more than any other sport, the game of baseball is experienced through the airwaves. Entire generations of Americans have prominent childhood memories that feature being huddled around the radio, hung on every last word crackling through to their eyes. No one man embodied this quote like Bob Uecker. For fifty four years, Uecker was the friend you never knew you had on summer nights. With his easygoing style, clear diction, and sharp, self-deprecating sense of humor, listening to a game was an experience in and of itself, even as the age of television became the age of podcasts, HD TV, and internet streaming.
Bob Uecker was a baseball lifer's baseball lifer, a man whose entire life story was gripped by a baseball and not the other way around. And yet, he was so much more than just another baseball broadcaster, or ex-player turned analyst. He was the unofficial ambassador of the game, the sitcom star, the preferred guest of the great Johnny Carson. If there was anyone who elevated baseball as a cultural institution in America during the second half of the 20th century into the 21st, it was Uecker.
Ultimately, the magic of Bob Uecker rested on two things. One, he was not someone who ever saw himself as a virtuoso, either as a player or as a broadcaster. He was no doubt, very good at the former, playing twelve pro seasons, and a natural at the latter. Yet, he had an accessible vibe to him, a relatability that highly successful people often lack. Two, and most importantly, he was a reminder that you can keep the child within alive, even as you grow older. He never took himself too seriously, or anything else for that matter. From being an iconic character in Major League, to a sitcom, to the regular gags on the Johnny Carson Show, there were plenty of laughs to be had in the life of Bob Uecker. Laughter is life, and Uecker understood this.
The loss of Bob Uecker will be painful, especially to the city of Milwaukee, but it was an impressive life and career. He leaves the game behind better than he found it. His long and successful life in the game meant the continued reassertion of the game as a critical cultural institution of the United States, and elsewhere in the world. And for that, baseball fans around the world remain in his debt. Rest in peace, Bob Uecker.
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