Did You Hear That? Part One
The voices of the game.
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We often have a complicated love-hate relationship with sports broadcasters. On the one hand, we essentially invite them into our homes and cars, and we share with them both the mundane and some of the most extraordinary moments of our lives. They provide the soundtrack to extreme highs and lows, their voices intertwined with ecstatic triumphs we’ll tell our grandkids about, or sometimes with gut punch defeats we’ll still be lamenting on our deathbeds.
And yet, we’re just as likely to nitpick and complain about their performances as we are to embrace them. The perfect example of this is Joe Buck, the announcer that America loves to hate. This, despite the fact that he’s obviously excelled at his job to the extent that he’s earned the top play-by-play position for two major networks and the obscenely large paychecks that accompany them.
His critics will argue that he got his spot because of his dad, which is nonsense. I have no doubt that his father’s influence opened doors for him in his career, but let’s be realistic here. Neither Fox or ESPN handed him the keys to their MLB and NFL coverage just because he’s Jack Buck’s son. Hell, ask an average sports fan under the age of thirty-five if they’ve even heard of Jack Buck. Chances are, unless they’re from St. Louis, they haven’t. I’m not saying Joe Buck is without flaws— he has plenty, and overall, I don’t think he’s as good as his dad. But he got one of the top jobs in all of sports because he’s still one of the best in the world behind the mic.
Being on the national stage has its pitfalls though, and they’re fairly obvious. As such, it’s not difficult to explain Buck’s lack of popularity. He’s called postseason baseball and football for over two decades. That’s the biggest games and in many cases, the most heartbreaking losses. And you know how sports fans are. If their team is losing when it counts the most and the announcer dares to compliment the other team, well then, that announcer must be biased! He’s against my team and is therefore a hack!
Case in point, the 2014 World Series. This was when Buck lost Kansas City forever. The San Francisco Giants beat the Royals in seven games. Kansas City put up a great fight, and the whole city and wider community came together in what really was a special moment in time after nearly three decades of futility, but it ultimately fell short due to Madison Bumgarner.
Madison Bumgarner. Just typing the name activates my PTSD. KC knows what I’m talking about. The fanbase was convinced that Buck had adopted Bumgarner as his new personal god. He had to have something against Kansas City. It was clear he was pulling for San Francisco, and for Bumgarner in particular, because he simply would not shut up with his constant praise for the San Francisco pitcher.
My response to that, even as a Royals fan, has always been, what the hell else do you want him to talk about? Bumgarner put together one of the greatest individual performances in World Series history and almost single-handedly lifted the Giants to the title. I would have loved for the Royals to step up and do something to slap the name out of Buck’s mouth (and they very nearly did), but the Giants pitcher kept coming through. Of course the broadcast crew was going to celebrate his performance.
The Royals fanbase at-large didn’t see it that way, and many of them have held a grudge against Buck ever since. Even the fact that he was on the mic for the Royals’ World Series victory the following season hasn't warmed their hearts. That's usually how it works. The sting of losing tends to last a lot longer than the euphoria of winning.
Considering he’s provided the call for over twenty Fall Classics and numerous Super Bowls, I would assume a similar situation has played out with nearly every losing fanbase across the country, which accounts for his polarizing reputation. Such are the perils of the national stage.
But a handful of announcers have managed to overcome those traps and achieve widespread love and acclaim. Admittedly, their numbers have shrunk significantly in recent years as baseball has become increasingly regional (often to its detriment), but when I was a kid there were numerous announcers with a national audience.
Sure, we tend to cherish our local announcers the most. They’re the voices we associate with our favorite team and we hear them way more often. And if you’re lucky, like I was as a Kansas City kid, you’ve been spoiled most of your life with a team of likeable and knowledgeable broadcasters. Being able to focus on one specific team year in and year out, and the ability to get close and learn the inner workings of an organization lends itself to quality coverage. But there is still something to be said for conveying the bigger picture.
With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to give you a write-up of my top five baseball announcers. Keep in mind, this is my personal top five and is in no way authoritative. Your top five may be completely different, and I’m not even trying to argue that mine is better. In fact, I’d love to hear yours. Please feel free to list them in the comments.
I had two criteria in making my selections. First, they had to have some form of national platform. This does not mean they couldn’t be a team-specific announcer (as you will see), but if they were only calling their team’s games for the local radio and/or TV stations, they were out of the running. This is why Denny Matthews, Fred White, and Paul Splittorff are not on the list, despite their personal importance to me. They might be Kansas City legends, but they’re not as well-known outside our footprint.
The second requirement was that they had to call games during the period covered by this newsletter, or what I’ve affectionately begun referring to as the PBN Era, 1985-94. Of course, their careers could go beyond those boundaries (and they do, in every case), but they had to be active during those specific years. And not just active— they had to reach a level of cultural significance during that time span. I believe all five did.
So, without further ado, here are my top five announcers.
5. Bob Uecker
Perhaps appropriately for the guy in the fifth-place spot, I had by far the least exposure to Uecker in the booth compared to any of the other candidates. Uecker did national work for ABC in the 70’s and 80’s, including spots on the criminally underappreciated and often forgotten Monday Night Baseball, and he sometimes popped up on NBC in the early 90’s, but he was never considered an anchor of either network’s coverage. More often than not, he was viewed as comic relief.
This shouldn’t lead you to underestimate Uecker’s baseball acumen, however. He was awarded the Ford C. Frick Award in 2003, which is given out by the Hall of Fame to broadcasters who make significant contributions to baseball. Pretty much all the names on this list have won it, and I offer it as proof that Uecker is absolutely deserving of their company. His day job is the Milwaukee Brewers’ play-by-play man, a position he has held since 1971, making him the second longest tenured announcer in baseball, behind only the previously mentioned Denny Matthews in Kansas City.
Bob Uecker has always been more than just a voice in the booth though. His beginnings were auspicious enough. A career .200 hitter and backup catcher with four teams in the 60’s, he was better known for being a cut-up in the clubhouse than producing on the diamond. Although he did hit one of his 14 career home runs off Sandy Koufax, and joked that he hoped they wouldn’t keep Koufax out of the HOF for it. But an even greater accomplishment might have been getting the notoriously gruff Bob Gibson to smile during a team photo when he surprised the hurler by holding his hand right before the flash. It was that sense of humor that would help him become a true crossover star.
A regular guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where he told self-deprecating stories about his lackluster career, he was soon appearing during just about every commercial break in the 80’s, selling Miller Lite as Mr. Baseball. Always the butt of the joke, Mr. Baseball was a hugely successful campaign, highlighted by the “I must be in the front row” spot, and doing its part to push the whole “tastes great, less filling” craze of the day. I remember my entire fifth grade PE class getting in trouble for shouting “tastes great” and “less filling” back and forth at each other one day. Yeah, probably not ideal that fifth graders are parroting beer commercials, but you can’t say they weren’t effective.
Uecker turned that success into a co-starring role on the sitcom, Mr. Belvedere, worked as a ring announcer at Wrestlemania III and IV, where he was famously choked out by Andre the Giant, and most notably, he played a looking-glass version of himself, Harry Doyle, the Cleveland Indians play-by-play man in the classic baseball movie, Major League.
Major League is his most iconic role, and even though he has a real-life catchphrase, like any good announcer should— “Get up! Get up! Get outta here! Gone!” whenever a Brewer hits a home run— his quotes from Major League are more memorable to me. There are a lot to choose from. Everybody knows “Juuuuust a bit outside,” and the “We only got one damn hit!” bit, but my personal favorite is “Dynamite drop-in, Monty,” which I like to break out whenever anyone adds a bit of unnecessary information. That one is technically from Major League II, a lesser sequel that is worth watching for that line alone.
But again, none of this should make you doubt Uecker’s commitment to the game. He’s a bit more serious in the booth than outside it, and he’s been on the call for some truly significant moments. He was there when his former teammate, Hank Aaron, hit his 755th and last home run, and he did the play-by-play for Robin Yount’s 3,000th hit. Uecker called the 1982 AL pennant run (the only one in Brewers’ history) and Paul Molitor’s 39 game hit streak in 1987. He’s brought the game to life through a million radios over the years, and even better than that, he’s done more than his fair share to make it fun.
4. Jon Miller
I’m going to try and be a bit brief (not my specialty) when it comes to Jon Miller, but this shouldn’t be taken as a slight. True, Miller doesn’t have the extracurriculars of Uecker (few do), but that shouldn’t reflect poorly toward his play-by-play skills. In fact, there are very few people I’d rather listen to calling a baseball game.
His voice reminds me of the smell of the Missouri River mixing with the scent of the foundry in Atchison, Kansas. If that sounds oddly specific, it’s because it is. Let me clarify a bit.
The town I grew up in hosts a grain distillery, and is not renowned for its enticing odors. I once had a professor at KU, unaware that he had a native in the classroom, compare the stench to beer puke pooled in the corner of a dank bar. He wasn’t inaccurate, but in the interest of fairness, the town doesn’t always smell like that. And even though the competing smell that the foundry puts out on the other side of the town isn’t what I would call conventionally fragrant, if you catch it at the right time, especially after it has rained or when it’s really hot out, it’s not altogether unpleasant.
For me, it’s nostalgic. Catching a whiff of that takes me back to playing baseball in my grandparents’ yard, spending the night at their house during the summer, drinking root beer floats after dinner, and watching Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN.
Miller was the voice of Sunday Night Baseball from 1990 to 2010, along with Joe Morgan. Morgan tended to be a polarizing figure, though I generally didn’t mind him, but Miller was the main draw. Few broadcasters are as engaging as the rotund bald man in glasses who welcomed viewers to the ballpark at the end of every weekend of my childhood.
His voice was smooth and often understated, as were his catchphrases— “That ball is fooouuul.” “Two” was his simple call for a double play. “Tell it goodbye” or “Big fly” for a dinger. He casually lulls you into a comfort zone, flawlessly integrating Spanish, Hawaiian, and Japanese for calls like “Adios pelota,” which he also frequently uses for home runs. Even when he makes a mistake, he covers it with ease and good-natured humor, like his now famous call of a Hunter Pence grand slam in 2016:
That’s a beautiful cover that makes me smile every time. Miller, who has called Giants games since 1997, did the same thing a week later, this time intentionally, to poke fun at himself.
Nor is he reluctant to poke fun at the absurdity of the game itself, when the situation calls for it. In 2003, he reacted with amused astonishment as he chronicled a play in real-time that featured two errors by Arizona on defense and three separate baserunning mistakes by San Francisco outfielder Ruben Rivera, who was eventually thrown out attempting to score the winning run. “That was the worst baserunning in the history of the game,” Miller remarked, and no one watching or listening disagreed.
If you’d like to hear him in peak form, without mistakes of any kind, humorous or not, check out his call of a 3 HR ninth inning comeback by San Francisco in 2022, punctuated by a Mike Yastrzemski walk-off. Or, if you’re more into historical moments, watch the clip of his call of Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 756th career home run. After listening to either, I think you’ll agree that even if Miller’s name isn’t as instantly recognizable as the rest of his peers on this list, he's still more than worthy of inclusion.
This post is running longer than I anticipated, so I think this is a good place to stop for the day. Look for Part Two— our first ever two-part article— in your mailbox next week. We’ll continue the countdown and reveal my top 3 announcers!
Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. Let me know your thoughts on Uecker and Miller in the comments below, and feel free to speculate on next week’s Top 3! And like I said at the top, if you’re enjoying PBN, please subscribe.