By Bill Trott
(Reuters) – Bob Uecker, whose self-deprecating wit helped him parlay a mediocre baseball career into stardom as a broadcaster, actor and pitchman for beer from his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, died on Thursday at age 90, the Milwaukee Brewers said.
Uecker, who observed his 50th anniversary in 2021 of calling Brewers games in his hometown, became a beloved figure in the city with two statues of him at the stadium. His family said he had been battling lung cancer.
Uecker used to frequently joke about his own six years as a journeyman major league player. His wit made a much greater impact than his bat and catcher’s mitt, and he led the league in laughs. “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson nicknamed him “Mr. Baseball” and had him on NBC TV’s nationwide late-night show some 100 times after he retired as a player.
The ads that Uecker filmed for Miller Lite beer in the 1970s and ’80s became fixtures during breaks in televised sports events. The ads made him a nationwide celebrity, fame he parlayed into other acting jobs including a role on the TV sitcom “Mr. Belvedere” and the three Hollywood “Major League” movies.
Commissioner of Major League Baseball Rob Manfred called Uecker “one of the game’s most beloved figures throughout his 70-year career in baseball.” He noted that during 54 years of broadcasting games, “Bob’s trademark wit became a staple of television and movies. Even with his considerable success in Hollywood, Bob remained fiercely loyal to baseball and to Milwaukee.”
Manfred said Uecker was “the genuine item: always the funniest person in any room he was in, and always an outstanding ambassador for our National Pastime.”
Uecker, or “Uke” as he was known, joked that his hitting slumps lasted into the winter and sports equipment companies paid him not to endorse their products. The only way he could catch a pitcher’s elusive knuckleball, he said, was to wait for it to stop rolling.
Sports Illustrated once called him “baseball’s loveable schnook.” Still, even as his fame grew as an entertainer, he remained devoted to baseball.
“Bob became incredibly popular, incredibly recognizable, but his favorite environment was always the clubhouse,” said Brewers Hall of Famer Paul Molitor. “He never changed. With everything that came his way, he never forgot his roots.”
Uecker was born Jan. 26, 1934, and was a high school baseball star. But in the major leagues, he was never more than a backup catcher.
His big-league career started in 1962 with the Milwaukee Braves and lasted only six seasons. He played on a World Series champion with the St. Louis Cardinals, as well as with the Philadelphia Phillies before ending his career with the Braves after they had moved to Atlanta.
He was a good defensive catcher but his career batting average was a dreadful .200, with only 14 home runs and 74 runs batted in.
“Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues,” Uecker wrote in his memoir, “Catcher in the Wry.” “To last as long as I did with the skills I had, with the numbers I produced, was a triumph of the human spirit.”
After the Braves moved to Atlanta, Milwaukee was without a major league team until the Seattle Pilots moved there and became the Brewers in 1970. Uecker joined the Milwaukee Brewers radio broadcast team in 1971 and took acting jobs on the side.
His beer commercials in the 1970s brought him into America’s living rooms as a garrulous but somewhat dense version of himself, completely lacking self-awareness.
‘THE FRONT ROWWWW’
In one commercial he boasts about his fame allowing him to get priority seating at games just before a stadium usher tells him he’s in the wrong place and has to move. He crows that he will probably be escorted to “the front rowwww” but in the next shot is seen sitting alone in the upper reaches of the stadium, yelling at an umpire.
In 1985 he was cast in the TV sitcom “Mr. Belvedere,” playing sportswriter/sportscaster George Owens, who has a testy relationship with his butler.
Uecker had a key role in the “Major League” movies – a comic trilogy starting in 1989 about a team of baseball misfits. Uecker played faithful broadcaster Harry Doyle, who tried to put the best face on the team’s atrocious performances, such as the time he proclaimed a pitcher’s wildly errant throw as “juuuust a bit outside.”
Uecker, who was married twice, also worked six years on ABC’s Monday night baseball games, hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 1984 and starred on “Bob Uecker’s Wacky World of Sports,” a compilation of sports bloopers and skits in the 1980s.
“I loved doing all that other stuff but baseball is No. 1,” Uecker told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2019. “Always has been and always will be.”
As a broadcaster, Uecker was so popular in Milwaukee that the Brewers’ stadium now has two statues of him – one standing outside and another seated in the upper reaches of the stadium as an homage to his “front rowwww” commercial. The second statue includes an unoccupied seat next to Uecker so fans can get a selfie sitting next to the statue.
Brewers players took the rare step of giving Uecker a player’s bonus of $123,000 when the team qualified for the playoffs in 2018. Uecker donated the money to charities. That same season they paid tribute to him one day by dressing in the plaid sports coats and loud shirts that Uecker was known for wearing.
In recent years Uecker had cut back on his broadcast schedule and worked mostly home games. During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, he had to do his broadcast work remotely as he and other nonplayers were denied access to the ballpark under the health protocols MLB put in place.
After the 2020 season ended, Uecker signed his first-ever contract with the Brewers, ending a half century of handshake deals with the team. The reason was health insurance. The Screen Actors Guild had discontinued his benefits so he signed a contract with the Brewers to get on the team’s insurance plan.
As the 2021 season began, Uecker, then 87 years old, had received a COVID vaccination, and said it felt great to be back at the ballpark.
“It’s amazing how you take everything for granted,” he told the MLB.com website. “Being down there on the field, shooting the bull. Then when you can’t do it, it’s bad. You really lose that.”
(Writing by Bill Trott; Additional reporting and editing by David Gregorio)
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