He was an actor, announcer, author, talk show celebrity and philanthropist.
Amazing: A man who played only six seasons in the Big Leagues and had a .200 average would become one of the best-known Major League Baseball players. He is not known for his playing days or big plays but just for being himself and entertaining us for decades.
The late, great Robert George Uecker, born January 26, 1934, died on January 16, 2025. Uecker was in his prime in the 1980s and ’90s and hadn’t been in the limelight for some time, but he was still a huge part of baseball as an announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers.
Many fans of a certain age got to know Bob Uecker when he was at his best. Others may only know Uecker as Harry Doyle, the man who played the announcer for the (pre-Guardians) Cleveland Indians in the 1989 movie Major League. But few people know the full scope of Bob Uecker’s life and achievements:
- He’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame, having received the Ford C. Frick Award in 2003, given annually, for his contributions to the game.
- He’s also in the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame.
- He’s in the “Celebrity Wing” of the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) Hall of Fame.
- He has some of the most quoted lines in TV commercial advertising history.
- He was in a Hollywood sitcom for five years and hosted other sports shows.
- He’s the author of two books: Catcher in the Wry and Catch 222.
- He raised and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
- He was a World Series Champion with the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals.
- Three of his 14 career home runs were off Hall of Fame pitchers Sandy Koufax, Gaylord Perry and Ferguson Jenkins.
- At American Life Field, where the Milwaukee Brewers play (formerly Miller Park), there are two statues dedicated to him: the Bob Uecker Monument outside the stadium and the “Last Row” statue in the “Uecker Seats,” section 422 on the Terrace Level. His name is also on the Brewers Wall of Honor inside the stadium.
Uecker’s self-deprecating humor, upbeat personality and overall good-guy character helped fuel a fantastic career and life until he was 90.
“I was with the Braves twice. They didn’t believe how bad I was the first time.”
Mr. Talk Show Guest: A regular on the late-night circuit.
Decades before The Tonight Show belonged to Jimmy Kimmel, and Jay Leno before him, it was in the hands of Johnny Carson, the talk show king. Carson supposedly bestowed the label “Mr. Baseball” on Bob Uecker, which then became his moniker.
Although exact numbers are hard to find, different online sources report that Uecker was a guest on The Tonight Show perhaps 100 times, putting him at the top of the most-frequent-guests list. He was also a guest on David Letterman’s The Late Show and other non-sports talk shows.
And who knew! Uecker even hosted Saturday Night Live on October 13, 1984, and did skits with the SNL stars, including Billy Crystal.
Mr. Announcer: Longtime broadcasting legend.
He was the voice of the Milwaukee Brewers from 1971 through 2024, a total of 54 years. Until he passed away, he had one of the longest active single-team tenures of any MLB announcers, behind only Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrin. He’s known for his trademark call for a Brewers’ home run: “Get up! Get outta here!”
In 1982, Uecker called the World Series between the Brewers (then in the American League) and the St. Louis Cardinals for a local radio station in Milwaukee. The Cardinals took the Series in seven games.
Uecker, however, was often seen on national TV broadcasts with the major networks in his career, mainly in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. He was a color analyst for ABC (’70s and ’80s). Under a contract with NBC, Uecker was a color commentator/analyst for two All-Star Games, two League Championship Series, and the ’95 and ’96 World Series, teaming with Bob Costas and Joe Morgan. He told Costas during one telecast about his World Series experience as a player with the St. Louis Cardinals:
“I missed the 1964 World Series against the Yankees. I was on the disabled list. I had hepatitis. Our trainer injected me, and that’s why the Cardinals won the Series.“
Starting in 2014, at age 80, he’d been calling fewer games due to health issues. Uecker, who was battling small-cell lung cancer in his final years, called his last game on October 3, 2024, in the NL Wild Card Series between the Milwaukee Brewers and the New York Mets, which the Mets won.
In 1987, Uecker was the ring announcer for the massive pay-per-view WrestleMania III event in Michigan that featured Hulk Hogan and André the Giant. The following year, he appeared as a ringside announcer for WrestleMania IV.
Mr. Advertising. Miller Lite TV commercial star
“I signed a contract with a sporting goods company. They paid me a tremendous amount of money never to be seen using their equipment.”
In the 1980s, Uecker made it big-time when he appeared in a series of TV commercials for Miller Lite beers. Light-beer companies were looking to generate sales, and Miller was battling with competitors for market share.
Enter Uecker. He appeared in about a half-dozen commercials and helped boost brand awareness. His most famous Miller Lite commercial, shot in 1984, which most every Uecker fan knows, is where he has called to get a free ticket to a baseball game and settles into the wrong seat. He has three memorable lines in just that one commercial:
- “Called the front office…BINGOOO.”
- “Oh, I must be in the front rowwww!”
- “Good seats, hey buddy!? He missed the tag! He missed the tag!”
In an interview in 2020, Uecker revealed how and why the commercials came about. “I wanted to do those Miller spots because they were such fun, and there were so many great guys doing them,” he explained. “They were the best commercials on television back then. I didn’t want to say no anymore because I figured they’d stop asking.” He’d been saying no to Miller’s courting him because another beer company was a Brewers’ sponsor at the time. But a time came when he couldn’t resist the opportunity.
The commercials led to a TV role in 1985 on a new sitcom called Mr. Belvedere. In the show, Uecker played George Stone, a sportswriter-sportscaster and the father of a family in Pittsburgh’s suburbs.
Not only did fans love the commercials, but so did a guy named David S. Ward, who was about to direct a movie he had written. Uecker’s acting career was about to reach the big leagues.
Mr. Hollywood: Uecker steals the show in Major League.
The story goes that David S. Ward, a screenwriter, thought Uecker would be the perfect announcer in a movie that Ward was set to direct. They needed someone for the role of Harry Doyle in the film Major League.
Uecker would be playing the announcer for the Cleveland Indians, a poor-playing team with a roster of misfits, including the young pitcher Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn, played by Charlie Sheen.
- “Vaughn, a juvenile delinquent in the offseason, in his Major League debut.”
- “Ball four. Ball eight. Boy, how can these guys lay off pitches that close?”
- On Ricky Vaughn’s first pitch, a fastball and wild pitch way off the plate, “JUUUUST a bit outside.”
Major League has a great cast, but Uecker as Harry Doyle practically steals the show, better that Willie Mays Hayes (a then-unknown Wesley Snipes) steals bases for the Indians.
Five years later, a sequel was made, Major League 2, but after a good opening, it wasn’t anywhere near as popular as the original.
Mr. Baseball: A most deserving title.
Baseball, more than any major sport, is about great nicknames:
- Babe Ruth was the “Great Bambino” and the “Sultan of Swat.”
- Lou Gehrig was “The Iron Horse.”
- Willie Mays was “The ‘Say Hey’ Kid.”
- David Ortiz is “Big Papi.”
- Joe DiMaggio was “Joltin’ Joe,” “The Yankee Clipper” and even “Mr. Coffee.”
But there was just one “Mr. Baseball.”
“I can remember in 1964, getting a bases-loaded walk and forcing in the winning run. It won us our first intrasquad game of the spring.”
Maybe he’s finally sitting in the front row with all the other MLB legends.
Resources: jsonline.com/story/sports/uecker-miller-lite-ads-almost-didnt-happen; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Uecker; onmilwaukee.com/articles/bob-uecker-facts; mlb.com/news/bob-uecker-statue-in-last-row; youtube.com/bob-costas-remember-bob-uecker; tmj4.com/sports/baseball/milwaukee-brewers/bob-impact-on-make-a-wish-wisconsin-kids’ usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2025/01/16/best-bob-uecker-quotes; fox6now.com/news/bob-uecker-statue-miller-lite-memorial
