Rest in peace, Bob Uecker

News of the death of Bob Uecker hit me hard. Uecker, the Milwaukee kid who made it to the big leagues and made it even bigger as an entertaining ambassador for baseball, was one of the great characters of the game.

I first heard Ueck on WTMJ radio when I moved to Milwaukee for graduate school at Marquette University. Once the snow had (mostly) cleared out, his voice always seemed to be coming from the radio in the Chevys I drove during my Milwaukee years.

With a player’s inside knowledge and a fan’s love of the game, he delivered clear, engaging accounts of the action on the field. But what set him apart was his wit, often aimed at himself. His self-deprecating charm endeared him not only to fans of the teams he played for and to a half century of Milwaukee Brewers fans, but to anyone who encountered him on a television screen.

Even my wife, a vicarious baseball fan through her husband, was touched by Uecker’s death. We were newlyweds when we moved to Milwaukee in 1981, in time for the start of the baseball season. Our first Brewers game together was opening day that year, and in a sense our daughter came along, a few months before she was born.

The tributes and reminiscences on Ueck (and he was universally, lovingly called that) are pouring in, and I’ll add two of my favorite memories.

My wife and I had the game on the car radio while running a few errands one Milwaukee day, and between innings consecutive commercials aired for a home remodeling company and Stihl chainsaws. Back on the air, Ueck started riffing on the ads. It went something like this: Want to remodel your home? Get yourself a Stihl chainsaw. That baby will get the job done in a hurry.

A couple of summers ago, I was doing some yard work here in New Jersey and listening to a Brewers game through the MLB app on my iPhone. The score must have been lopsided, because Ueck started discussing team photos. He didn’t mention his Cardinals classic when he and Bob Gibson held hands. No, he was talking about the time in a group photo shoot he was asked to turn away from the camera. It was, he said with his usual aplomb, his high school class graduation photo.

I’ll miss hearing Bob Uecker on the radio. Fortunately there are plenty of recordings of him easily accessible via the internet.

In chatting about Uecker, my wife reminded me of the section of the bleachers in old Milwaukee County stadium that had a banner proclaiming “Uecker’s pukers.” That, I contend, was the ultimate fan tribute to Mr. Baseball.