For Brewers Fans, Bob Uecker Was One Of Us

By TODD GOLDEN

''Special to Fastball on SI''

Back in October, I was driving back to my Bloomington, Ind., home from Big Ten Basketball Media Days in Chicago. As it often does, traffic on I-65 ground to a halt in northwest Indiana.

This would normally have been an annoyance, but no traffic jam wasn’t going to get me down. After all, I had Bob Uecker on my radio and this proud son of Milwaukee was on cloud nine.

The Milwaukee Brewers led the New York Mets 2-0 late in the decisive Game 3 of their National League Wild Card series. Jake Bauers and Sal Frelick had hit back-to-back home runs in the bottom of the seventh inning.

What could go wrong? The Brewers had all-world closer Devin Williams to come on in the ninth to secure a series victory in front of the jubilant home folks at American Family Field.

My people. Uke’s people. Milwaukee, the smallest market in Major League Baseball, was going to beat the odds and move on in the playoffs. And Uecker was on the call. He had missed more games than usual during the 2024 regular season. He was 90 and everyone knew he was easing his workload, but when he missed the first two games of the Mets series at home, it was a concerning shock to the system for Brewers fans as he didn’t miss those kinds of moments. Was Uke OK?

All of that was on the back burner as he was back on the mic for Game 3, and Brewers fans were about to be treated to another Uke series-clinching call.

Until it all went horribly wrong for the Brew Crew.

In the ninth, Francisco Lindor walked, Brandon Nimmo singled and Pete Alonso hit a three-run home run off the usually bulletproof Williams. The Mets added another run later in the ninth inning to make it 4-2, and the Brewers had no response in the bottom of the ninth.

I sat there in my car … gutted. Uecker, a professional to the end, had a steady hand on the tiller. A father figure on the mic for sad Brewers fans like me, who needed a calming voice.

But even he couldn’t hide his own heartache in the postgame show.

“The Crew will have it end here tonight,” Uecker said with a halting voice Brewers fans weren’t used to hearing from him. “I’m telling you. That one had some sting on it.”

Still stuck in traffic, I listened to these words, which turned out to be among the last ones he said in a broadcast, and had real fear that it was the last time I would hear Uecker – the voice I had known since my love affair with the Brewers began in 1978 when I was in first grade.

I hoped I was wrong. Brewers fans want to win because we love our team, our city and our state, but Uecker was so much a part of the culture of being a Brewers fan that most wanted a long postseason run for him. Life is unfair, but can it be so unfair that Uecker never gets to call a World Series clincher?

On Thursday, that worst fear for Brewers fans was realized. The club and Uecker’s family announced his death.

As it turned out, that final call had a lot more poignance than I, or most anyone else, realized. As was reported after his death, Uecker had suffered from small-cell lung cancer since 2023 and was suffering through pain during many of his 2024 broadcasts. It’s probably just as well that I didn’t know. I would have been inconsolable. It was soul-crushing enough to learn the news of his death on Thursday.

That personal connection is why I’m here. My day job is covering Indiana University athletics for Indiana Hoosiers On SI. However, baseball is the well-spring for my interest in sports, the genesis of my desire to be a sportswriter, and a sport I still love as a fan much as I did when I was a kid.

I am also a Milwaukee native, born hard on the shores of Lake Michigan, and I am a diehard Brewers fan. Milwaukee is my city, my hometown, it’s an inseparable part of my soul.

My middle name is Aaron, named for Hank Aaron (before he broke the home run record, I’m proud to say) – I was born to have Milwaukee baseball in my heart. Like me, Uecker was born and raised in Milwaukee. He was one of us. Uecker moved with ease in the Milwaukee world of Friday fish frys, custard stands, bubblers and stop-and-go lights. One of his most famous in-game ad spots was for Usinger’s Sausage – it doesn’t get more Milwaukee than that.

Uecker was also comfortable hanging among famous folks, doing stand-up comedy on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, co-starring in “Mr. Belvedere,” and stealing the show in Miller Lite commercials as well as “Major League.”

He had numerous chances to leave Milwaukee, either to broadcast baseball elsewhere or for his comedy or acting pursuits. But he always came home, and he always made it clear that he wasn’t camping out when he did.

Uecker was proud to be from Milwaukee, a city that doesn’t always feel appreciated by the outside world for its charms as much as it thinks it should be.

Not Uke. He wore his Milwaukee and Wisconsin pride on his sleeve. And, oh boy, did those of us from Wisconsin love him back for it.

An underrated aspect of Uecker’s initial appeal as a broadcaster is he was one of the few Milwaukee Braves to create a connection to the Milwaukee Brewers. Being a Milwaukee native in addition also helped.

When the Braves left Milwaukee after a very contentious exit that heated up in 1964 and lasted through a lame-duck 1965 season before the team finally moved to Atlanta before the 1966 season, it alienated Wisconsin fans who were Baby Boomer-aged or older. Baseball had been cruel to Milwaukee, and not everyone was ready to welcome it back.

Uecker was a conduit by which the healing process was eventually accomplished. He began broadcasting in 1971, four years before Aaron returned to Milwaukee to finish his career.

A bond was forged in the way Uecker honed his craft. The Uecker Brewers fans heard wasn’t the cynical Harry Doyle from “Major League” or the clueless loser he portrayed in his Miller Lite commercials.

Uecker was a very good play-by-play man. The jokes and stories came second. The game came first. Uecker wasn’t going to yuk it up in the bottom of the ninth of a tight game. He knew when to call it straight. He successfully walked a very fine line between enthusiasm for the home team and not necessarily being a homer. He respected the game, and because of that, he respected the opposition as much as the Brewers.

When Uecker did go into story mode, it was a treasure. The baseball stories he told of his playing days and legends he crossed paths with were priceless. So were stories about fishing out on the lake or being out in the woods. Like I said, he got us.

The best stories were non-sequitur conversations that sprung from the ether of his fertile mind. Once in a while, they’d border on suggestive without ever crossing the line. Most of them were just goofy, as if you were listening to Uke tell tall tales at one of Milwaukee’s hundreds of watering holes.

Once the Brewers began winning big in the late 1970s, Uecker became an institution as he had a team worthy of his calls. When the Brewers fell off, first in the mid-1980s, and then again for a far more prolonged period starting in 1993, fans knew they at least had Uke to soothe the losing. It’s not complete hyperbole to suggest he kept the flame alive for the Brewers in the doldrums of the 1990s and first half of the 2000s.

That’s what Uke was really about for folks from Wisconsin. He was the background noise at our family picnics, our cookouts, our drive to the lake or just to go to the store. He was always there. He became family.

I reflect with fondness all of the people I listed to Uecker with in my own life. Both sets of grandparents, my Dad, my late Mom, who died when I was 12, my sister and brother, nearly all of my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my Milwaukee school friends, co-workers when I briefly returned to Wisconsin in the early 2000s, my wife and my kids.

He was the soundtrack of four generations of people in my life, and so many in Wisconsin can relate in the same way.

Uecker got me in trouble once. During the 1982 pennant race, when the Brewers and Baltimore Orioles were fighting to the bitter end for the AL East crown, my Dad ran an errand and had 11-year-old me in tow. I made up some excuse that I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go back to the car. He gave me the car keys, but what I really wanted to do was listen to the game. I did … and nearly drained our car battery in the bargain.

Dad wasn’t pleased, but I’m sure, deep down, he understood.

When our family moved to Indiana in the late 1980s, I listened to Uecker via a transistor radio. Paul Molitor’s 39-game hit streak in 1987 was experienced for me through that wave of static.

My favorite Uecker call was when I was driving to Iowa on a work trip in 2011. I listened to the walk-off NLDS clincher over the Arizona Diamondbacks. I hung on every Uecker word before I pulled over on the interstate in the Quad Cities and ran around my car like an idiot. When I got back in the car, he was as jubilant as I was.

I cherish those memories, so it’s hard to fathom that there won’t be any more of them. But why reflect on that? Brewers fans got over 50 years of Uecker being the soundtrack of our summers. World Series championship or not, we were the lucky ones.

“A swing and a drive!” was the way he started his home run calls. You knew something great was going to happen when he said that.

That moment of pure joy, enjoyed for an entire lifetime of games, is the perfect way to remember him. He’ll be missed, but the happiness he gave all of us will never be forgotten.

Todd Golden is a Wisconsin native who covers Indiana football and basketball for our sister site, "Indiana Hoosiers on SI''

For Brewers Fans, Bob Uecker Was One Of Us — And We Loved Him For It

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