Bob Uecker’s Voice Lives On

I called Jonathan Lucroy in the early afternoon of July 29, 2023. I was on deadline for a story I was writing for The New York Times, about why catchers are rarely traded during the season, and I had a few follow-up questions for him.

When we had spoken three days earlier, Lucroy described himself as a “redneck psychiatrist” for his pitchers, someone who knew exactly what to say to earn their trust and coax them through the toughest big league lineups. This was one of the reasons why, during the second half of his 12-year big league career, contending clubs in need of a catcher would target him ahead of the trade deadline. It’s also what allowed him to keep getting jobs as he pushed into his mid-30s. At that point, he was a veteran whose intangible value exceeded his production.

This all crossed my mind while the phone rang. And rang. And rang. Finally, after about 45 seconds, a familiar voice came on the other line, except it wasn’t the one I’d expected. Instead of Lucroy’s Southern drawl, I heard the comforting cadence of a Bob Uecker broadcast.

“Lucroy swings and sends a pop fly foul behind home plate. This one’s going to get in the lower box seats. And wow, look at that. That foul ball hit his wife, Sarah, right on top of the head. And she’s knocked out. How about that? And he’s out, too. If you want a return call, leave your name and number. If you don’t, leave your zip code. Thanks.”

So, I did what Uecker told me to do: I left my name and number, though I resisted the urge to leave my zip code. An hour later, Lucroy called me back, and when I didn’t pick up, he followed the instructions of my prepubescent voice (I hadn’t changed my greeting since middle school) and left me a message. Not long after, I returned his call and once he’d answered my questions, I asked about the Uecker recording. He told me that he and some of his teammates on the 2011 Brewers had Uecker come up with a fake broadcast call to use for their voicemail greetings. I laughed, thanked him for his time, and hung up.

This season will be the first since the franchise’s first season in Milwaukee that Uecker will not be calling Brewers games on the radio. The Hall of Fame broadcaster, entertainer, and World Series-winning catcher died on January 16 at age 90, leaving behind a legacy of laughter that touched millions of people across his more than five decades on the air. It’s sad to consider the reality of baseball without him, even for those of us who never knew him. For Lucroy and several other former Brewers, though, Uecker’s voice lives on, through audio messages and videos that he recorded for them.

It started with relief pitcher Kameron Loe, “a big ole tall dude,” as Lucroy describes him. One day during the 2011 season, Lucroy was talking with Loe, who mentioned that he’d gotten Uecker to record his voicemail greeting for him. “I want to do that,” Lucroy remembers thinking. “I’m gonna have it forever.”

Lucroy decided to ask Uecker about it the next time he saw him. It didn’t take long. Uecker was around the players more than most broadcasters, and the players wanted him around. He had his own locker, and he’d banter with guys in the clubhouse and soak in the hot tub before the game. “I’d never seen that, or heard of that with any other announcer,” Loe says. “He was part of the team.”

On days when Lucroy wasn’t in the lineup, he would take a load off by talking to Uecker for hours, sometimes until shortly before first pitch because that’s when Uecker would have to head up to the booth to call the game. What made these conversations so special for Lucroy is that they were never about playing baseball. Sure, Uecker would gab about his life in the game — his Mickey Mantle stories were some of Lucroy’s favorites — but he avoided any discussion of hitting mechanics, blocking technique, or whatever other performance feedback Lucroy might get from his coaches and teammates.

“He told me once that he would never do that, like talk to us about hitting or catching,” Lucroy says. “He goes, ‘I sucked. I can’t say anything about anything, because everyone here is better than I was.’ He just liked to hang out with the guys and crack jokes and make fun of people and give them a hard time.”

Not long after learning about Loe’s Uecker voicemail greeting, Lucroy walked up to the broadcaster and asked, “Hey, Ueck, can you set my voicemail for me?”

Uecker gave Lucroy a stern look, as if he’d have to regretfully refuse the request. Instead, Uecker agreed, but his voice lacked its usual flair. “You better get it in now before I take a dirt nap,” Uecker said. “Because you’re not gonna get it after I die.” He held flat for a beat, letting the catcher process what he’d just heard. Lucroy knew Uecker was getting up there in age, but the grave response surprised him. All he could say was, “Dang.” Uecker started cackling.

In one take, Uecker reeled off the story about a Lucroy foul ball bonking his wife on the head and knocking her out. It was clever and comical and perhaps a bit insensitive, but without malice.

“Everybody just loved him because he was so relatable,” Lucroy says. “He was so witty, one of the wittiest guys I’ve ever been around.”

That wit is what made Uecker beloved beyond baseball. It’s what led him to an Atlanta nightclub in 1969, where one evening he opened for Don Rickles. His set caught the attention of musician Al Hirt, who owned the club and suggested Uecker as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which turned into over 100 appearances on the late night talk show and helped him become a household name.

That wit is also what carried the career .200 hitter and lifetime backup catcher to the spotlight of Saturday Night Live, which he hosted in 1984, memorable Miller Lite commercials, a starring role on the ABC sitcom Mr. Belvedere, and his iconic performance as announcer Harry Doyle in the movie Major League. It’s what gave Loe the idea to have Uecker’s voice be what callers would hear whenever he couldn’t pick up the phone.

While they were talking one day, Loe said to Uecker, “Man, you know what would be cool? If you left my voicemail for me.” Uecker thought it sounded fun. A couple of days later, Uecker found the reliever in the clubhouse and offered to do the recording for him.

“So I handed him my phone,” Loe recalls. “And he just starts to rattle off a call: ‘It’s the bottom of the 15th inning and everybody else is used. The last guy on the bench is Kameron Loe and so he’s our last hope. And the bases are loaded.’

“I ended up hitting a home run and winning us the game. And it was like a minute and 45 seconds long. It was just so cool. One of the most impossible scenarios that I would be in — that I could even hit a home run — and that we’d go into the 15th inning and need me. It was just awesome, man. It was so perfectly, beautifully done. It was a minute and 45 seconds long, but I was like, ‘This is the great Bob Uecker. You’re gonna have to listen to this whole thing to leave me a message.’”

Eventually, though, Loe had to change it because its length became an issue. “I had some of my best friends and family members going, ‘Hey, we’d love to leave you a message, but the Uecker call is, you know, we’ve heard it 30 times.’” He saved it to his phone before he recorded his boring new greeting.

He never deleted it, he says, but at some point it disappeared. He thinks it was lost in the transfer when he upgraded to his first smartphone. When Loe and I spoke a few days after Uecker died, he was crushed that he couldn’t listen to the recording one more time. He can still hear the broadcast of what would have been the highlight of his career, and he’s grateful that he can live through it, even if it’s only fiction, because the memory of the call and the man who made it is real.

“He just had that aura about him,” Loe says. “It didn’t matter if you were the guy who was there on your first day, or if you were the guy that’s been seeing him for the last 20 years. He made everybody feel special, and he was always going to say something witty that was going to make you smirk or smile or think. You have to be a genius to be that on. He didn’t stumble, he didn’t mumble, he didn’t have awkward pauses. He just was a natural. He was a freaking genius, and he made everybody feel good about themselves.”

For Tim Dillard, that’s what sticks out the most about Uecker: the way he made people feel. Dillard is perhaps best known today as the gregarious goofball on Bally Sports Wisconsin broadcasts, but before that he was a pitcher who spent 16 of his 18 professional seasons in the Brewers organization, including four in the majors. In fact, Uecker was the first person he saw from the Brewers when he arrived at Nationals Park to make his major league debut.

Dillard remembers the madness of the moment. Flying from Nashville to Washington on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend. Hopping in a cab and immediately heading to the ballpark. Running late because of all the traffic. He was already in a rush, and that combined with his nerves and backseat road rage had him sweating profusely.

“So here I am,” Dillard recalls. “I’ve got my baseball bag turned over my shoulder. I get dropped off on the wrong side of the stadium. I am just huffing and puffing, asking, ‘Where’s the visiting clubhouse?’ And some people didn’t even know because it was such a new stadium. They’re like, ‘I think it’s that way.’ I mean, I am losing my mind. I am sweating through my suit. And as I’m walking — and I think I’m close — a bus pulls up, and the door opens as I’m walking by, and the first person that gets out is Bob Uecker.”

Dillard says he knew Uecker a little bit at the time, but not well. That’s what makes what happened next so remarkable.

As soon as he got off the bus, Uecker spotted Dillard and stated the obvious, “Hey, T. You look a little sweaty.”

“I knew I was sweating through my suit, and I was flustered a little bit,” Dillard says. “It’d just been one of those days, and I’m totally nervous about the big leagues and everything. But I couldn’t help but laugh. He instantly diffused the situation. I was relaxed.”

Five or so hours later, Dillard took the mound with the Brewers trailing 5-1 and pitched a scoreless eighth inning, during which he whiffed Aaron Boone for his first career strikeout. But nearly 17 years later, the performance isn’t what comes to Dillard’s mind as he thinks back on his first day in the big leagues. Instead, Dillard beams as he says, “That was my first big league memory. Bob Uecker was in it.”

Unlike some of his other Milwaukee teammates — such as Lucroy, Prince Fielder, and 2011 NL MVP winner Ryan Braun — Dillard wasn’t a regular contributor. He could be counted on to cover low-leverage innings, but he wasn’t going to get the ball in tight games to preserve leads like Loe and closer John Axford did, and he didn’t get the chance to pitch in the postseason.

He certainly would never make this comparison, but in some ways, he filled the Uecker role on the 2011 Brewers team that went to the NLCS. He was a vibes guy who took the field when called upon and otherwise provided plenty of comic relief. The Brewers recognized this quality in Dillard, to the point that in 2018, six years after his final major league appearance, they called him up to Milwaukee one last time — except, they didn’t add him to the big league roster. Instead of pitching out of the bullpen, his job was to pitch and record videos for the team’s social media accounts.

During this stint, he produced a Saturday Night Live cast introduction parody called “Brewers Night Live,” and he knew exactly who he wanted to kick things off.

“It all hinged on if I could get Ueck to do the intro,” Dillard says. So he found Uecker in the clubhouse cafeteria and asked him if he would be the one to look into the camera and say, “Live from Miller Park, it’s Saturday night!” The 84-year-old Uecker agreed to do it. It sounded like fun!

“And then he started telling me a story about Saturday Night Live,” Dillard says. “And then he started telling Johnny Carson stories. And then he started telling wrestling stories.”

After an hour and a half of listening to Uecker’s yarns, it was getting close to game time and they still hadn’t recorded the video. Dillard had to interrupt Uecker so he wouldn’t be late to call the game.

“Ueck, man. I’ll let you go, dude. I know you gotta be somewhere,” Dillard said. “So, uhh, do you mind if I film you?”

“Yeah, T, my bad,” Uecker responded, apologizing for going off on one of the most glorious tangents Dillard has ever heard. “Go ahead.”

Dillard asked: “Do you know the line?” Uecker did. Of course he did — he’d hosted the real Saturday Night Live. With the camera rolling, Uecker’s voice was crisp yet folksy as he said, “Live from Miller Park, it’s Saturday night!”

“It was just amazing,” Dillard says. “I never really liked to ask for his time because he was in such high demand, probably for most of his life. Like, everybody wanted to hear the stories and talk to him and get pictures with him, so I really tried to show him the most respect. I really didn’t try to ask too much of him, but he was overgenerous at that moment.”

So Dillard made what he called “a dumb little video” in which he called out the names of several Brewers players, announcers, and Miller Park employees — “Lou, the Bouncer!” — as if he were introducing the SNL cast members. It also included B-roll footage of different parts of Milwaukee in place of the New York City scenes featured in the SNL opening credits. It’s incredibly silly and mostly forgotten, but there’s Uecker at the top, totally game for it.

“That’s probably my one recording of Ueck,” Dillard says now. Part of him wishes he’d asked Uecker to set his voicemail greeting for him. He remembers when Uecker did it for Loe and Lucroy; in fact, Loe connected me with Dillard for this story because he was sure Uecker had recorded Dillard’s too. But he’s also thankful for all that Uecker gave him: the memories, the laughs, the friendship.

“I think he was put on this earth for others, for their enjoyment,” Dillard says. “He made everything better. Whether it was with his knowledge or his wit, his storytelling, just his voice, all of it. That was his gift, and he shared it with the world. He was a guy that was bigger than life and bigger than baseball, but he was humble enough to just give it all away to everybody else. He had time for everybody and made everybody feel amazing. And that’s a rare gift.”

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