Doing MLB through the years, Bob Uecker had the ability to sprinkle in humor too

Ueckerisms

With the death of Bob Uecker recently, the broadcasting world lost a Hall of Fame announcer, who was such more than a gifted broadcaster. It lost a broadcaster who, unlike the great majority of today’s sports announcers, could broadcast and entertain at the same time.

Mr. Uecker was a serious student of the game. He had a remarkable 54 years run as the Milwaukee Braves announcer, as well as appearing in movies, on TV programs and as a stand-up comic.

Doing MLB through the years, Bob Uecker had the ability to sprinkle in humor tooUnlike at least 99.9 percent of today’s sports commentators, who announce a game as it they were on the front line of a pinched battle between to armies. Uecker sprinkled his commentary with wit that made listening to him fun. That’s what also made him such a successful hawker of a product.

There are too many Ueckerisms to relate here. One of his most famous was an exchange he had with Howard Cosell on ABC’s Monday Night Baseball in the late 1970s, when Uecker disagreed with something Cosell said.

Cosell responded, “Uecky, I get your point. But you don’t have to be so truculent. You do know what truculent means, don’t you?”  Without missing a beat, Uecker said, “Of course, Howard. If you had a truck and I borrowed it, it would be a truck-you-lent.”

Uecker, was nicknamed Mr. Baseball by Johnny Carson, on whose show he made about 100 appearances, mostly poking fun at himself about his ineptness as a baseball player.

His commentary reminded me of other sportscasters of the past who believed that being amusing didn’t detract from the game.

It was not always that way.

Some examples:

• Harry Caray would lead the crowd in the singing of “Take Me out to the Ball Game” during his tenure as a Chicago Cub’s announcer.

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• When things didn’t look good for the Philadelphia Phillies, Harry Kalas would sing “High Hopes.”

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• Rosey Rowswell, would say,” Open the window, Aunt Minnie, here it comes!” and break a light bulb to sound as if a home run broke a window, when announcing for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

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• Phil Rizutto would make no secret of leaving the announcer’s booth after the 7th inning so he could beat the traffic over the George Washington Bridge and also once said, “I like radio better than television because if you make a mistake on radio, they don’t know. You can make up anything on the radio,“ said the New York Yankees’ announcer.

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• No one could provide excellent analysis and entertainment at the same time as John Madden did with his zany diagrams of plays. Madden might accurately be cited as the most important sportscaster the NFL has ever had, because he had people tune in just to watch his performance, converting many to new fans.

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• Don Meredith, who could charm an audience almost as good as John Madden, is known for singing “Turn out the lights, the party’s over,” a line from the Willie Nelson classic “The Party’s Over,” when one team was certain to win.

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• Dizzy Dean, who called games for the St. Louis Cardinals and the then St. Louis Browns, (as well as The Game of the Week in 1953), was one of the first ballplayers to become an announcer. He never used statistics as a crutch to fill time. He featured his own world inventions and used the slang of rural America, (which elicited complaints by English teachers).

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• Of the current announcers, Kevin Burkhardt, when he was the New York Mets’ sideline reporter (before joining Fox), game after game was able to use his creativity to deliver reports that were both incisive and entertaining. An example was when he broadcast while paddling a Kayak from McCovey Cove in the waters adjacent to the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark. Unfortunately, his assignment with Fox sports does not permit him to demonstrate creativeness in sports broadcasting.

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• Sports fans could justly argue that there were better announcers than those listed above. But I would argue that for a well-rounded broadcast of a sporting event, meaning informing viewers of what was happening and entertaining them at the same time, they were certainly among the best and did what a broadcaster is hired to do, keep listeners and viewers tuned in even when the game is a blow out.

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• What’s missing from today’s broadcasting booth are commentators like the above. Saying that, I would be remiss not to mention in an essay about broadcasters to not give tribute to three announcers that stand apart from the pack.

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• Marty Glickman, who changed the way basketball is announced as the New York Knickerbockers play caller by painting with his voice a picture of what was occurring on the hard wood.

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• Vin Scully, who as the Los Angeles Dodgers announcer, used the English language as the play-by-play announcer in a manner that made a simple groundout to second base seem as if it was poetry in motion, and, Bob Costas, not only for his excellence as a broadcaster, but for not being fearful about expressing his opinions about aspects of sports that other announcers would be afraid to discuss. In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter: said that Costas was “The Conscience of NBC Sports.” In my view, he’s the conscience of all sports TV broadcasters today.

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Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, and was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in some of the most significant national and international sports and non-sports programs. He also traveled internationally as a media adviser to high-ranking government officials. He now is a frequent contributor to public relations publications, consults on public relations projects and was on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He has been a key player on Olympic marketing programs and also has worked at high-level positions directly for Olympic organizations. During his political agency days, he worked on local, statewide and presidential campaigns. He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr (at) juno.com.