
I asked my sports journalist friend Mike McCann to pitch hit for me (ha!), as “sports” and I will never be shipmates:
Bob Uecker, a less than ordinary ballplayer who became one of baseball's signature play-by-play voices—and extended that fame into TV and movie success—died Jan. 16 at age 90. Possibly the most famous .200 hitter in baseball history, the Milwaukee native spent six seasons as a backup catcher on the Braves, Phillies and Cardinals during the 1960s. Making light of his on-field failures led to success as a comic after dinner speaker and TV talk-show guest—with more than 100 appearances with Johnny Carson, who nicknamed him “Mister Baseball”—plus costarring in the sitcom Mister Belvedere and the Major League movies. One of the sports celebrities seen in Miller Lite Beer commercials, their running gag about being stuck in the worst seats in the house led to them widely referred to as the “Bob Uecker seats.” The funny man also had a serious side—he spent 54 years calling Brewers games in his native Milwaukee and (having lost a child to ALS), became a tireless fundraiser for the neuromuscular disease.
