Happy Birthday Bob Uecker

I am such a huge fan of Uecker, I'm even willing to overlook the fact he slummed for Mr. Belvedere.

 

Get up, get up, get out of here, gone!

A stone cold icon in Milwaukee and deservedly so. He single-handedly kept all of those horrid years in 90s and 2000s listenable for Brewers fans. Access to his broadcasts is really the only reason I've kept XM/Sirius.

Uecker's the only voice left who was been there with me for my entire life of following sporst. I hope he's there for many more.

 

I actually saw Ueck play, when he was a backup catcher with the Phils in the 1960s. He didn't hit that much worse than most backup catchers.

 

Career average of exactly .200, though. That's hard to do.

Two great Letterman bits about Uecker, the first by Artie Lange, the second by Norm MacDonald:

 

He's said he was only able to hit as high as .200 because major league pitchers are the best in the world, and sooner or later they're going to hit your bat.

 

You can look it up. The one pitcher Uecker could hit was -- Sandy Koufax.

 

Also had the best line about how to catch Phil Niekro's knuckleball: "I wait for it to stop rolling, then I go pick it up."

 

I did look it up. He hit .184 vs. Koufax with 1 HR and 8 K in 38 AB. Although I guess that could be considered "hitting" Koufax. Poor Uecker, the most ABs he had vs. any pitcher was Koufax. Gee, I wonder why the regular catcher didn't play those days ...

On the flip side, he was 3-for-10 vs. Steve Carlton and 2-for-6 vs. Warren Spahn.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/b-pvb.cgi?n1=ueckebo01#choice=&throws=&year_game=career&opp_id=&orderby=PA&orderbyb=Name&minPA2=0&minPA=0&orderbydir=DESC&orderbydirb=ASC&n1=ueckebo01&as=batter

 

If you can stomach it, pour down a Miller Lite Lite Beer from Miller for Bob today.

And here's the classic commercial:

 

I saw him get two hits off Koufax. With the Phils, Uecker was almost a platoon player, as regular catcher Clay Dalrymple was almost as bad a hitter and batted left. Then, the Phils got Gus Triandos, and Uecker was THIRD-string.
There were a lot of weak hitting catchers in the '60s. Lucky for Ueck, he was the funny one.

 

Don't hate on the Belv. How could you forget the episode where the opposing softball team intentionally walked Robert Goulet(!) just to face Uecker with the bases loaded?!? Now that was funny.