Joe Buck: My addiction to hair plugs nearly cost me my voice

Add Brad Nessler to that list.

 

Something tells me Musberger is using other material.

 

Would love to hear Tim McCarver's inning-long analysis on Buck's hair plugs.

 

Can't wait until we stop a World Series game in the middle of the fifth inning so Ariana Grande can come out to sing a song for #hairplugawareness presented by MasterCard.

 

The older I've gotten, the more I've liked Joe Buck.

He's a few years older than me. We went to high school three miles apart and I used to listen to him on the FM station of KMOX (KHTR) when he was a college intern getting his start.

When I started out as a sports anchor in Small Market, USA, guys like Buck pissed me off to no end. He didn't have to schlepp a camera to shoot high school volleyball games in the middle of nowhere. I did.

His dad was a Hall of Fame announcer who greased his path. My father is in prison, possibly for life, serving a child molestation sentence and he told he, for years, that I was in the wrong field.

It took me until I was about 34 or 35 (with 13 years in the business by that point) to realize that he is simply more talented than I am -- I'm damn good at what I do but I'm strictly Thursday night dinner theatre at the Dew Drop Inn compared to his level.

Buck does an EXCELLENT job in his play-by-play role, mostly as traffic cop who doesn't seem to take the event itself too seriously (unless it's the Super Bowl or a Game 7 World Series). He drops in light moments when he makes a mistake and lets Aikman handle the heavy lifting of analysis. Buck talks just about the right amount. PbP guys are easy to criticize but, having done it quite a bit, it's a damn hard job.

Where I've grown to appreciate him is that he publicly recognizes and talks about how, if Jack Buck wasn't his dad, he wouldn't have been able to start in the business at Marvin Gardens while the rest of us start on Baltic. (Chicago, actually, is the epicenter of the nepotism sportscaster or newscaster -- it's definitely not just Buck.)

I've talked on here quite a bit about what my female co-anchors have gone through on trying to push the sun back into the sky and not "age out". It's a very real problem. Bulimia and purging are very common, but unspoken, problems in this field -- especially now that we're all in HD.

Even as a man, I am constantly taking steps to not gain weight - I run constantly and am in close to phenomenal shape for a mid-40s guy but the extra 10 pounds I can't seem to lose annoy me greatly - and, yes, I keep an eye on my hair. I'm blessed (perhaps by discovering at age 40 that my real (biological) father had a full dead of luscious, Redford-style hair until he died last year) that I probably won't lose my hair. Hell, it may never even go truly gray.

Yet I can understand Buck's anxiety over his hair, although, he's really only seen during the first 90 seconds of a FOX NFL broadcast and during a 60-second shot in the third quarter. Perhaps this is a vanity play on his part -- wouldn't be the first. However, it's not like he needs the money (celebrity tell-all books don't exactly sell like they did in 1990). Maybe this is just part of Buck trying to be a better man.

We all have a battle within our core that we hide from everyone.

All of us.

 

The fact Joe Buck maybe addicted to hair plug treatment and it caused is vocal cord paralysis ... if that's the most scintillating detail from his book, I'll sure as hell pass.
I think he's a great announcer, but he sounds like a boring (which is probably a good thing) person.

 

I don't think there is much envy in the dislike for Joe Buck. I know plenty of people who have never been in journalism or broadcast and/or have no idea who his father was or about any nepotism.
He just has a very unlikable quality. Smugness, maybe? I don't know. I don't care enough about him to really consider it that closely.
I just don't like the guy. Sometimes there are people you just don't like, and Joe is one of them for me and many others.
Doesn't make him a bad person.

However, part of being a sports broadcaster is likability.
Obviously, it hasn't held him back.

With regard to vanity and the insecurities about appearance that are rampant in the TV broadcast industry, as they say in the union, you bid on the job.

 

Has Costas had any hair plugs recently?

 

Curt Schilling Begged Bob Brenly to Keep him in Game 4 of '01 World Series Because He Knew Brenly Was Mic'd | VICE Sports

This story is fantastic. Joe Buck says in his new book that it was already decided Schilling was coming out of the game, but since Brenly was miked up, Schilling made a play to stay in so he would look good.

Now they are going back and forth with Schill calling Buck a liar, etc., etc.

 

Never understood people's disdain for Joe Buck. Schilling? I'd totally believe that story. My buddy and fellow Red Sox fan said the other players used to refer to Schilling as "red light," because the TV camera light bulbed red to indicate it was the hot camera, so if it was red, the person knew they were being filmed live. And Schilling paid close attention to that whenever he was in the dugout. I don't know if it's true, but it sounds true. P.S. It was ketchup on the sock, pass it on.

 

Joe Buck is one of the smarmiest, self-loathing, egotistical, look-at-me, beat off to my own voice broadcasters I've ever heard.

I'll be buying his book tomorrow.

 

Joe Buck comes across as kind of a sanctimonious twat, but he's quite good at his job.

A couple of friends of mine have known and worked around Schilling for many years -- in one case, the relationship goes back to before Schilling was a pro. They both absolutely hate his guts. He's a phony, egotistical, pathological liar.