Bo Boone

Bob Uecker spent 54 seasons in the Milwaukee Brewers radio booth. The most famous pennant call of his life was a fake one, in a movie. Last night his replacement used it for the real thing. Here is the whole thing. Jackson Chourio caught the last out and Jeff Levering said this on WTMJ. "The Brewers win the pennant! Oh my God, the Brewers win the pennant!" Then, "The World Series will go through Wisconsin!" Now here is why Wisconsin lost it. Uecker played Harry Doyle in Major League. The announcer. He has a line in that movie, when the team finally wins the pennant, and the line is oh my God. That movie was filmed in Milwaukee. So the most quoted pennant call Bob Uecker ever made was for a team he did not work for, in a city he was not in, for a championship that never happened. Now here is the man himself. Before the booth he was a catcher. He played 297 games in the big leagues and hit .200. Fourteen home runs. Total. He won a ring in St. Louis as the backup catcher, which means he has a World Series ring and almost no World Series. He built an entire second life out of being bad at baseball. Harry Doyle. Mr. Belvedere. The Tonight Show. The beer ads. And 54 seasons on the radio in Milwaukee. Here is the part that stops you. He was already the Brewers announcer the last time this team won a pennant. That was 44 years ago, in his twelfth season. He did 42 more after that one. He never got another. He kept working while he was sick for the last two years of it. He was in the clubhouse for the division clinch in his final September. He passed away about 21 months ago, at 90 years old. Here is what Levering said afterward. "I'm still trying to pinch myself because I'm pretty sure I blacked out as soon as that third out was made." He said he had nothing written down. "I didn't script anything." And then, "I felt what I felt." And then this. "It always goes to Bob. We felt him with us all night." The team put out one line of its own. Dedicating this pennant to Mr. Baseball. Now the honest part. He did get one. He was in that booth for the last pennant and he got to call it, so this is not a man who never saw it happen. And Milwaukee won this thing without him. But he spent 42 more seasons waiting on another one, and the pennant call everybody can recite was something he made up in a movie. Last night a guy who grew up listening to him said it out loud, and meant it.