The Chris Moeller Archives

Mr. Baseball

I've got no science to give you with this. All of my evidence is anecdotal. But baseball has lost its sense of humor. Higher salaries and ticket prices have caused players to adopt an ultra-professional, but by-and-large extremely dull posture. The proliferation of websites devoted to sports-celebrity gossip has required the players to become extra protective of their personal privacy and their public images, and now it's only the actual societal menaces that take the time to drink and use recreational drugs for fun in-between, and sometimes, during, games.

The television and radio broadcasters, as a group, are as colorless and boring as they've been at any time that I can remember. Since most of the games are resigned to cable channels, these announcers and their bosses seem intent on only broadcasting to the established sports fan, not wooing the otherwise disinterested others that could be won with some extra human interest.

A generation ago, we had Morganna the Kissing Bandit, the exotic dancer "with a 112-pound body and a 15-pound chest" who ran illegally onto the field and kissed the cheek of 37 different ballplayers between the seasons of 1971 and 1990. If she did that at a Major League game tonight, she would get tasered.

Perhaps all of this is to be expected when you have a commissioner that looks like this, but our baseball business is in dire need of a personality who humanizes and humorizes the game again, a character who adds color and helps to take the game out of its sporting ghetto and place it back into the American cultural and entertainment mainstream. What it needs is another Bob Uecker.

I was reminded of how great Bob Uecker has been for baseball as I listened to him interviewed by phone this afternoon during the Fox Game of the Week between Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Uecker is still delivering play-by-play on radio for the Brewers in his hometown, but it's primarily localized exposure and the 75-year-old is currently on leave from the team recovering from heart surgery. (He's been reading quite a few get-well letters, he told Fox's Tom McCarthy and Mark Grace during the broadcast-- most of them he's written himself.)

Though it's still a tremendous joy to listen to Uecker, it's clear we're past the day when he would score with his comedic quips on late-night television seated next to Johnny Carson or David Letterman. He appeared as a guest with Johnny 64 times and starred in a number of hilarious beer commercials that traded on his less-than-stellar 6-year playing career during the 1960s.

Here's a clip of Bob with Letterman from April 4th, 1994. Forgive the so-so quality of the video, but appreciate the great comedic timing of the man. Uecker has been more than just a funny ex-ballplayer these years, he ranks, I believe, with the great comedians. Support for this opinion is that other comedy greats regard him with such high esteem.

posted by CM @ 5:44 PM