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January 16, 2025 15 mins
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of the best things about being the next big

(00:01):
leader is getting preties to the game called the front
office bingo. And once these fans recognize me, I probably
won't even have to pay for my life here from Miller.
I love them these fans, though, I break life because
it's less billing and it tasts great. Good say sir,
we're in all save buddy, comme.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
No, I almost be in the light beer from Miller.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Everything you always wanted in a beer and left.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Let's say, hey, buddy, he missed the tag.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
He missed the tag?

Speaker 4 (00:30):
All right, Oh my gosh, that's uh, that's that's a classic.
That's that's from nineteen eighty four. I think it's a
forty year old at Bob Buker, I must be in
used to walk around, I remember, I remember so.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
I guess I was in college when that came out, and.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
I remember sometimes you'd just be walking around just say
to a random person, you know, when the context kind
of made sense.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
I must be in the front row.

Speaker 4 (00:56):
Bob Buker passed away at the age of ninety, and
considering what a career Bob Buker had as a broadcaster,
he was a player too, but as a broadcaster. I
figured there's a pretty darn good chance that my friend
in Kaway, colleague Jack Corrigan, probably had more than one
opportunity to cross paths with Bob Buker and meet him

(01:18):
and talk to him.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
And I just thought it would be cool to get to.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
Get Jack on the show and ask and you know,
like a good lawyer wouldn't ask a question he doesn't
know any answer to. But I guess, I guess I
am Jackson. First of all, thank you, And did you
know Bob Buker.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
I've known Bob for forty years, first met him in
nineteen eighty five, my first year in Big League baseball
as a broadcaster, and friends throughout. Just a character, a
wonderful man, and two things people would be surprised, Well,

(01:57):
I would say surprised, but in person. And Bob's even funnier,
or was even funnier than he was in Major League
or the Miller commercials or Mister Bell the Deer, all
those things. Just what a sharp, quick sense of humor
he had. And boy did he know baseball. I mean

(02:17):
he did, one of those guys. If he wasn't so
good as a broadcaster and a comedian, he would have
been a great general manager. I just loved the interactions
with Bob. He, like I said, a character, one of
a kind for sure.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
I share just a sixty or ninety seconds earlier in
the show from Bob Eucher's speech at his Hall of
Fame induction, and it is just hilarious and given with
such a like dead pen, you know, straight faced delivery,
you know, like how about how how he was born
and he still remembers how cold the asphalt was on

(02:53):
his back.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
It was just unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, he was so, like I said, so funny. One
of the things I cherish, you know. When I met
him for the first time, he called me Jackie boy,
which you know, nobody had called me since I was,
you know, in the very earliest stages of elementary school.

(03:21):
And in twenty eighteen, when the Rockies and the Brewers
met in the wild Card series, I brought my family
up because some of them had not met Bob before,
and so I brought him up to the broadcast booth
and we were visiting with Bob. And when we walked out,
my one grandson, you know, wasn't that he met Bob,

(03:44):
youger all the other things. He just looked at me
with this incredulous face, saying, Papa, that man called you
Jackie boy. He just thought that was unbelievable.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
Did you think and this might have changed over time,
all right, so you can say it was both or whatever,
but did you think of Bob youucker, more like a friend,
more like a peer, more like a mentor.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
My mentors were more people like Joe Tait, who I
first started doing baseball with. The Joe was a great
basketball announcer as well in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
And Ernie Harwell, who you know I listened to growing
up as the Tigers games across Lake Erie to Cleveland.

(04:37):
Bob was more of a of a friend in a colleague,
you know, he was. He was just one of those
people that, yeah, we talked a lot of baseball, but
most we were telling stories and just having fun. I
mean a lot of times I'd come back from their
booth to our booth and my stomach would hurt because

(04:59):
I was laughing so hard. I mean, that's just the
way he was.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
Tell me any story about hanging out with him, you know,
outside of a stadium, you know, did you ever travel together,
or some story when you had dinner together.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
You know, the most interesting Well two things. One, I'll
have to clean it up a little bit. Came in
to spring training after having had my first bout with
prostate cancer surgery that fall, and you know, and met

(05:36):
up with Bob at a place called Guidos in Scottsdale,
one of his hangouts, and he, you know, he asked
how I was doing and all of that. And then
Bob could be very earthy, so as best I can
do this, he just said, well, it's great to hear
that good news because there for an so be like you,

(06:00):
because there are too many blank died he blank people
in the world. We can get rid of them, but
we need to keep you, uh huh. And then the
other one, you know, of course Bob the famous Harry Doyle,
the announcer in the movie Major League and they premiered

(06:24):
a Major League in Cleveland because it was about the
Indians and it was written by a Cleveland during all
of that, and Bob was there for the premiere and
we were talking, you know, about various aspects of the movie,
and of course you know his commentary. You know, boy,

(06:44):
that broadcasting schools really paid off for you, Monte or
just a bit outside all those various things that he
said and Bob told us, which was I'm not surprised,
but still surprised. So the first day of shooting where
he was on camera, he finished the scene and David Ward,

(07:05):
the producer, director, writer, you know, so that's great Bob,
And Bob said, hey, can we do this again? He says,
I'll do as many takes as you want, but can
I just you give me the scenario and let me go.
So almost all of the commentary, all of the dialogue

(07:27):
of Bob Uker in the first Major League movie is
improv I mean, he just wow. He was just winging it.
You know. Sometimes it was one take, sometimes he did
six or seven, and the people on the set would
be laughing and everything else, because that was Bob.

Speaker 4 (07:46):
I should know the answer to this, But I don't
listen to a lot of Milwaukee Brewers radio. But I
think Yuker was broadcasting this past season, wasn't he.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yep. The last two years were the first two years
that he stopped traveling. I mean, he you know, COVID
and other things. But he did come to Denver and
in twenty two he and Dick Montfort were good friends.
In fact, you know, involved in a couple of business ventures,

(08:17):
if I believe, But in any event, he and he
and the Dick and Charlie Montfort were friends of Bob's.
But then in twenty three he was just doing home games.
And last year he probably did about seventy five games,
you know, all of them at home, so most of
the home schedule. Once in a while, if he was

(08:38):
a little tired, he'd, you know, if it was a
day game after a night game, he might not do
that day game. But then he did, you know, their
playoff games too, and really until I want to say,
maybe this year, perhaps last year, he would still periodically
throw batting practice, I mean, you know, on the players.

(09:00):
I mean, was a true baseball guy. Wow.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, So Yuker was the.

Speaker 4 (09:09):
Main broadcaster for the Brewers for fifty four years. I mean,
you've been doing it a long time, but fifty four
years your sounds like a really long time.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Yeah, they're all you know. Vin Scully did the Dodgers
for sixty seven years, and then Denny Matthews was the
original broadcaster with the Royals, and I believe he started
in sixty nine, so that'd be thirty.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
One and he's still going with him.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
He's still with him, Yeah, you know, fifty five years plus.
But you know, it's it's we're losing some of the
real icons of the game in our industry, if you
will Ross you know people when you think about it,
I mean, Scully he saw more than half the season's

(10:03):
two thirds of the seasons if you include when he
was growing up of the history of baseball, and Uker's
pretty close. I mean he was playing in the early
fifties and broadcasting, you know, well into the twenty first century.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yeah, amazing, folks.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
If you don't recognize the voice, we're talking with Jack Corrigan,
voice of the Colorado Rockies and Kwait, colleague of mine
and an author and all around renaissance man.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Uh Yuker won a World Series, didn't he.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, I'm trying to think if it was with uh.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
It was with the with the Cardinals. It was with
the Cardinals.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, yeah, he told he told a great story, you know,
of a Cardinals story. When he was playing for Saint Louis,
Bob Gibson, the Hall of Fame pitcher was a fierce
competitor and you know, and he owned the plate as
far as he was concerned. Gibby had one of those

(11:02):
times where he missed a couple of starts, went on
the injured list. They didn't do, you know, rehab starts
at that time. They'd have a guy come out and
he'd do a simulated game where they you know, they
phase three or four live batters and then go sit
in the dugout for a little bit and then come
back out. Do you know the simulate a game if

(11:23):
you will, And they get through, you know, a half
dozen hitters. And Red Shandish was the manager for the Cardinals,
and he said, give you that's that's probably good and
give you says Red, give me one more, and so
Red goes, you get in there. So so Bob says,

(11:46):
he got into the batter's box and Gibson hit him
right in the ribs with a mid nineties fastball and
turned to the manager and said, yeah, I'm ready.

Speaker 4 (11:54):
Now I've got I've got two listeners here, and.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
I want to add. My question for you with both
of them.

Speaker 4 (12:04):
Is is do you think these things.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Are are true?

Speaker 4 (12:07):
One of them, Bob Buker's alias at hotels was Harry Doyle.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
That I don't know, I couldn't tell you wouldn't It
wouldn't surprise me. You know, guys, I know there are
other broadcasters in baseball that if they feel the need
to have an alias, if you will at a hotel,
use Harry Doyle. I mean, you know, Van Scully's the
god of baseball broadcasters. Harry Doyle's our favorite.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
I'm I'm told that your alias at hotels is Jerry Shimmel.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, that's a good one. That'll work.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
That'll work all right.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
One other one, other listener text says fun fact, ask
Jack if he knows this.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
So I guess this.

Speaker 4 (12:52):
This listener seems pretty confident in what I'm about to
read to you. Bob Buker's rookie baseball card shows him
holding the bat left handed when he was a right
handed batter.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
He apparently did it as a joke.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yes, I've heard that same story. I've not seen the card,
but it would not surprise me because in that place
Guido's that I'm talking about in Scottsdale, there's a picture
of Yuker on the wall. It's a Chicago Italian deli, Guidos,

(13:25):
and there's a picture of Yuke going off the field
with a couple of his teammates with arms around him
and other teammates there and Bob's autograph on it was
my teammates have had enough and they're getting rid of me,
when in all likelihood they were celebrating something he had done.

(13:47):
That was Bob.

Speaker 4 (13:49):
Last question for you, Jack, did you happen to go
to his Hall of Fame induction?

Speaker 2 (13:55):
No? You know, that's the The unfortunate thing is the
rest of us are all working. Sometimes people will take
off for it. I remember watching it and it was
like I felt, and I can't remember who it was,
but I felt sorry for who followed him. You had
no chance. And one of the things they do now

(14:17):
when they induct the broadcasters, and they do it now
on Saturday evening so they don't get stuck having to
follow somebody like a Uker doing it on Sunday.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (14:32):
Jack Corgan, Voice of the Colorado Rockies, I'm sure glad
we got you on the show.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
I had a feeling you knew him, but I didn't realize.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
You knew him that well, and that made it a
more special conversation.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
So thank you for agreeing to do this.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Jack, My pleasure Ross anytime we got to catch up
like this, regularly.

Speaker 4 (14:50):
Yeah, indeed we do, but not because people are dying,
but just with a lot of fun stories.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, that's it exactly, all right, thank you Jack, all right,
Bazz

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