MILWAUKEE — The Brewers spent months meticulously planning the celebration of life for Bob Uecker, their beloved Hall of Fame broadcaster and larger-than-life television personality, who died in January. They carefully consulted with his family. They choreographed every detail, which included a surprise in the final moments of the moving, 90-minute pregame tribute Sunday afternoon at American Family Field.
Just as Bob Uecker Jr. was about to throw the ceremonial first pitch to franchise legend Robin Yount, the current Brewers players emerged from the dugout, each of them wearing UECK on the backs of their jerseys. The players went through a receiving line while embracing the Uecker family.
Then the first pitch was thrown, and it couldn’t have been more perfectly imperfect: Juuuust a bit outside.
Whole squad joined the Uecker Family for today’s first pitch 🥹 pic.twitter.com/ff4zMjUzCa
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) August 24, 2025
From his most quoted lines as fictional announcer Harry Doyle in “Major League” to his 100-plus appearances on “The Tonight Show” in which he mastered the art of deadpan self-deprecating comedy to the TV sitcom dad he portrayed on “Mr. Belvedere” to the light beer ads that remain just as side-splitting 40 years later, Uecker was a national celebrity and gifted comedian — certainly the most famous light-hitting backup catcher in baseball history.
To his fellow Milwaukee natives, he was so much more than that: the radio backdrop to five-plus decades of Wisconsin summers, the ultimate brand ambassador for a team that never has the priciest players, and a daily reminder that baseball, as hard and humbling as any game ever invented, is supposed to be fun.
“Today, here in the ballpark, which was Bob’s real home, this is a chance for all of you to say goodbye and thank you to your friend and to the man who more than anyone else, personified your team: Mr. Baseball, Bob Uecker,” said Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Costas, who emceed the program and helped to curate it. “There was a lot more to Ueck than the public persona. There was a lot of heart.”
The Brewers recreated a version of “The Tonight Show” set on the dais as Costas sat behind a desk and prompted memories from a panel of special guests that included Yount, Hall of Famers George Brett and Ted Simmons, former MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, Brewers owner Mark Attanasio and Brewers TV announcer Brian Anderson. The gallery seated in front of the dais included Uecker’s family as well as cast members from “Mr. Belvedere” and “Major League.”
The program interspersed testimonials with a four-part video that recounted Uecker’s life, highlighting his early years and his playing career, then his most memorable moments as a Hollywood celebrity, then his broadcasting career and, finally, a tribute to his lifelong connection to Milwaukee.
There were plenty of laughs, of course. With Uecker, there always were. But the Brewers were thoughtful and intentional: they wanted a sendoff, not a send-up.
“Bob was so much larger than life that it was hard, and to this day, it’s hard for me to comprehend that he is gone,” Attanasio said Sunday morning. “The organization’s goal was to do whatever felt right for the family. And so everything that you’ve seen up to this point and that you’ll see today was all to follow the family’s wishes.”
The Brewers renamed their press box the Bob Uecker Broadcast Center and revealed a placard with his name and a microphone alongside the other retired numbers in franchise history. They set up Uecker exhibits throughout the ballpark for the sellout crowd of 42,053, including a display of mannequins adorned with some of the more audaciously patterned sport jackets he wore in the booth or while filming some of his most memorable commercials.
Elsewhere, fans were able to view the Uecker-themed bat that Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich used to hit two home runs while leading an eight-run comeback in a 10-8 victory over the Cincinnati Reds on Aug. 16.
The baseballs used in the Brewers’ game Sunday against the San Francisco Giants bore a special Uecker stamp, and the bases were fitted with a commemorative Uecker side jewel. The Brewers created a one-day-only retail collection of Uecker apparel that sold out quickly, with a portion of the proceeds directed to charities that the late broadcaster supported.
To honor Uecker’s military service, the national anthem was followed by a flyover from the 128th Air Refueling Wing, Wisconsin Air National Guard — the same plane that Uecker joined for a refueling run in the summer of 2018, which he described as a personal thrill.
Costas, who teamed with Uecker on national telecasts including the World Series, paid tribute to a man who found so much humor in humility but took the craft of announcing seriously.
“Most of the country outside Wisconsin knows him from Johnny Carson and the ‘Major League’ films, but if he never said one thing that was funny, and you just judged him as a baseball announcer, especially on the radio, (he’s) Hall of Fame caliber,” Costas said. “And when he was with me and Joe Morgan, he knew the game. He was so sharp, his observations were always right on the money.”
A close-up look at the special bases used for Sunday’s game in honor of Bob Uecker. (John Fisher / Getty Images)
Selig, who purchased the Seattle Pilots and relocated them to Milwaukee in 1970, recalled how he hired Uecker as a scout and received complaints from his superiors when the first reports arrived smeared with gravy and mashed potatoes. Moving Uecker to the broadcast booth was the ultimate stroke of luck for a franchise that has never had a more important or enduring star.
“It wasn’t only his analysis,” Selig said. “It was his style. It was his voice. I could tell — and of course, I listened to so many thousands of games — as soon as I turned the radio on, I knew whether we were winning or losing.”
“The Brewers were such an anonymous team in the early ’90s and 2000s, but they had Bob Uecker,” said Drew Olson, the longtime former beat reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “It was almost like having a gold card everywhere you went. We’d go to Yankee Stadium, and the fans would be all over the players. But when they saw Bob Uecker, it was nothing but cheers.”
Uecker could have left Milwaukee countless times, Costas said. New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner made several overtures. But there was no severing his lifelong connection with his hometown, which included stints as a player with the Milwaukee Braves and another after the team relocated to Atlanta.
“I was the first player from Milwaukee to play for the Braves,” Uecker said in one of his many “Tonight Show” appearances. “I was also the first player from Milwaukee to get sent to the minor leagues by the Braves.”
Carson began introducing Uecker as “Mr. Baseball” as a gag. It grew into part of his identity. Nobody inspired more laughs at their own expense. In a 1994 appearance with David Letterman, Uecker facetiously complained that he never received Hall of Fame recognition for a playing career in which he hit .200 and posted a minus-1.0 WAR:
“There are a lot of things I did that those guys didn’t do,” Uecker said. “In 1967, I led the Atlanta Braves in two departments: ‘Hang in there’ and ‘Get ’em next time.’ I mean, I don’t see anything in the press guides about those guys doing that.”
Uecker got mileage out of all his one-liners, but he had so many of them, and told them so well, that they never got stale. He didn’t have a star hitter’s timing at the plate, but his comedic timing was peerless.
“I’ve had a lot of big times in the big leagues,” he once told Carson with his signature straight face. “I can remember, 1964, a bases-loaded walk forcing home the winning run. … Well, it won our first intrasquad game of the spring. So it was quite a thrill for me.”
Uecker’s playing career, while celebrated for its futility, had its high points.
In 1962, he caught Warren Spahn’s 327th victory, which broke the record for most wins by a left-handed pitcher in baseball history. Uecker backed up Tim McCarver on the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals in 1964, although he didn’t log a plate appearance in the series and joked that when the rings were presented, he had to comb through the grass to find his.
He received the most playing time under manager Gene Mauch with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1966, but he never improved as a hitter.
“I’d be sitting there, and Gene would say, ‘Bob, grab a bat and stop this rally,’” Uecker said in 2003 while receiving the Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting excellence — an all-time classic speech punctuated by laughter that turned poignant at the end.
“It’s been a great run, but number one has always been baseball for me,” Uecker told the crowd in Cooperstown, N.Y. “No matter what else I ever did, baseball was the only way I wanted to go.”
Yelich remembered Uecker as a friend to every Brewers player, whether they were an All-Star or a September call-up. If a young pitcher threw one to the backstop, Uecker would come in the clubhouse and do his Harry Doyle routine: Juuust a bit outside.
“Whether it was your first day in the big leagues or you’d been there for 10 years, he treated you as though you were his friend his entire life,” Yelich said. “I think that was one of his real gifts, making people feel like they were best friends and he’d known them forever.
“He’s still with us to some extent, and I think we all feel him.”
Ueck’s “home away from home” 💙
Today, we’ve renamed our broadcast wing — the “Bob Uecker Broadcast Center” — a new reminder of the dedication, passion and humor that Ueck imparted on the Club pic.twitter.com/8oYlp8CDbr
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) August 24, 2025
Yount, when called on by Costas, needed a moment to regain his composure. Then he turned his microphone upside down before trying to speak.
“I learned that one from Bob,” Yount said while drawing the biggest laugh of the program. “I met Ueck in 1974, up until he passed in 2025, and he was the same person through all the things he accomplished. He never changed. He just loved making people laugh, right to the end. He told me he wasn’t afraid of dying. He just didn’t want to be there when it happened.”
Still, the Brewers couldn’t plan for everything. They were one out away from their league-leading 82nd victory when Heliot Ramos hit a two-run single off Milwaukee closer Trevor Megill, and the Giants claimed a 4-3 victory.
“Gosh, I wish we could’ve gotten that one for Ueck, huh?” manager Pat Murphy said. “I didn’t think there was any way the baseball gods would bestow that upon us.”
There was no scripting a perfect ending for the Brewers last season after they won 93 regular-season games and doused Uecker in champagne while celebrating the National League Central title. Uecker, 90, had been battling small-cell lung cancer for two years and only told his closest confidants that the disease had reached the terminal stage.
When the Brewers lost their wild-card series to the New York Mets in agonizing fashion, stunned in Game 3 by a late home run from slugger Pete Alonso, Uecker’s final sign-off was tinged with more than unrequited hope.
“Well, New York, down, they did it,” Uecker said. “And the Crew will, uh, have it end here tonight. I’m telling you, that one … had some sting on it.”
Costas said he and his wife visited Uecker and his family two weeks before that season-ending series. Costas understood he was saying goodbye.
“And that was the last time that I saw him, but I heard the last broadcast when Alonso hit the home run off Devin Williams that broke everybody’s heart,” Costas said. “When you hear Ueck signing off, he didn’t always wear his heart on his sleeve, but it was so poignant. He was disappointed for the team, because it was a heartbreaking loss, but he also knew that these were the last words he’d ever speak as the voice of the Brewers.
“His voice was not as strong, and he wasn’t quite as sharp, but it was still Bob Uecker. And when you listen to that, even though he doesn’t frame it this way, that’s about as poignant a valedictory as any broadcaster has ever delivered.”
It was not in character for Uecker to dwell on disappointment. He always found a way to spin it into a laugh line. Among the video clips most repeated during Sunday’s ceremony and nine innings packed with additional tributes: Uecker in the broadcast booth, pantomiming a home run swing for the crowd, then jerking his head backwards as if watching a foul ball to the screen.
In Yelich’s hands, anyway, a Bob Uecker bat became a hero. That’s how magical this Brewers season, inspired by Uecker’s memory, is becoming.
Yelich mentioned that after hitting his home run against Cincinnati, one of his subsequent at-bats resulted in a duck-snort double that fell in front of the left fielder.
“We kind of joked about it,” Yelich said. “Ueck liked that one better.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Jeffrey Phelps / MLB Photos / Getty Images)