Tag Archives: Hank Aaron

“Mister Baseball”…Imagine what a Brewers World Championship would mean to the heart and soul of the organization

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89-year-old Milwaukee Brewer radio announcer Bob Uecker (center) celebrates the Brewers 2023 Central Division Championship Tuesday with Brewers owner Mark Anastasio and is wife Debbie. Courtesy Milwaukee Brewers.

Go ahead, call me a big bowl of slightly overripe Irish sap bubbling over on the stove. Or, Wisconsin maple sap, doing same, a drippy, sticky mess, while the cook is off chasing away hungry racoons brash enough to walk in the slightly-ajar front cabin door.

Now ask me if I care. What readers of this blog might have inferred by now is that, as a culture commentator, I rank local team sports as important as any “high, middle or low-brow” art, in terms of community impact, of reknitting and reinforcing the precious weave of community fabric, which in modern times seems to be torn asunder at the local and national levels.

Yep, nothing brings all corners of a community — call it Wisconsin and the extended Brewer fandom — together, politics and racial biases aside, more than team sports that represent the city. So, we have our Brewers, our Bucks and our state has our Packers. I just was prompted to recall to a good friend the first time I was brought to tears as a young sports fan, was at a Packer game with my father, at Milwaukee’s County Stadium in about 1959 versus Johnny Unitas, a sports–transforming quarterback — and the mighty Baltimore Colts.

Now, which aspects of culture might have a more lasting, profound or transformative impact might be another discussion, yet even removing sports from that discussion is an elitist fool’s errand.

Now, my main point might help to explain my blog subtitle: “Exploring our common and uncommon culture.”

OK, explanatory throat-clearing out of the way (yahhh-hem!…Gee, this column is getting, um, sticky), Here’s my sap-drenched point. I just overheard a radio sports talk show host (on 97.3 F.M. The Game) pose the rhetorical question: What it would mean to Bob Uecker, for the Brewers to win it all, now that they are Central Division Champions once again. The question hit me squarely in the gut because I hadn’t considered it until now. Have you?

As the announcer intimated Uecker may be retiring, that is, becoming yet another bronze statue, the ultimate one, before our very ears. and will, in spirit, join the two (count ’em) commemorative statues of him at Miller Park (er, Am-Fam Field). Even Aaron, Yount, Molitor and Selig only have single statues there.

The man is 89 years old and still the foghorn, no, the clarion bugle, of Milwaukee sports. Listen to this, a medley of his more unforgettable home run calls: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=bob+eucker+calls+a+home+run&mid=A3BFA25D04945CF49F17A3BFA25D04945CF49F17

One of his last HR calls is his description of Martin Maldonado’s walk-off blast to win a 17-inning game –by a career back-up catcher like Uecker, who caught all 17 innings (Maldonado is still playing for the Houston Astros.) Listen to these clips and look down to check for goosebumps. If none, check your pulse. For your sappy blogger, my sight is blurred by my tear ducts. Does any baseball announcer have a more powerful home run call?

I’ve never even seen Uecker in person, which I’m a bit surprised by, as an aging Milwaukee native, though I spent 20 years working in Madison. Yet, I feel like he’s a very special uncle, my only-surviving “relative” of “The Greatest Generation.”

These thrilling clips segue to an introduction to “the great Bob Uecker” by David Letterman, with a delightful Uecker impersonation and anecdote by Saturday Night Live alum Norm MacDonald.

If you dig further on You Tube, you should find some of Uecker’s many funny visits on The Tonight Show, with Johnny Carson, always introducing him as, “Would you welcome, Mister Baseball, Bob Uecker!”

This is getting down to the nub of my point. If Johnny Carson helped establish Uecker’s identity as the premier ambassador for the sport entwined with Milwaukee’s national identity as “Mister Baseball,” nobody comes close to Bob Uecker’s significance.

And if so, how do we zoom in on the implications of that identity? Given that is a strong, if arguable case for “Mister Baseball,” who more than Bob Uecker would most appropriately signify “Mister Milwaukee Brewer”? Perhaps the first former player who comes to mind as competition is Robin Yount, arguably the greatest historic Brewer, he of the 3,000-plus hits, league MVP at two different positions, etc. Yount is very much “in the ballpark,” or even comes close, but at best he’s still “just a bit outside,” as Uecker might say.

Bob’s a Milwaukee native and so Milwaukee that it’s still hard for me to type his slightly odd ethnic name correctly, I always want to type “Eu…”

In terms of visibility, wide renown and popularity, Uecker is the voice, the personality, the heart and ambassador of the Brewers, and by extension the city of Milwaukee. It’s also in his still-potent sense of humor, dry as a Wisconsin martini and always ready to float to the top during a slow spot in a game, like a buoyant Door County cherry.

A favorite Uecker line: The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.

Even consider him at his corniest, in his current, effortlessly gemietlekiet-soaked commercials, as the infallible blindfolded nose tester for the best Milwaukee sausage: “AHHHH Usinger’s!” (though I’d still argue for Klement’s!) Even the youngest Brewer fans know the white-haired nose for those.

Uecker doing Usinger’s commercial. facebook.com

In other words, it has been all too easy for many of us to take him for granted over the 50 years as the voice of his team, our team. Let that sink in: fifty years as the voice of the Brewers.

He might feel a bit like Sisyphus, pushing that big baseball boulder up the hill every season, the boulder that signifies the smallest market in Major Leagues, for 50 years of working, and waiting, for a championship!

No, make that 53 years, (having started with the Brewers in 1971). So, damn, he’s really pushing it. Time for him to slow down? He sounds as vital and sharp as ever, it seems.

Here he is more recently calling back-to-back game-winning homers by Christian Yelich and Ryan Braun: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=bob+eucker+calls+a+home+run&mid=A3BFA25D04945CF49F17A3BFA25D04945CF49F17

In one of the vintage home run calls above, he perhaps unconsciously invokes the renowned exclamation of his radio predecessor, Earl Gillespie, voice of the Milwaukee Braves, when he yells out at one point, “HOLY COW!” sensing instinctively how much that’s a quintessential Wisconsin rubric.

So, imagine what a first-ever Brewers World Championship — with Uecker calling the final out, and perhaps the crucial hit or home run, would mean to Uecker — as he possibly contemplates, or chooses, to finally ride off into the sunset? By extension, what would it mean to the city that is his?

At 89, “Ueck” still can embody the essence of the game’s timelessly boyish, pastoral playfulness (with a hint of its sublimated corn-field mysticism: “Build it, and they will come.”) and, in the next breath — as a Brewer suddenly smashes a rocket shot — can capture the drama and visual majesty of an epic, game-winning home run.

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Bob Uecker baseball card from 1964. He’s with the Cardinals in this card but he’s wearing a Milwaukee Braves uniform after being recently traded to the Cards by the Braves. e-bay.

Leave it to Uecker to be apparently the first baseball player to pose playing a tuba for his Topps baseball card. pixels.com

As a backup catcher, he played for the Milwaukee Braves, St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, and Atlanta Braves from 1962 to 1967. His career batting average was an even .200, the generous essence of mediocrity back then, even if a fair amount of current Major Leaguers now hit below that today and still have jobs.

WIKI reports: “After retiring, Uecker started a broadcasting career, (he) became known for his self-deprecating wit, and became a regular fixture on late night talk shows in the 1970s and 1980s, facetiously dubbed “Mr. Baseball” by TV talk show host Johnny Carson. He hosted several sports blooper shows, and had an acting career that included his role as George Owens on the TV show Mr. Belvedere and as play-by-play announcer Harry Doyle in the film Major League and its two sequels.[1] “

More from WIKI: Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers declared September 25, 2021, as Bob Uecker Day in honor of his 50th year broadcasting Brewers games.[25] Uecker threw out the first pitch in the game against the New York Mets. But instead of throwing the ball to the catcher, he unveiled a pitching machine and used that. Before the game, leftfielder Christian Yelich presented a gift on behalf of the players, a pair of custom Nike sneakers with “Air Uecker” and “Get Up, Get Up” on one foot and “One Of Us” and “Just a Bit Outside” on the other.[26]

What of that “facetious” Mister Baseball moniker? Stick around long enough and the joke pretty much wears off, and you’re left with the dregs of titters, like random splatters of brat mustard, adorning a life-size statue sitting in a stadium seat, amid the distinctly pungent aroma of spilled Miller Lite.

Bob Uecker statue in an Am-Fam Field seat, with a
“mini-me” of himself, actually a Uecker bobblehead doll. Pinterest.com

 

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It may start in a small town but this movie’s heart grows as big as Milwaukee

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In one of the toughest scenes in “Small Town Wisconsin,” alcoholic Wayne Sobierski, pounds down liquor while desperately searching for overnight accommodations for the night in Milwaukee. badfeelingmag.com

Small Town Wisconsin runs only through Tuesday, June 21, at the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee, but continues through Thursday at Marcus Theaters in Franklin, New Berlin, Delafield, and Saukville. For times and tickets: https://mkefilm.org/oriental-theatre/events/small-town-wisconsin 

Small Town Wisconsin is now available for purchase or rent on YouTube, here:

As was my mother, I consider myself something of a movie buff. As a professional arts journalist, I have only occasionally reviewed films, as I’ve worked for publications with designated film critics, per se.

But the new film Small Town Wisconsin hit me pretty hard, partly because it is a small-town Wisconsin story (my folks are from Two Rivers) that strives, like a salmon swimming upstream, towards a big spawning ground of dreams, the big city of Milwaukee Wisconsin (my hometown).

Director-turned-executive producer Alexander Payne understood the qualities he values in this film. He’s provided some of the richest indie-courting-the-mainstream films we’ve had in recent years: Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, Nebraska and Downsizing. So, he produced Small Town, which was written by Jason Naczek and directed by Milwaukee-native Niels Mueller and has racked up a slew of film festival awards. I suspect Payne saw the heart he brings to all his films even though this, to my eyes is, more than his satires, among other things, a gentle poke at small-town manners.

Producer Payne is also an actor’s director, having elicited some of the finest roles of various actors’ careers, including Laura Dern, Bruce Dern, Reese Witherspoon, Jack Nicholson, Sandra Oh, Paul Giamatti, George Clooney, Will Forte, (Aaron Rodgers-ex-girlfriend) Shailene Woodley, and character actor June Squibb, among others. So, there’s the imprimatur.

The biggest name actor in Small Town Wisconsin is Kristin Johnson, the Emmy award-winning actress for Third Rock from The Sun.

What we have here is a sort of fish-out-of-water story, times two. The main character Wayne Stobierski (Daniel Sullivan) is slowly being reeled out of his comfort zone — as a failing divorced father virtually immersed in alcohol, literally kicking and screaming — up into the harsh reality of losing any custody of his adorable son, Tyler (Cooper J. Friedman). He seems basically a good guy and an extremely sympathetic character, but Wayne also has anger-management issues. So, it’s obvious to everyone how he’s floundering as a father.

Wayne’s only daily responsibility is to one goldfish, Buster, who also is symbolically forced out of his little water bowl simply by Wayne’s inebriated neglect. So, we fear Wayne will meet a similar fate, which hangs over the story. Point beer tall boys, with occasional whiskey shots at the local bowling alley bar, seem to be his primary fuel (the small town’s street scenes are in Palmyra).

So, the writer and director proceed to force Wayne up on a tight rope, in varying degrees of intoxication, with the poor schlep tottering between high-spirited comedy and utter pathos. Bowling scenes seem a variation on those of The Big Lebowski and provide the most notable cultural context for small-town Wisconsin — easygoing solo and team sport play to sustain folks through the state’s long, cold winters. The director strives for balanced political context by including cardboard cutouts of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton observing the bowling matches. Wayne’s comical lane mishaps extend to an offbeat scene of him driving around drunk with his bowling ball, another symbol of self-destructiveness.

It is only Wayne’s fundamental if dysfunctional decentness that persuades his ex-wife Diedra (Tanya Fischer), to warily allow him one last weekend with his son, on two conditions: that he explain to Tyler that he’ll be moving to Phoenix with her and her new husband, and that Wayne be accompanied by a chaperone, his best friend, Chuck (Bill Heck), an archetypal clean liver. Tyler clearly loves his father even though he realizes he’s an alcoholic and understands, at a basic level, what the word means.

Wayne struggles to break the news to his son Tyler — that the boy will be moving with his mother and stepfather to Arizona. wsaw.com

That relationship provides most of the film’s heart squeezing and tear-jerking which is, in my book, hard earned, but with golden aspects, like the humble luck of finding a great baseball card in a random gum pack and making hay with that card. In fact, Wayne shows his true colors by financing his last big bid for his son’s heart (and perhaps more) by selling his baseball card collection, including his Hank Aaron rookie card. Though he pitches the weekend to Deidra as a typically rustic fishing and camping outing, Wayne’s secret idea is grander: give Tyler something he’ll always remember his dad by, a trip to Milwaukee, and the boy’s first major league baseball game.

Indeed, it’s a small odyssey with one eloquent classical allusion. Wayne declares Milwaukee’s baseball stadium as what “the ancient Romans called a coliseum.” Wayne, a drinking-on-the-job car mechanic, plans a night or two in Milwaukee’s finest hotel the Pfister, and the big game, “Milwaukee versus Chicago” (curiously the Cubs and Brewers are never specifically named). Sullivan, and increasingly Heck and Johnson, carve out richly-textured characters. Chuck’s personal situation almost drives him to find some new solace, on this trip. They end up at the Milwaukee home of Wayne’s sister Alicia, played by Johnson in one of the most substantial and affecting roles of her career.

Despite all the things working against him, Wayne is lucky to have a sister like Alicia (Kristen Johnson).  screen daily

One curiosity is that a movie this excellent has only earned about 80% Rotten Tomatoes critics rating, though a 95% audience score. As I see no real flaws in it, I might only speculate that it was victimized by our cultural schism between rural and urban. Milwaukee itself is somewhat idealized and the movie provides a rich panorama of the city’s diverse virtues, including a Lake Michigan boat tour of the lovely cityside, a visit to Usinger’s sausage retail outlet, and an impulsive quest to the McMansion of ex-Milwaukee slugger Gorman Thomas. I must leave the wiggling storyline in the water at that. Suffice to say, sister is the better angel on bro’s shoulder, in a story of redemption as tough-minded as it is bighearted.

So, I wonder if those less taken by it adopt the small-town viewpoint, as defensive about the characterization of the lead as an alcoholic, with little apparent self-awareness. Of course, alcoholics exist in big cities at least as much, if not more, than small towns. And the film’s makers walk their own tight rope of avoiding precipitously heavy-footed political commentary.

After all, ex-wife Deidra, Chuck and Alicia are fully sober and reasonably intelligent. And Wayne himself, in his lucid moments, displays a distinct sensitivity, especially interacting with his son. Is there a small-town critique that isn’t only defensiveness, and is this the posture of dissenting critics? The movie strives also for an overriding cultural point: We need to start bridging the gap of rural and urban, red and blue, because our commonalities as Americans are quite evident and valuable in such things as baseball games, road trips, fishing and bowling, and the gratifying and heartbreaking dynamics of nuclear families.

To me, a film like this also allows us to see our humanity shorn of illusions created by politicians promising the moon and snookering those who desperately grab onto, what appears to them, the fading American dream. Facts and stats bear it out: Urban minorities still have much more to overcome in America.  Yet a film like Small Town Wisconsin suggests that even a decent white man, with black heroes, can lose his grip and must, at some point, do something other than blame others for his apparent fate.

A final symbolic pattern surfaces: Two people, who help open Wayne’s eyes in Milwaukee, are black. A third black person, with a “halo” for a name, grew up in Milwaukee, and shows him a possible way to a new start in life.

 

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