Reckoning with Bob Uecker's Final Game
- Post Authorby Sports director
- Post DateThu Jan 23 2025
By Vince Hesprich

“Bob Uecker” by Steve Paluch is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
For many non-sports fans, it is difficult to understand the appeal of professional baseball. As a die-hard fan of the sport, is even more difficult to blame them. After all, a comparison between baseball and the three other major sports in America would seem to yield the conclusion that America's Pastime is fundamentally broken and undeniably boring.
Basketball is filled with the best athletes on the planet and offers the likelihood of seeing a team's superstar play most the game while taking as many shots as they want. That freedom is why the modern record for most shot attempts in a game belongs to Kobe Bryant who expertly reminded the world once more of his greatness by using 50 shots in his legendary final game to collect 60 points.
In baseball, you are considered lucky if you see the star player hit more than four times over the course of an entire game. And if your star is a starting pitcher, there is at least an 80% chance they will not play in the game at all. That restriction is why Babe Ruth's last game saw the once-terrifying slugger go 0-1 with a groundout in a meaningless May game on an irrelevant Boston Braves team that finished the season with 20 less wins than any other team in the sport.
Hockey is defined by its lightning-quick pace and nonstop action. No matter how bad a game is, fans will always be treated to the spectacle of watching 12 people with razors on the bottom of their shoes fly around a block of ice crashing into each other and launching a small cylinder around at speeds that can top 100 miles per hour.
Compare this to baseball whose primary tool for burning time is the thing Americans hates most: waiting. Waiting for the batter to walk up to the plate. Waiting for the pitcher to throw. Waiting for the players to take the field. Every time a pitching change occurs, fans find themselves waiting for the manager to walk onto the mound, waiting for the manager to finish their conversation with their pitcher, then waiting for the manager to wait for their relief pitcher to warm up after the relief pitcher had just spent the entire game waiting to enter the game. With that in mind, it was no surprise in 2010 when the Wall Street Journalfamously concluded that just 18 minutes of a three-hour baseball game involved movement and 90% of a baseball game was spent watching nothing happen.
Finally, professional football is easily the biggest sport in the nation and it is easy to see why. The sport sees a mere 17 games used to decide what teams make the playoffs, injecting urgency into every contest and hope into every fanbase that their team can become the annual feel-good story just by having a few close finishes go their way.
Any hope of getting lucky in the sport of baseball is squashed by a debilitating 162-game schedule. Sure, any team can hypothetically get a win on any given contest, hence how the woeful Pittsburgh Pirates swept the juggernaut Dodgers last season. But when a three-game winning streak in baseball is the mathematical equivalent to winning 31 percent of one football game, it is no surprise that the Dodgers nonetheless ended the season as World Series champions and the Pittsburgh Pirates finished the season one game out of last place in their division.
Add in the inherent unfairness within the sport that enables the Los Angeles Dodgers to have a team payroll more than the bottom-five teams combined, and the conclusion seems obvious: baseball is impossible to care about.
And yet, on October 3, 2024, it was a game of baseball that forced hundreds of thousands of people into a full exploration of the emotional spectrum. Somehow, in the same way only the most specific of circumstances could have turned a power plant in Chernobyl into a nuclear explosion, so to can this hapless, starless, lethargic, boring excuse for a sport twist itself into the perfect scientific formula for both jubilation and despair. Explaining how a kids game can accomplish this task can best be done with the only thing more boring than baseball: stock portfolios.
In a lot of ways, being a sports fan is not dissimilar to being an investor. An investor has a limited amount of capital they can place in the market and making a profit hinges on their ability to strategically select what stocks to invest in. Similarly, sports fans have the option to make a different sort of investment: an emotional investment. The more a fan follows along with a team's progress, the more they care about the result, and the more they will be personally impacted by how the season ultimately concludes. In a best-case scenario, a fan nets a lifetime of emotional profit when their team wins multiple championships. But when a fan is stuck in an endless cycle of investing their emotions into a team stuck in a perpetual recession, the result can be legitimately taxing. For that reason, 90-year-old Bob Uecker entered the 2024 MLB season in more emotional debt than any sports figure who ever lived
The bond between a die-hard fan and their team can feel impossible to match, but those who work in the industry are quick to argue that while a team can be a major part of a fan's life, those who associate their livelihood with a team are infinitely more connected. As the radio voice of the Brewers for 54 years, the connection between Bob Uecker and the Milwaukee Brewers baseball club has a strong argument as the closest connection there has ever been between a single person and a professional sports team. Unfortunately for Uecker, if someone were to rank every professional sports team in order of how fun they would be to spend 54 years watching, the Brewers would likely be near the very bottom.
Milwaukee entered 2024 as one of only five professional baseball teams that have never won a championship. While all five of those teams have proven to be a chore to cheer for, what makes the Brewers uniquely frustrating throughout their history is how dynamic their failure has been. Sure, there have been plenty of hapless seasons where any hope for a championship is all but erased before the month of April is over, but what makes the Brewers uniquely painful is that sprinkled within the endless mediocrity are numerous seasons filled with the hope of finally giving the Brewer faithful a return on investment. Whether it be a quick exit like in 2020, a game-seven loss that kept Milwaukee out of the World Series like in 2018, or even the ultimate soul-crusher in the form of a game-seven defeat in the Fall Classic like in 1982, baseball in Milwaukee would never yield fruit. Opportunity rarely knocks on the Brewers' door. When it does, the Brewers adjust their calendar to make sure they are not home.
There was never an official announcement regarding whether 2024 would be Uecker's last, but there were signs for those looking. Uecker had already decreased his workload in recent years to the extent that it was not uncommon for his health to force him to go weeks without gracing Wisconsin radios. There was even doubt if Uecker would announce at all in 2024 when the Brewers released their broadcaster list ahead of the season and Uecker went entirely unmentioned. When Uecker's return was finally announced on March 27, 2024, just one week before first pitch in Milwaukee, the Brewers' official statement was carefully worded to state that Uecker would announce opening day on April 2 and “take it one day at a time after that.”
The fear of Uecker's first broadcast at age 90 being the equivalent of Babe Ruth's last game with the Braves was very real. And yet, when Uecker was introduced at the top of the broadcast and his iconic voice hit the airwaves once more, he reminded Wisconsin why he earned his reputation as the funniest voice in baseball by shouting “I've been locked in this room since last October I'm just happy someone finally opened up the door!”
Uecker was still Uecker, but it was also clear he was laboring. The unexpected breaks became regular and made every pitch from every inning from every game his voice could muster feel like the curtain call of a legendary band's final tour. Uecker's unspoken last-stand alone would have made the 2024 Milwaukee Brewers worth watching, but the team decided to do do something that was a rarity throughout Uecker's career: they gave their announcer a fun team that could win some games.
The 2024 Milwaukee Brewers were designed to generate emotional investment. They had a payroll in the bottom third of the sport and played their games in the smallest market in the sport. Although there were personable stars at the top, most of the roster was made up of no-name players with clear flaws in their game. Leading the team was a 66 year-old manager Pat Murphy who only got the job because the team's previous longtime manager jumped ship to manage Milwaukee's biggest rivals in Chicago. Fresh off trading their star pitcher before the season, the team entered the season openly embracing its status as the biggest trigger words in fandom: disrespected underdogs.
As the season went along, it became clear to Wisconsin that the Brewers had the potential to be the sports equivalent of putting money into Apple in 1976 when Steve Jobs was operating out of a garage. They soared to a division title, leaving in their wake a collection of thrilling victories and memorable moments until the playoffs arrived and the Brewers found themselves matched up in a best-of-three series against the New York Mets.
In many ways, the Mets were the antitheses of all the struggles Milwaukee faced. Where the low-payroll Brewers had zero margin for error regarding salary allocation, New York had pockets so bottomless that it generated legitimate comedy. Going into the series, the Mets were paying pitchers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander $31 million and $25 million respectively which was, an on annual basis, more money than any of the Milwaukee Brewers were making. The kicker was that neither Scherzer nor Verlander were on the Mets roster, and were instead pitching for other teams after the Mets traded them away.
With the Mets having the ability to pay opposing players more than the Brewers were paying their most expensive players, the upcoming battle was already set to be the climax in the great baseball story being written in Milwaukee. The battle would have made a decent Hollywood film if not for the fact that a near-identical plot had already been written, and it was one the Brewer faithful knew well.
In 1989, Major League became a surprise box office hit due to its unafraid nature toward being predictable. The cliches and tropes were so pervasive that it allowed viewers to ignore the unrealistic nature of the film and unabashedly live out their fantasy of witnessing the ultimate hypothetical sports story. In the film, the Cleveland Indians' owner fields a cheap team filled with no-namers and washed-up veterans in the hopes of losing games, but the team's distinguished first-year manager turns the unlikely odds into motivation and guides the team to a thrilling playoff victory over the high-payroll big-city New York Yankees.
The parallels between this fictional team in 1989 Cleveland and the real team in 2024 Milwaukee were already apparent before taking into account the two-biggest similarities. Firstly, the climax of the film was shot in Milwaukee at County Stadium where the Brewers played from 1953 to 2000. Secondly, the character Harry Doyle, Cleveland's fictional announcer whose often-vulgar commentary is a popular pick for best part of the film, was played by Bob Uecker himself who largely wrote his own lines for the character. Needless to say, the similarities between film and reality were joyfully eerie while the difference was beautifully simple. Cleveland was trying to earn a playoff win to stick it to the team's villainous owner for exploiting a stadium lease loophole which allowed them to relocate the team to Miami by fielding a disastrous team for the purpose of minimizing attendance. Milwaukee just wanted to win one for Bob.
Uecker had not called a Brewer game in weeks leading up to the playoffs and his biggest fans were forced to continue waiting as Uecker was unable to attend game one of the series. Like any protagonist, the Brewers struggled out the gate and a collection of self-inflicted wounds led to a game one loss. In order to keep their season alive, Milwaukee would have to win two-straight games against the hottest team in the sport. Their first win came the next day through a pair of clutch home-runs, but Uecker once again was unavailable throughout the broadcast.
The thrilling game two win meant that game three was set to be the biggest the Brewers had played in years. It was the kind of game Uecker rarely got to see over 54 years. When he did get to see them, the Brewers usually found a way to rip his heart out. However, with a strangely-unique opportunity in front of him and the entire state of Wisconsin behind him, Bob Uecker decided that he would test fate and use whatever strength his 90-year-old body could muster to don the headset once more. The date was October 3, 2024.
It is hard to find many things the sport of baseball is the undisputed best at, but one of those things is undoubtedly its ability to use nicknames as a method for assign roles to certain figures. A player gains a role through their style, reputation, personality and an infinite list of other, often-nonsensical, characteristics. The result is an endless collection of players whose entire careers can be summed up in a few words. By cementing himself as they greatest defender in the history of baseball, Ozzie Smith became baseball's “Wizard.” Derek Jeter became “The Captain” through his consistency and level-headedness. Meanwhile, reliever Mitch Williams' inability to find the strike zone made him the sport's “Wild Thing.” Baseball has “Bambinos,” “Hammerin' Hanks” and Charlie Hustles.” It has “Big Papis,” “Big Hurts” and “Big Units.” It even has “crime dogs,” secretaries of defense” and “human rain delays.” Thousands of fascinating characters have filled professional baseball and yet the sport chose Bob Uecker, a backup catcher whose career was so unremarkable that calling it average would be a laughably-generous assessment, to hold its most prestigious role: “Mr. Baseball.”
Sure, Uecker gained his most famous nickname from noted non-player Johnny Carson, but nicknames only stick when everyone analyzes the argument for its existence and collectively agrees on its candidacy. The truth is that the reason why a quick quip from a comedy great was enough to plant baseball's most prestigious nickname onto one to one of the sport's most notoriously-unproductive players is because the baseball world recognized that Uecker's love for the sport transcended the traditional methods by which players were judged.
Perhaps the only thing that sullies Uecker's nickname is the silly sport its based on which, going by previous logic, makes being crowned “Mr. Baseball” the sports equivalent of being crowned “Lord of the Flies.” However, what Mr. Baseball knew better than anyone is that the same shortcomings that make America's Pastime appear outdated compared to its competition are also what make the sport brilliant from a storytelling perspective. Game three between the Milwaukee Brewers and the New York Mets became the ultimate proof.
Baseball's inability to let its starpower shine can lead to the game's most unknown players finding themselves in the biggest spots, but those exact circumstances turn those previously unknown players into heroes in the eyes of entire fanbases. Early on, the hero for Milwaukee was rookie pitcher Tobias Myers who had been a part of six organizations across his first eight years in minor league baseball before a swarm of injuries forced the Brewers to give him a shot midway through the season.
Somehow, over the course of one year, Myers went from getting ripped apart in the minors as a relief pitcher to starting a do-or-die playoff game at the major league level. For Myers to even be on the mound was a testament to perseverance. For Myers to then allow just two baserunners over five scoreless innings felt like something unrealistic even by Major League standards.
Myers' heroic night would have ideally been enough for Uecker to celebrate an easy win, but a similarly-strong performance from Mets starter Jose Quintana meant that Mr. Baseball had the privilege of calling a barn-burner. Both teams' offenses were shut down throughout the duel, yet a scoreless contest meant that one swing of the bat had the potential to dramatically change the fortunes of both the game and the season. The mere threat of each pitch possibly leading to a game-changing hit made baseball's supposed weakness into a major strength.
While it is true that the vast majority of a baseball game is spent waiting, the kind of waiting associated with a close baseball game is not the traditional kind that fills the monotony of everyday life. Waiting for the next pitch is not like waiting at the DMV; its the anticipation of being at the top of a roller coaster's peak while waiting for the cart to finally plummet down the tracks. Baseball is the scene in the thriller movie where the character has their hand on the doorknob of the foreboding closet in the abandoned mansion. At its best, baseball combines the exhilaration of opening a present with the apprehension of watching a roulette wheel spin. There is no additional action to watch. There is no escape. There is only pure, raw, unadulterated suspense.
The antidote to this emotional suspense is supposed to come through the 162 game schedule that renders a single game irrelevant. But this depressant becomes a powerful stimulant come playoffs. The first 162 games appeared lifeless at first glance. Instead, they were secretly charging up a battery that powers the playoffs. In October, every team is faced with not just the possibility, but the statistical likelihood, of failure. When future games are not guaranteed, the toil of the previous months can be rendered either irrelevant or significant in one pitch. One swing. One moment.
A scoreless game in the eighth all but guaranteed that Mr. Baseball would see one of those moments. The transformation was officially complete. The stars had officially aligned. The game of baseball had successfully twisted itself into a machine specially designed for emotional investment. The only question left was would this machine create euphoria, or would it create radioactive sorrow.
Jake Bauers provided an answer.
The backup first-baseman recognized it was his turn to don the cape and crushed a changeup over the right field fall to give the Milwaukee Brewers a 1-0 lead in their most important game in years. The moment sent a tense building of 41,594 fans into a fever pitch. The atmosphere was electric. The investment had officially made a profit.
Before the Brewer faithful could even fully process what their team had accomplished, Sal Frelick, who had gone an impossible 147 straight games without home run going into game three, picked that exact moment to hit the first pitch he saw into the second deck and turn the jubilation into delirium. The Milwaukee Brewers had done it. Maybe this team would not go on to win the World Series, but they had epitomized what made their game great. They became the perfect way to explain why Bob Uecker became invested in the the sport in the 1930s and why his investment remained steadfast in 2024.
Uecker may not have been the specific Brewers radio announcer on the microphone when lightning struck twice, but when the ninth inning arrived, there was no doubt that Mr. Baseball would be the voice behind it. The ninth inning became an opportunity for the sport of baseball to give its biggest fan a parting gift after 70 years in professional baseball. All his team had to do was get three more outs.
Suddenly, the Mets had two runners aboard and New York Superstar Pete Alonso found himself with a bat in his hands, staring down Brewers close Devin Williams. Bob Uecker on the call:
“Alonso, stepping out momentarily, now back in there. Williams, three balls and a strike. And the pitch.”
“Hit in the air to right, deep, warning track, and gone. Peter Alonso just put New York on top in this one with a three-run home run to right field. And just like that, a 2-0 lead is now a 3-2 deficit.”
“That quickly. Wow.”
It was all a big practical joke so perfectly orchestrated that even the funniest man in baseball never saw it coming. Across the literal tens of thousands of innings that Mr. Baseball watched, the sport he loved saved its most heartbreaking for last. The Mets ultimately scored four in the top and shut down the Brewers' last gasp in the bottom as the collective eighth and ninth inning of Brewers vs Mets game three became an instant candidate for most devastating stretch of baseball a fanbase has ever had the misfortune of witnessing.
Where other announcers use their final words to delicately and precisely recap their careers, Uecker did not have it in him. Maybe he dared to believe there was a chance he would be back next season. Maybe his notoriously-humble self thought a final goodbye would be unfair to the postgame crew's tight schedule. Maybe he was just tired. Either way, when Bob Uecker died four months later on January 16, 2025, it meant that the last thing he ever said on the air was the perfect summary of how a fanbase felt watching a team they spent a year following go from irrelevant to irreverent to decadent.
Uecker's final line encapsulated the feeling of growing a meaningful connection to a group of players and coaches who do not know you exist because the team wound up being better at playing a kids game than some oddsmakers at Las Vegas projected. It summarized the feeling of investing in a startup that looked like it could be the next Apple, only for the company to wind up being Theranos. It compressed the desperation of using a fictional Hollywood team with an outdated mascot as a scientific piece of evidence regarding how a real-life team would perform.
It encapsulated how Uecker himself undoubtedly felt, considering he had been secretly battling small cell cancer since 2023 and kept his battle hidden from almost everyone. His words made it obvious that even at 90, his lability to emotionally attach himself to the game that beared his nickname remained.
“I'm telling you,” Uecker began, before starting a pause that conveyed more emotion than any words could.
“That one… had some sting to it.”
As silly as it sounds, its fair to wonder whether this loss, combined with the other tragic losses Milwaukee faced throughout their history, have a major impact on Uecker's legacy as a broadcaster. Any team's announcer dreams of using the airwaves to proclaim that their team won “the big one.” For an announcer to spend 54 years with one team and never get to make that announcement is not nothing. The greatness of an athlete is often measured by how many championships they won. Somehow, this remains indirectly true for the game's broadcasters despite their reputation of having zero influence on their team's performance.
The unfortunate truth is that the likes of Vin Scully, Mel Allen and Jack Buck only had the opportunity to boost their legacy by calling the biggest moments because their respective teams fielded teams capable of creating those moments. Uecker never had the chance to dramatically provide the time of day as Sandy Koufax finished off a perfect game because the Brewers never had a player like Sandy Koufax. The opportunity to rave about a player's greatness after a record-breaking home run was muzzled by Milwaukee's inability to develop truly devastating power hitters. When the Brewres did collect enough talent to be competitive, an inability to retain that talent meant the championship windows were few and far between. Uecker never had the iconic calls of his peers because the team he spent 54 years with rarely had an iconic moment. And in an industry where an incredible call in the World Series is worth 1,000 incredible calls in meaningless summer games, Bob Uecker finds himself outside the top five on nearly every online list which ranks the greatest to ever do it.
The argument is simple: if you had to choose one voice to describe a big moment when the stars align, you would choose the voice that has experience describing those big moments. What this argument does not account for is that memorable baseball moments are only memorable because of their infrequency and that the majority of a broadcaster's time is spent attempting to build a relationship with an audience in the hope they stick around through the season's inevitable monotony. Ironically, the figure that best described that concept was also the figure who saw more memorable moments and less monotony than anyone: Vin Scully.
In a 2009 story by PBS, Scully justified his decision to work alone by arguing that if you are selling a car, it is better to talk directly to the customer about the car then to have the customer listen as you tell someone else about the car. Uecker, like Scully, expertly recognized that connecting with an audience is the most important part of the job and that they were as much salesmen as they were baseball announcers.
Making a fanbase care about the outcome of the biggest game of their lives is easy. Its selling them on the low-impact 162 games beforehand that is where the salesmanship arrives. The whole point of baseball is winning in October, yet the average baseball game sees two teams with either meager or nonexistent championship hopes play a game where one team takes an early lead and rides it to an easy finish.
The difference between Scully and Uecker is that by working for the perennially contending Dodgers, Scully was in the favorable position of being asked to sell Porsches at an 80% discount. Meanwhile, Bob Uecker spent the better part of 54 years selling ugly used pickup trucks that were only reliable in that they were consistently unreliable.
Just like a bland pickup truck, the Brewers never felt like they had any truly unique features compared to the rest of the league. The only consistent tool Bob Uecker had at his disposal to convince Wisconsin the Brewers were worth following was Bob Uecker. It was the only tool he ever needed.
What made Bob Uecker great is that he broke down the barrier between team and fan by being closer to both groups than any announcer ever was. As a former player known for his unmatched wit and love for the sport, Uecker created personal connections with everyone within the organization until he inadvertently became the most influential person in the organization outside of the team's owner. Meanwhile, his love for both his hometown of Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin as a whole made him a beloved figure across the Badger State to even the most casual of baseball fans.
Combining a good standing with both parties meant that Mr. Baseball was always in the perfect position to explain to his audience why baseball is a game worth following. Unlike much of his audience, Uecker never faced the naivety of finding ways to enjoying baseball at its most rudimentary level where nameless figures in opposing colors compete to see who can whack a ball with a stick at the right time. Instead, he had the privilege of personally meeting a new collection of people and watching them attempt to accomplish their goals both as an individual and as a team.
Uecker's biggest strength was his ability to make Wisconsin care whether or not the stick hit the ball. He conveyed through his energy and his insight that even the worst of teams have their moments to remember and storylines worth following. Every team has the new player looking to start their career with a bang and the aging veteran looking to extend their career. Every player gets their moment and every team gets their celebration. Even if that celebration was never the ultimate one, Bob Uecker's ability to humanize every team made every moment special.
And when it was impossible to sell an individual game, when the Brewers fell behind an insurmountable number of runs and baseball descended to its lowest level as entertainment, Uecker rose to his highest level as an entertainer. He always had the superpower of reminding listeners why he was on The Tonight Show over 100 times back when the program was an institution of everyday culture. He could tell fans one of his unlimited number of stories from his playing days, like how he was fined $275 for wrecking a tuba at the World Series after using it to shag fly balls, or how he forced his entire team to retake their team picture after he was caught secretly holding hands with Hall of Fame Pitcher Bob Gibson. At any moment, he could drop one of his famous one-liners like when the Brewers were once down 8-0 in the ninth and Uecker used his deadpan humor to deliver one of his more famous lines: “well, a couple of grand slammers and the Brewers are right back in this one.”
The lone positive of Uecker's death is that those who witnessed his comedy unfiltered finally had the ability share their personal experiences. But beneath the laughter was the confirmation of a belief that felt too ridiculous to be true. Just one day after Uecker's death, Yankees announcer Michael Kay spoke truth to the longtime rumor that Yankees owner Geroge Steinbrenner courted Uecker to be New York's announcer numerous times throughout Uecker's career in Milwaukee. But no matter how much money Steinbrenner offered, Uecker never took the deal, citing a love for the Brewers and the city they played in.
For all their faults, the Brewers were the perfect team for Uecker to showcase his greatness even if it meant that greatness would never go fully appreciated. The good news for the Brewers was that Bob Uecker ultimately going overlooked in the pantheon of announcing greats did not matter less to anyone than it did to Uecker himself. He never cared about his legacy. All he cared about was baseball and creating laughs. The Milwaukee Brewers gave him the opportunity to spend his entire adult life doing both.
Mr. Baseball is not a tragic figure. He does not warrant your sympathy, nor does he want it. Within the context of a world where billions spend their lives filled with the quiet desperation of finding a lifelong passion, Bob Uecker may be the luckiest man who ever lived. He recognized early on in life what made him happy and was fortuitous enough to spend a lifetime making a fortune doing exactly that. Along the way, he gained adoration from those who followed him, respect from those who worked with him, and love from those who knew him. Even as his body broke down and his health forced him to reckon with what lay ahead, the love was for what he did was so strong that Uecker died a 90-year-old man who never officially retired.
Bob Uecker is a reminder of why time is worth enjoying. He is the epitome of why the dream is worth chasing and a life is worth living. He was awarded more time on Earth than almost anyone and spent nearly all of it inviting the rest of us to see the world through his perspective: the one that recognized how the seemingly mundane could hold a season's worth of entertainment and a lifetime of inspiration.
It would be foolish to pretend Mr. Baseball was unbothered by the fact the team he spent a lifetime working for never ended their season holding a championship trophy. However, to twist this relatively minor inconvenience into an excuse to turn a symbol of entertainment into a pillar of hidden anguish is to mischaracterize a legacy that transcends the concepts of winning and losing.
Most of Mr. Baseball's finest quotes are a reflection of his quick wit and dry sense of humor. However, one of his lesser known gems, said years before his death, is the ultimate proof that a man who never took his role for granted died with the same appreciation he lived with:
“I hope the fans have enjoyed listening as much as I've enjoyed doing the games. I don't ever go to the park where I don't have a good day. I don't like losing. But I don't think I ever go to the park where I have a bad day.
“I don't think once.”