The Brewers and Dodgers meet in the NLCS for a best of seven series starting this Friday. Come Game 3, Hall of Fame Broadcaster Bob Uecker will return to the city that helped make him famous.
Uecker has been calling games on the radio for the Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club since 1971. But most who live outside the state of Wisconsin may know him for, perhaps, something else.
Uecker's much, albeit self-maligned playing career spanned just six major league seasons, but it's his broadcasting career that now roars through its fifth decade. Also in its fifth decade is another career of his: show business.
The Catalyst of Uecker's acting career? Most likely it was his appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Thanks to his popularity, quick wit, and special relationship with Carson, Uecker appeared on the late night talk show more than one hundred times.
Next, it was on to more fulfilling work. Something he could really sink his teeth into.
When he wasn't filming another light beer commercial, he was trying his hand at playing a sitcom dad.
That's right, Ueck' played George Owens on Mr. Belvedere alongside Christopher Hewett and Ilene Graff.
But it was a 1989 role in a movie filmed in Milwaukee about a baseball team from...Cleveland?..that cemented his legacy not just as a broadcaster, but a comedian and actor as well.
Uecker played Harry Doyle, the fictional radio play-by-play voice of a struggling, Bad-News-Bears-esque Cleveland Indians Ballclub. Baseball and comedy; for Ueck', it was a perfect fit.
Although his playing career wasn't necessarily worthy of high praise--Bob often joked about his ability to get into the Hall of Fame as a player--he did wind up in the Hall for his first love: baseball.
