Jack Buck Passes Away

[Nanner]

Wednesday, June 19, 2002
Buck a St. Louis institution, broadcast legend
Associated Press

ST. LOUIS -- One of most distinctive voices in sports has been silenced.

Jack Buck, who in nearly five decades as a broadcaster rose from Harry Caray's sidekick to a St. Louis institution, died Tuesday night after a long hospital stay. He was 77.

"He had a great life," said Joe Buck, who joined his father in the booth in 1991 and called the Cardinals' victory over the Anaheim Angels for Fox. "He didn't waste one minute of one day. He packed two lifetimes into one lifetime. He went from poor to wealthy in his lifetime, yet he never changed."

Buck underwent lung cancer surgery Dec. 5. He returned to Barnes-Jewish Hospital on Jan. 3 to have an intestinal blockage removed and never left the hospital. Joe Buck said his father went in and out of a coma several times the last few weeks.

On May 16, Buck underwent another operation to eradicate a series of recurring infections, including pneumonia, and was placed on dialysis. Joe Buck said his father died with his family by his side.

"He made us proud every day," Joe Buck said. "He battled for his life."

Jack Buck began calling Cardinals games on radio in 1954, teaming first with Caray. Nationally, Buck called Super Bowls, World Series and even pro bowling for CBS, ABC and NBC.

"It's a sad day for the game of baseball," Arizona Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenly said. "He was baseball for a lot of people who grew up in the Midwest."

The gravel-voiced Buck, a heavy smoker for decades, authored several memorable calls.

After a gimpy Kirk Gibson hit a game-winning two-run homer off Oakland's Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the 1998 World Series, Buck was incredulous: "I don't believe what I just saw!"

Buck was also behind the microphone for the first telecast of the American Football League and at the NFL championship "Ice Bowl" in 1967.

In St. Louis and throughout the Midwest, it was Buck's calls of Cardinals games that made him a beloved figure. His signature call after Cardinals victories: "That's a winner!" In 1998, the team unveiled a bronze sculpture outside Busch Stadium of Buck's likeness behind the microphone.

"There only is and always will be just one Jack Buck," said former slugger Jack Clark, who played for the Cardinals in the 1980s. "He's a Hall of Fame announcer and a Hall of Fame person. He was in the game when it was at its purest. His calls of Stan Musial, (Bob) Gibson, Ozzie (Smith) and all the way up to Mark McGwire are classics."

Buck also told Cardinals fans to "Go crazy, folks, go crazy!" when Smith homered -- his first ever left-handed -- off Tom Niedenfuer of the Dodgers to win Game 5 of the 1985 NL Championship Series.

Buck took a minimalist approach when McGwire tied Roger Maris' home run record in 1998. Then, he said, "Pardon me for a moment while I stand and applaud," while the crowd noise washed over the airwaves.

"It was a thrill just to be interviewed by the man and sit down and talk to him," Arizona ace Curt Schilling said. "He was living baseball history."

John Francis Buck was born Aug. 21, 1924, in Holyoke, Mass. He left home as a teen-ager to work as a deck hand on the iron ore boats of the Great Lakes and was drafted into the Army at 19 during the height of World War II.

Buck shipped out for Europe in February 1945 and was wounded the next month in Germany. Back home a year later, Buck went to Ohio State and launched his broadcasting career at the school's radio station.

"When I went on the air to do a sports show at WOSU, I had never done a sports show before," Buck wrote in "That's a Winner," his autobiography. "When I did a basketball game, it was the first time I ever did play-by-play. The same with football. I didn't know how to do these things. I just did them."

In 1954, Buck beat out Chick Hearn -- who went on to become an institution with the Los Angeles Lakers -- for a job with the Cardinals.

Buck left the Cardinals booth for a year in 1960 to work for ABC. He later had a falling out with the network, which led him to not return a phone call that could have landed him the first play-by-play role on the network's "Monday Night Football."

Instead, he called Monday night games and 17 Super Bowls on CBS radio with sidekick Hank Stram from 1978-1996.

In 1990, Buck began a two-year stint as lead baseball announcer for CBS. All the while, Buck continued to call Cardinals games. Joe Buck is now the lead baseball and football play-by-play announcer at Fox.

An amateur poet, Buck often read his work on the air and, on occasion, to crowds. When baseball resumed last year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Buck's patriotic words were a highlight of a pregame ceremony at Busch Stadium.

Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame's broadcaster's wing in 1987, Buck later became a member of both the broadcasters and radio halls of fame. He was awarded the Pete Rozelle Award by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1996 and received a lifetime achievement Emmy in 2000.

Buck, who had six children with his first wife Alyce, and two with wife Carole, is survived by his second wife; sons Jack Jr., Dan and Joe; and daughters Beverly, Christine, Bonnie, Betsy and Julie.

A public memorial service will be held Thursday at Busch Stadium before the Cardinals' game against Anaheim.

[Baseball Guru]

:crying2: :crying2: :crying2: :crying2: :crying2:



R.I.P.



:crying2: :crying2: :crying2: :crying2: :crying2:

[RockieBill]

I can't imagine anyone (my age, anyway) that didn't listen to Buck on their cheap transistor radios late at night. Many years ago, there were a lot fewer radio stations, and the ones that were broadcasting could practically be picked up coast to coast, depending on the weather. Jack Buck was literally the voice of baseball for thousands (millions?) of kids growing up in the late '50s and '60s.

Rest in peace, Mr. Buck.

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Losing an old friend I never met
By Jim Caple
Page 2 columnist


Jack Buck died Tuesday at age 77. It's odd how sad you can feel at the passing of someone you never met.


Which is not to say we didn't know Buck. Or at least feel like we knew him. With a half-century in the business, Buck's gravelly voice was one of the most distinctive in sports. He called games in all sports (he did "Monday Night Football" on CBS radio for many years), but he was always best known and loved for baseball. He was behind the microphone for the Cardinals for five decades and for national broadcasts for many postseasons.

I can still hear him saying, "We'll see you tomorrow night!" after Kirby Puckett hit his home run to win Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. Which is amazing, because I was in the Metrodome press box at the time and didn't hear him say that until seeing the highlight tape sometime later.

That line, and his other most famous ones, including "I don't believe what I just saw!" after Kirk Gibson's 1988 home run, and "Pardon me for a moment while I stand and applaud" after Mark McGwire's record-tying 61st home run, hardly compare to even the least of Winston Churchill's many utterances. But damn if hearing them didn't send such chills through our bodies that the goosebumps made us look like we were the ones on andro.

That's the thing about the great broadcasters, though. It isn't so much what they say, it's how they make us feel when they say it. The best of them tease, reassure, worry and excite us so skillfully, that we can't imagine the game being played without their voice.

It's a universal thing. People in St. Louis felt the same way about Buck as people in Chicago felt about Harry Caray, as people in Los Angeles feel about Vin Scully and Chick Hearn, as people in Detroit feel about Ernie Harwell, as people in Seattle feel about Dave Niehaus, as people in Cincinnati feel about Marty Brenneman and as people everywhere feel about their favorite broadcasters.

Small wonder. Add up all the hours of all the games over all the years, and we probably hear their voices more than anyone outside our immediate family. In a time when we barely know our next-door neighbors, we invite these guys into our homes and our cars night after night, year after year. We might not listen to our parents, we might not know what to say to our siblings, but we pay such strict attention to these guys it's as if they were reading off the winning numbers on our Powerball tickets.


I grew up in southwest Washington state, back before there were the Mariners and when the nearest team was the San Francisco Giants. I listened to Lon Simmons and Al Michaels broadcast their games on station KFBK Sacramento, but only after the sun set and atmospheric conditions allowed the radio signals to reach the 700-some miles to our living room and into my dad's radio. Even then, it was a frustrating hit-and-miss thing, and I would have to work the dial as if I were a ham radio operator trying to pull in a transmission from behind enemy lines. "Sutton winds and throws.... Swung on and hit deep to left-center! Davis goes back" -- [STATIC] -- "the crowd is going wild" -- [MORE STATIC FOLLOWED BY SNIPPET FROM CREDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL'S "DOWN ON THE CORNER'' FOLLOWED BY MORE STATIC FOLLOWED BY COMMERCIAL FOR AUTO DEALER FOLLOWED BY STILL MORE STATIC] -- "and no men left on base.... "

Now, of course, we have Internet broadcasts and games almost every night on ESPN or Fox, plus hundreds more available through cable packages. I won't pretend for a minute that the old way was better. Given the choice between watching the game on TV or listening on the radio, I will always choose TV.

But there still is little that is as comforting as listening to a great broadcaster describe the game. They might be broadcasting to millions, but the best make each of us feel as if we're sitting in the booth with them. In time, they build such familiarity that we wind up feeling like we're a couple old friends enjoying the game together.

Which is why we felt like we lost a friend with Buck's passing yesterday. And you'll have to pardon me for a moment while I applaud him.

[Nanner]

Shawn, that's a terrific article. Made me cry.

:clap1: for Jim Caple and Jack Buck.

[PissedPrincess]

RIP.:crying2:

[imgreat95]

I think that jim caple is one of the best writers that ESPN has..



Tonight, at the Pirate game, in lieu of a moment of silence, they put a big picture of Jack up on the jumbotron, and then played many of his calls from throughout the years. I honestly could not help but cry. We'll miss you Jack.

[imgreat95]

Farewell: Jack Buck / One of the best
Buck's casual style won people over, on and off the air

Thursday, June 20, 2002

By Shelly Anderson, Post-Gazette Sports Writer







Pirates play-by-play man Lanny Frattare ranks Jack Buck among the top five baseball broadcasters of all time. You could get an idea of Buck's talent, Frattare said, just by watching him after a game.


http://www.post-gazette.com/images2/20020620apjbuck_230.jpg




St. Louis-area native Kent Biggerstaff on Jack Buck -- "I looked at him as an artist." (Associated Press)








"I think most major-league announcers come to the ballpark with briefcases," Frattare said yesterday. "I saw him leave the ballpark, home and road, with nothing in his hands. If there was something in his hands, it was the latest novel he was reading.

"If Jack had nothing in front of him -- notes, lineups -- he could do a ballgame."

Of course, Buck did use lineups and other aids when calling games. It's just that his easy style made him sound so unencumbered, so natural.

That was the recollection of a handful of local men with ties to broadcasting or baseball who knew Buck. The longtime radio voice of the St. Louis Cardinals, who also broadcast pro football and other sports, died late Tuesday night. He was 77.

"He painted a picture over the radio. I looked at him as an artist," said Pirates head trainer Kent Biggerstaff, who grew up across the Mississippi river from St. Louis in Wood River, Ill., and listened extensively to Buck on Cardinals broadcasts, particularly in the 1960s, when Buck was partnered with another baseball broadcasting legend, Harry Caray.

When the Cardinals were on the West Coast, Biggerstaff kept a transistor radio on low well past his bedtime.

When he made it to the major leagues with the Pirates 20 years ago, Biggerstaff wanted to meet Buck.


"I just worked up the nerve to go up to him," Biggerstaff said. "He handled it very graciously."

That meeting launched a relationship in which Buck invited Biggerstaff to be a guest on the Cardinals' pregame radio show just about every year during one of the Pirates' trips to St. Louis. Buck always pointed out to the fans that Biggerstaff was a hometown guy.

Pitt basketball analyst Dick Groat knew Buck for nearly 40 years and worked with him. Groat played for the Cardinals from 1963-65 and joined Buck on pregame shows for the latter two of those three years. Later, he worked a couple of games as Buck's color analyst.




"I learned a great deal from working with Jack Buck," Groat said. "I loved his voice.

"He was not just an excellent broadcaster, but a very good person. Everybody that played for the Cardinals loved Jack. He was one of the most pleasant people to work with."

Frattare's memories of Buck go way back, to the early 1950s when Frattare was a little boy in Rochester, N.Y., and Buck was an up-and-coming broadcaster calling the Rochester Red Wings' games.

Like Biggerstaff, Frattare wanted to meet Buck when he made it to the big leagues.

"I searched him out because of the Rochester connection," Frattare said. "Early on, I was a little bit intimidated by people like Jack Buck and Harry Caray and Vin Scully. It was easier with Jack because by my second or third year, he reached out and said, 'Hey, would you do an interview with me on the pregame show?' "

Frattare admired the way Buck would casually approach new players around the batting cage, introduce himself and welcome them. That way, when he needed to ask them for an interview, it would not be awkward.

Frattare equally admired Buck's broadcasting.

"I really liked his comfortable, friendly style. It was something I wanted to do," he said. "I loved the way he let the game breathe."

That style was not a gimmick. It was a reflection of Buck's personality.

"Even the way he walked, there was kind of a casual quality about him," Frattare said. "He'd stroll out of the dugout before a game and over to the batting cage, then maybe over to the other dugout to talk to someone he knew."

That was a quality that struck Steelers and Pitt football broadcaster Bill Hillgrove, who got to know Buck some when Buck was lead football radio announcer for CBS.

"The thing that always impressed me about him was the fact that he was so approachable -- as opposed to so many of the network guys," Hillgrove said. "He would hang around outside the booth and talk to anyone. He was just another guy in the press box."

Biggerstaff said even last year, when Buck was battling Parkinson's disease, his personality and pleasant disposition overshadowed his physical problems.

"He was sharp as a tack," Biggerstaff said.

Groat recalls the last time he saw Buck in New Orleans around the holidays in 1991. The Pitt basketball team was there playing in a tournament. Buck was there on a football broadcasting assignment. They happened to be staying at the same hotel.

"He wasn't any different that night in New Orleans than he was when I played with the Cardinals," Groat said.

"He was the ultimate professional."



Gone Deep Into Memory
Some of the most memorable calls made by Jack Buck during his decades of broadcasting. Buck died Tuesday at the age of 77.



•Oct. 15, 1998: Kirk Gibson's home run against Oakland in the World Series:

"Gibson swings, and a fly ball to deep right field. This is gonna be a home run! Unbelievable! A home run for Gibson! And the Dodgers have won the game, 5-4! I don't believe what I just saw!"



•Sept. 7, 1998: Mark McGwire's 61st home run, tying Roger Maris for the single-season record:

"Look at there, look at there! McGwire Flight No. 61 to Planet Maris! Pardon me for a moment while I stand and applaud!"



•Sept. 5, 1998: Mark McGwire's 60th home run in 1998, reaching the mark set by Babe Ruth:

"Wake up, Babe Ruth! There's company coming!"

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Loss Of a Great Voice and a Helping Hand

Leonard Shapiro

Thursday, June 20, 2002; Page D05


Back when Channel 4 sports anchor George Michael, a St. Louis native, was working in Philadelphia and trying to break into baseball as a play-by-play announcer, he asked his friend, former Cardinals first baseman Bill White, to help him produce a demo tape of a game.

White, who also was working in Philadelphia and trying to become a sports broadcaster, readily agreed. After they called a live game into a tape recorder, Michael noticed that the Cardinals were coming to town to play the Phillies. He asked White if there was any way he could get the tape to his friend, Jack Buck, the team's Hall of Fame broadcaster.

Buck died yesterday at 77 in a St. Louis hospital, where he had spent all but two days of 2002 after undergoing lung cancer surgery and surgery to remove an intestinal blockage. A man who often spoke of his humble beginnings in Cleveland, he had a reputation as being approachable, especially to fledgling broadcasters.

"Call him up, he'll talk to you," White told Michael, who was a bit more shy in those days than he is now as the sports colossus of local TV news.

"So I did," Michael recalled yesterday. "I asked him if he'd mind spending a few minutes with me. He said, 'Come on over to the hotel and we'll listen to it together.' We sit down, and I'm sweating bullets, and then after about 30 minutes, he says to me, 'I'm not sure who you're trying to imitate, but I can tell you this, you've got it, you don't have to imitate anyone.' "

For 90 minutes, Buck also offered technical advice, tips on how to make pithy calls filled with important information, general advice on maintaining enthusiasm and advice on dealing with nit-picking critics. When Michael told him his biggest concern was in determining whether a long fly ball was going to be a home run or an out, Buck had a practical answer.

"He said to me, 'Just watch the fans out there. If they stand up, it could be out of there,' " Michael recalled. "Then he told me to call Jerry Hoffberger [then the owner of the Baltimore Orioles] about a job. I did, and he hired me to do summer relief on the Orioles in '74. I did 30 games, and that was the break I needed."

George Michael was not the only beneficiary of Jack Buck's largesse. For almost 50 years as the voice of the baseball Cardinals and a Jack-of-all-sports on the air, Buck entertained millions of fans across America. Bob Costas has often talked about sitting in a driveway as a teenager on Long Island and tuning his father's car radio to 50,000-watt KMOX, the Cardinals' flagship station, and listening to Buck and his one-time partner, Harry Caray.

I was one of the millions listening, as well. As a graduate student at the University of Missouri in Columbia in 1969, I can remember listening to their banter, with Caray singing his famous little ditty as the home team pushed into the pennant race -- "The Cardinals are coming, tra la, tra la."

Both men are gone now, along with so many other brilliant baseball voices -- Red Barber, Mel Allen, Bob Prince, Lindsey Nelson and Jack Brickhouse, to name just a few. This summer, Ernie Harwell, another giant, is calling his final season of Detroit Tigers games after more than 50 years in the booth. And Vin Scully, my all-time favorite, likely will not be far behind over the next few years.

Like Buck, all were Hall of Famers, and every one of them could switch from sport to sport, from radio to television with the greatest of ease. Buck did football Cardinals games for years, until they moved to Arizona. He did the NFL for the CBS network and for CBS Radio, and had several network baseball stints as well.

"That's a winner," he'd say when the Redbirds' latest victory was in the books, but the call I'll always remember came on NBC in the first game of the 1988 World Series. Buck was behind the microphone when Dodgers slugger Kirk Gibson, hobbling on an injured knee, blasted a game-winning, two-out home run on a 3-2 pitch in the bottom of the ninth against Oakland's ace closer, Dennis Eckersley.

The Dodgers won, 5-4, and took the Series in five games. As Gibson limped around the bases, Buck captured the drama with one simple phrase: "I don't believe what I just saw."

In 1998, when Mark McGwire tied Roger Maris's home run record, Buck said simply, "Pardon me for a moment while I stand and applaud."

I got to know Buck when we were both selectors for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He served in that role for 11 years and resigned in 1997 only after completing his mission of making sure two old Cardinals, tackle Dan Dierdorf and tight end Jackie Smith, had been chosen for enshrinement in Canton.

I only wish we were allowed to bring tape recorders into those meetings the Saturday morning before the Super Bowl, just to be reminded now of Buck's brilliantly researched and impassioned presentations on two of his old friends.

He was that way on and off the air and was a man who never forgot where he came from. His wife, Carole, once asked him what he planned to say to God at the gates of heaven, and Buck replied, "I want to ask Him why He's been so good to me."

He wrote in his autobiography, "I wouldn't change a thing about my life. My childhood dreams came true."

So did George Michael's, and Jack Buck had a significant hand in that, as well.

"It's funny, I'd always run into him at spring training in a restaurant in St. Pete," Michael said. "He'd see me and smile and say, 'Don't forget, you owe your career to me,' and then he'd always pick up my bar tab. My satisfaction is that I got to write him a three-page letter saying thank you for everything you've done for me. That was just a year ago last summer. He was very special."


© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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Cards will hold closed-casket viewing at home plate

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press


ST. LOUIS -- The initials ''JFB'' were carved in the grass just beyond the center field wall and in the dirt behind second base.


The bronze bust of Jack Buck at the microphone outside Busch Stadium became a shrine crammed with cards, caps, stuffed animals, balloons and photographs.


Black bunting draped the statue, alongside an American flag. A transistor radio was tuned to KMOX -- the Cardinals' flagship station.


The tributes for the 77-year-old Hall of Fame broadcaster, as revered an institution as any in St. Louis, resume Thursday with a send-off that recalls the death of Babe Ruth more than a half-century ago.


There will be a 4½-hour closed-casket public viewing at Busch Stadium in the morning, with Buck's beloved Cardinals playing the Anaheim Angels in the afternoon. The start of the game was pushed back for the viewing.


Buck died Tuesday night from complications following lung surgery Dec. 5. He had been hospitalized more than 5½ months and was in and out of a coma the last few weeks.


On Wednesday night, when the Cardinals beat the Angels 6-2 for their fifth straight victory, several players said they sensed Buck's presence in the stadium.


''It's one of the first games he's watched in a while,'' pitcher Matt Morris said. ''It's a difficult situation, but this is where he belongs, and I think he'll be with us the rest of the season.''


Tributes poured in from Buck's broadcasting colleagues across the country such as Ernie Harwell of the Tigers, Marty Brennaman of the Reds and Vin Scully of the Dodgers.


''It's a personal loss for me, and of course for baseball, because he was a great ambassador,'' Harwell said. ''He'll be missed by so many people.''


Baseball hasn't had a comparable ballpark ceremony since the Yankees held a two-day visitation for Ruth at Yankee Stadium in 1948 with hundreds of thousands of people paying respects.


On Wednesday night, reserve outfielder and St. Louis native Kerry Robinson and a clubhouse attendant taped Buck's signature signoff -- ''That's a winner!'' -- in tiny strips on the dugout wall.


Before the game, there was a moment of silence followed by Taps, a video tribute and speeches by team majority owner Bill DeWitt and broadcaster and son Joe Buck.


''Words are hard to come by,'' the son said. ''He would have loved to be with us tonight and I kind of feel like he is.''


DeWitt said Buck would be added to the list of the team's retired numbers, represented by a plaque and a flag carrying the words, ''That's a winner!''


Buck began his broadcasting career nearly five decades ago and quickly connected with players.


''He's a Cardinal,'' said Red Schoendienst, one of the team's six living Hall of Famers. ''If he was a ballplayer, with his timing, he'd probably have been a .400 hitter.''


Fernando Vina, who came to the Cardinals in a 2000 trade, remembers Buck giving him a special silver dollar after he hit his first home run with his new team.


''He gave me one for good luck, and I always kept it with me,'' Vina said. ''Now, I just save it in a good place and know he gave it to me. Jack, he had that special aura.''


Center fielder Jim Edmonds also joined the team in 2000. He said Buck belonged on ''another tier'' of people.


''It's like the president, the pope, whatever you want to call it,'' Edmonds said. ''It's like losing somebody like that.''


Scully said he'll mostly miss Buck's humor.


''He was a gruff-voiced guy with a big heart,'' Scully said. ''I can understand why the people of St. Louis and throughout the Midwest especially loved him and put him on the highest pedestal.''

[Nanner]

These are great articles, Shawn. Jack Buck touched many lives.

I saw parts of the ceremony on Wednesday night when they showed bits on Sportscenter. Made me cry. Especially when Joe Buck thanked the two teams for moving their starting time for Thursday back 4 hours. He looked at the Angels dugout and said, "You didn't have to do this. And I thank you. The family thanks you." Everything was so tasteful and heartfelt.

:ohno:

Thanks for posting those.

[Baseball Guru]

Here a few more articles if anone would like to read them...They are courtesy of MLB.com
Jack Buck (http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/events/obits/mlb_obit_jack_buck.jsp)

[Nanner]

Originally posted by Baseball Guru
Here a few more articles if anone would like to read them...They are courtesy of MLB.com
Jack Buck (http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/events/obits/mlb_obit_jack_buck.jsp)

Wow. That's a huge amount of tributes! It must be extremely heart-warming for the Buck family to see and hear so many tributes to their dad.

The people who spoke at the ceremony were terrific.

Thanks for the link, James.