47: the broadcaster I grew up listening to

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by Berigan

JONESBORO, GA – I ain’t a beat writer….can’t get scoops from the players sitting in front of my computer in Jonesboro! Oh sure, I could make stuff up, like Dyan Perry does. Or you can just say something like some writers do but that ain’t write right.

So something I can write about, at least a little bit, is baseball broadcasters I have heard through the years. I have listened to Skip and Pete longer than any others in my life. They don’t work much together these days, but any time I hear them together, or separately, it’s like putting on a pair of very comfortable shoes. It just feels good! Even when you hear good ones you really don’t know how very good they are ’til you hear bad ones. And, boy howdy! (do the youngsters today still say that???), have I heard some bad ones! With the Yankees, you can hear John Sterling and some woman with a shrill voice convince millions that baseball is not a very good game….I really can’t listen to many people do baseball on the radio, that is a special talent few truly possess.

But, I’m not going to write about Skip and Pete, or the really bad ones today. Lately, for some reason I have been thinking back to the broadcaster I grew up listening to….the late, great Jack Buck.

I’m sure most everyone here has heard, or at least heard of, Jack Buck….but, unless you listened to him call Cardinal games while driving around at night (or doing Monday night football with Hank Stramm on CBS radio) you never really heard Jack in his element, at his best.

Something about him calling games on CBS TV seemed…subdued. Like some know-nothing kid producer had said “Jack, you can’t be a homer, don’t get too excited, just call the game. You ain’t just broadcasting to some hicks in and around St. Louis, this is the big time!” Plus, with Tim McCarver never shutting up about all he could do is call balls, strikes and hits.

Which was a shame. Because Jack Buck was as funny as anyone, anywhere, when he got on a roll. So much great stuff he did (MC charities, host local roasts, had his own non-baseball show on KMOX) is just sitting, gathering dust, not likely to ever be heard again. Pre-Internet, pre-youtube. I’m curious if anyone here who heard Jack only on TV, even thought of him as a funny guy!

He had a great guy in the booth that he clearly felt comfortable with, Mike Shannon. If you like Skip and Pete, you would like Jack and Mike in their prime.

But, there were times when he was able to shine through on national TV, when something magical happened, and he couldn’t contain his excitement, like Kirk Gibson hitting a homer off Eckersley, and no one even thought it was possible he could play in the series.

Broadcaster Marty Brennaman on that moment:

“The thing that amazes me about him — and all of us have our own styles — he understated things to the extent that they more than adequately conveyed what people saw and thought. When Kirk Gibson hit the home run off Dennis Eckersley to win the World Series game, he said seven words: ‘I don’t believe what I just saw.’ And that conveyed everything that people in Dodger Stadium were thinking [and] people watching on TV or listening on the radio. He said it exactly the way it was. That’s a talent that very few people like us in this business have.”

some quotes by Jack….

“It’s such a beautiful sport, with no politics involved, no color, no class. Only as a youngster can you play and as a pro can you win. The game has kept me young, involved and excited and for me to be up here with gems of baseball”

“It (George Steinbrenner’s new yacht) was a beautiful thing to observe with all thirty oars working in unison.”

“The biggest kick I get is to communicate with those who are exiled from the game — in hospitals, homes, prisons — those who have seldom seen a game, who can’t travel to a game, those who are blind.”

“When Harry and I were doing the games together, we were as good as a team as there ever was. His style and mine were so different that it made for a balanced broadcast. The way we approached the job, with the interest and love both of us had for the game, made our work kind of special.”

Some quotes about Jack by the people who knew and loved him…and were helped by him.

From Skip Caray:
“It seemed like he took a liking to me right away. There were always people trying to warm up to me because of who my Dad was. Jack wasn’t like that. He genuinely liked me and wanted to help me with my broadcasting career.

He was doing play-by-play for St. Louis University basketball games and wanted me to come and do color analysis with him. There was a point that he thought basketball on the radio was boring. So we started taking turns doing the play-by-play. When St. Louis had the ball, Jack was talking and when the opponent had the ball, I was talking.

There was one game in which there was a loose ball after a rebound and neither of us knew who should be talking. There was silence for about 10 seconds and then we both just started laughing. So needless to say, our innovative idea ended there. The 10 or so games that I did with him doing SLU games gave me valuable experience and helped me get where I am today.

A few years later, there were some people with the St. Louis Hawks organization that remembered hearing those broadcasts and gave me the chance to do their games. When they moved to Atlanta, I went with the team and it helped me get the job with the Braves.”

And everyone’s favorite Chip Caray (hey, I like him, and that’s all that really matters! ) was helped by Jack as well. He talked about Jack just after he died:

“Jack is the voice of baseball in St. Louis. He was as big as Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray combined, and I really believe to this day maybe the best ever broadcast team in the history of this game was Buck and Caray in the old days on KMOX.
I grew up in St. Louis and I was one of those typical kids who fell asleep with the radio on under his pillow listening to Jack and Jay Randolph and Mike Shannon broadcasting games from the West Coast.

I auditioned for one of the Cardinals jobs several years ago and I was sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Pittsburgh reading the newspaper, scared to death. This quarter comes flying out of the air and lands right on my newspaper and I look up and it was Jack and his wife. He came up to me and said, “Good luck.” He gave me a pat on the back and said welcome. He said, “I hope everything goes well.” And then he said, “By the way, don’t screw it up.”

…..Obviously, his health has not been very good [towards the end] and he handled himself with such great humor and great class. I wanted to interview him in the booth and talk to him about what he’s seen and he said, “Hey, guys, what’s shaking besides me?” He had Parkinson’s disease and he immediately made everyone else feel comfortable around him.

He was the voice of summer and a huge influence in my career. He went out of his way to make me feel comfortable and he always had a smile on his face and a song in his heart.”

Having listened to Jack Buck broadcast, I’d say you could see the smile on his face and the joy in his voice for the game. I think that’s why Chip’s style doesn’t grate on me, like it clearly does others. Chip needed to sound, and be, as different from his father and grandfather as he could. I hear a bit of Buck’s ‘hey, I’ve got the best job in the world’ in Chip’s voice….perhaps Jack sounded more sincere to others broadcasting that way.

Like Chip, I can remember staying up late, with a high tech transistor radio under my pillow listening to the Cards play past my bedtime. I’d swear Jack was almost as disappointed as I was that Willie Stargell had somehow bested us yet again late in the game, or when Manny Mota with a pinch hit, drove in the winning run for the Dodgers (when I really was staying up late!), though I don’t think he had tears running down his cheek, swearing I’d never listen to another Cardinal game like I was. But, like any true idiot fan of baseball, the dawn of a new day would make the reality that the Cards were not a very good team, somehow an insignificant fact, and I would be back for more….more close games, more losses, and more enjoyment listening to Jack Buck have a great time calling a game, and telling stories.

Of course, when I moved away from St. Louis in 1983, I was already on the outs with the team as well (as I have mentioned before, they traded darn near everyone off the team) and the KMOX signal didn’t always come in real well all the way down in Jacksonville, but….a taste of home was always there at 1120 on my AM dial any time I wanted it (and the station was coming in). And when I moved to Atlanta, it came in even better…and Jack was always there…..

But I noticed around 2000, he didn’t sound quite the same. He was a longtime smoker, and it seemed to finally be taking a toll on the best radio voice ever, IMHO. He now sounded hoarse, like he had been screaming, and….old. I didn’t know how little time he had left. He was missing games, and in and out of the hospital. He had one more moment though left to give….he read a little poem he wrote that he spoke the day baseball returned after 9-11. I remember ESPN showing it and chills running up and down my spine…watch this! Once again, he brought me to tears with his words.

He died June 18th, 2002, at the age of 77. I wish I could tune in to KMOX, and hear him one more time mention Busch beer, and say one more time….. that’s a winner!

John Francis Buck

1924 – 2002

~Berigan~

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