There was a jovial electricity in the air of St. Louis on the night of Monday Oct. 14, 1985.<\/p>\n
Cardinals\u2019 shortstop Ozzie Smith had just won Game 5 of the National League Championship Series with a solo home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. The city was alive: shouts of joy filled the streets, car horns blared.<\/p>\n
Inside the car of legendary team announcer Jack Buck, however, you\u2019d never know the difference. There was no hooting and hollering, no postgame show blaring from the speakers. Instead, classical music filled the vehicle as Jack, smiling from ear to ear, quietly drove home with his youngest child, Julie.<\/p>\n
Nothing was said for much of the ride home, Jack enjoying the music, his 13-year-old daughter\u2019s eyelids heavy from another late night at the ballpark.<\/p>\n
That night, as Smith\u2019s shot cleared the right-field fence at old Busch Stadium, Buck bellowed across the airwaves, \u201cGo crazy, folks! Go crazy!\u201d The phrase became so enmeshed in the fabric of St. Louis\u2019s baseball-crazed culture that it may as well be engraved across the Gateway Arch.<\/p>\n
Finally, Dad broke the silence. \u201cKid,\u201d he said, his smile shifting to a skeptical grin, \u201cgo crazy? I don\u2019t know if that was the right thing to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
Therein lay Jack Buck\u2019s charm. He was real, an Average Joe who lived his life in an above-average way.<\/p>\n
For millions of baseball fans across the Midwest, Jack Buck was more than just the voice of their favorite baseball team; he was the voice of their childhood. As much a part of the soundtrack of their homes as the ring of the telephone, the bark of the family dog, or the shout of their parents calling them to dinner.<\/p>\n
Known for his deep, gravelly voice and razor-sharp wit, Buck was the radio play-by-play man for the St. Louis Cardinals and was a beloved fixture in the community for nearly half a century.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe loved, more than anything, just meeting people,\u201d says Julie Buck. \u201cAs much as people would come up and say, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m sorry to bother you, but can I take a picture?\u2019 if there\u2019s ever been anybody that loved doing that, it was my dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
His Childhood Dream<\/b>
\nBuck was the ultimate self-made man. Born in 1924 in Holyoke, MA, John Francis Buck wanted to be a baseball announcer. Not a baseball player like most boys of his era or even a sports announcer. Buck always dreamed of being up in the booth looking out over a diamond on a warm summer afternoon.<\/p>\n
During pickup games as a kid, he would announce the action as he played. Chasing a fly ball he would shout, \u201cHickey hits a line drive. Buck goes back!\u201d It drove the neighborhood kids crazy.<\/p>\n
When he was 15, his family moved to Cleveland, where Jack and his brother Earle would take the streetcar to Indians games. In the bleachers at old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, Jack would announce as if on the radio, much to the ire of his brother, who would yell at him to \u201cstop!\u201d Sometimes, Earle would get so fed up that he would ditch Jack and go sit in another section. The irony: as a kid, Jack couldn\u2019t seem to find anyone who wanted to listen to his baseball commentary.<\/p>\n
After his father died, the teenage Buck took a slew of jobs, working as a porter, cook, baker, deck hand, crane operator, and iron-ore worker to support the family. He nearly dropped out of high school in 1941 to work more and would have done so had one of his teachers not come to his house to plead with his mother.<\/p>\n
He was drafted and fought in the European theater of World War II, his tour of duty ending prematurely when he was struck in the leg and forearm by shrapnel. He was lucky to survive: somehow, the strike just missed the exposed grenade clipped to the chest of his jacket. Buck received a Purple Heart and was in a Paris hospital when fighting ended.<\/p>\n
After returning from the war, Buck enrolled at Ohio State, where he called Buckeyes basketball games on the campus radio station, WOSU, while paying his way through school by working the graveyard shift at a 24-hour gas station in Columbus.<\/p>\n
\u2018Find Something Else To Do for a Living\u2019<\/b>
\nThe first night Buck sat behind a real microphone, his classmates were assigned to listen and jot down critiques on his play-by-play skills. The next morning, he was roasted. Taking things in stride, Buck recalled that most of the critiques \u201cwere honest and helpful.\u201d Except when his professor shrugged his shoulders and said, \u201cYou\u2019d better find something else to do for a living.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, Buck became a fixture at WOSU and soon was hired at Columbus-based WCOL. He broke into television in 1952 at WBNS-TV.<\/p>\n
In 1954, his childhood dream became a reality when he joined KMOX radio in St. Louis, calling Cardinals games with another broadcasting legend, Harry Caray, before teaming up with analyst Mike Shannon in a pairing that would last nearly three decades. He became the team\u2019s top announcer in 1969, punctuating each victory with his signature expression, \u201cThat\u2019s a winner!\u201d It wasn\u2019t long before he became a St. Louis icon.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe taught me how to treat the people behind the scenes the same way you would treat the executives that come into the booth,\u201d says Jack\u2019s son, Joe, himself Fox Sports\u2019 lead play-by-play man on the network\u2019s MLB and NFL packages. \u201cI learned watching him. He didn\u2019t talk about it; he just lived that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iconic Calls<\/b>
\nBuck\u2019s most noted calls are like a \u201cbest of\u201d album of iconic baseball moments. Some of them so recognizable that fans can recite them verbatim, dramatic pauses included. Like that call of Smith\u2019s 1985 blast: \u201cGo crazy, folks! Go crazy! It\u2019s a home run \u2026 and the Cardinals have won the game \u2026 by the score \u2026 of 3-2 \u2026 on a home run \u2026 by the Wizard!\u201d<\/p>\n
Or the authentic euphoria of Kirk Gibson\u2019s homer to win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series: \u201cI don\u2019t believe \u2026 what I just saw!\u201d<\/p>\n
Or the simplicity of his words behind Kirby Puckett\u2019s walk-off shot in Game 6 of the 1991 Series: \u201cAnd we\u2019ll see ya \u2026 tomorrow night!\u201d A call that Joe poignantly reprised during Cardinal David Freese\u2019s home run that capped an epic Game 6 of the 2011 World Series.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had genuine excitement, not manufactured excitement,\u201d says NBC\u2019s Bob Costas, whose first professional job in the business was serving as play-by-play announcer for the ABA\u2019s Spirits of St. Louis for KMOX. \u201cYou could tell when he was moved or thrilled by a moment, and it was genuine. That\u2019s why I think he was so great in big moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buck was a wizard with the English language. Even Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway redrafted their best works. Not Buck. His classics were extemporaneous.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was brilliant at describing a moment in real time without a lot of forethought,\u201d says Joe Buck. \u201cWhen you\u2019re always cramming it all back into the same home-run call, I think it becomes more about the broadcaster. When you do it the way he did it, it becomes more about the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buck was a fixture among football viewers as well, providing the call on CBS NFL broadcasts, including the \u201cIce Bowl\u201d in 1967. He also served as the CBS Radio voice on Monday-night games, teaming with former Kansas City Chiefs head coach Hank Stram for nearly two decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always considered him to be a baseball announcer,\u201d Stram said once. \u201cThat\u2019s how I remember him when I grew up. When we got together \u2026 it was amazing to see how alert he was and how much he knew about football.\u201d<\/p>\n
In all, Buck called 11 World Series, 18 Super Bowls, and four Major League Baseball All-Star Games in his storied career.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was someone who was very fluent, had a great sense of irony, and was someone that, when you think of the term \u2018Renaissance Man,\u2019 was as great a \u2018renaissance broadcaster\u2019 who ever lived,\u201d says Curt Smith, an author on sports broadcasting, senior lecturer at the University of Rochester, and former presidential speech writer.<\/p>\n
A Humanitarian, Too<\/b>
\nAs talented as he was behind the mike, Buck was known around St. Louis as much for his charitable endeavors. It was once estimated that he attended about 200 charity events a year, serving as master of ceremonies for a large majority of them. His favorite cause was the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, for which he served as the chief fundraising chairman for his local chapter. He never charged for a charity appearance.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou would never have to worry when someone would come up to you and say, \u2018Hey, I know your dad\u2019 or \u2018Let me tell you a story about your dad,\u2019\u201d says Julie Buck. \u201cIt was always a positive story about how he touched someone\u2019s life. He always made us very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the 1990s, Buck began to cut back on his number of Cardinals games, mostly because of health concerns.<\/p>\n
He suffered from a variety of ailments, including Parkinson\u2019s disease, diabetes, sciatica, and vertigo. As with most challenges in his life, he used humor to get through them, once joking to a crowd, \u201cI wish I\u2019d get Alzheimer\u2019s. Then I could forget I\u2019ve got all the other stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
His wife, Carole, recalled that, when the two would lie in bed at night, he would tell her stories. On one such night, he announced a fake baseball game with teams made up of his medications: \u201cSinemat is up to bat with Mirapex on first.\u201d<\/p>\n
His death in 2003 was met with much sorrow in St. Louis and with tributes across the country. He\u2019s honored at new Busch Stadium with his face on the outfield wall among the retired players; his statue sits outside. He has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame, and the portion of I-64\/US-40 that cuts through St. Louis was named in his honor in 2009. A member of both the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame, Buck received the Ford C. Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987.<\/p>\n
All of the honors and awards, however, will never encapsulate who Jack Buck really was: a great father, a great humanitarian, and a great man. A man just as likely to be found smoking a cigar while shooting craps at a glitzy Las Vegas casino as he was to write poetry or be moved to tears by an ultrasound of one of his grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Remembered fondly for his wit, he was loved for his sincerity. When his wife asked him what he would say if he met \u201cthe Lord,\u201d he responded simply, \u201cI\u2019d ask Him, why were you so good to me?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":788,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"tags":[25],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inductees\/473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inductees"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/inductees"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}