PLEASURES OF LIFE

It was a particularly hot midsummer morning in New Orleans. It was 1964, JFK had been assassinated the previous fall, and I was an 11-year-old knucklehead with a Butch Wax crew cut and a $9.95 Spalding catcher’s mitt from Atlantic Thrift Center. We were spending our second summer in a 900-square-foot brick house about 3 miles east of the city limits, with only a noisy attic fan to protect us from the hot, sticky air.

It was my third year as an enthusiastic collector of Topps baseball cards. I had begun stockpiling them for a required merit project as a Cub Scout from Pack 222, Den 9. It seemed a lot more exciting than stamp collecting. The photos on the cards would come to life on Saturday afternoons in front of our monochrome Western Auto TV. And I had become addicted to the hard slabs of bubble gum, a bonus for me and for my young dentist, Dr. Murret, who looked a little like Vincent Price, and was Lee Harvey Oswald’s first cousin. But that’s a story for another day.

I had some great cards. Pretty much all of them, in fact, from Stan Musial to Mickey Mantle, to my favorite player, Tim McCarver, the 23-year-old catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. He was a Southern boy from Memphis and was sure to be an all-star for years to come. He might have even been Irish. I could relate to him.

In the ’60s, before cable TV, our roof antenna could pull in a game on Saturdays at 1 p.m. on our minuscule screen. Mostly it was the St. Louis Cardinals playing the Cubs, Reds, Giants, Dodgers or Braves. The games were called by the often brash Dizzy Dean, a former Cardinal pitcher himself, and Pee Wee Reese, the Dodger great, who would provide color — as if Dizzy needed the help. Less frequently, it would be the Yankee “Game of the Week,” which I didn’t mind because I could see the best the American League had to offer, names like Mantle, Roger Maris, Harmon Killebrew and Carl Yastrzemski.

In the years before the hapless Houston Colt .45s (now the Astros) were established and before the Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta, the Cardinals were the closest team to New Orleans. In fact, in those days, they had the largest geographical fan base in the U.S., stretching from Tennessee to Colorado. And they were huge in New Orleans. At night, I could hear Harry Caray call the Cardinal games on KMOX, the 50,000-watt clear channel giant, all the way from St. Louis to the transistor radio in my bedroom. Even after the Colt .45s joined the National League, watching them play baseball was painful. I once saw a Houston pitcher lose both games of a double-header. I saw another throw a no-hitter, and lose.

In the ’60s, St. Louis was an industrial juggernaut with factories up and down Manchester Road, their smell drifting for miles. It was a family-oriented, blue-collar city. The Gateway Arch was under construction. But most of all, St. Louis was the best baseball town in America on the hot summer day my mom and I boarded the “Southern Belle” at Union Station for our annual trip to visit my Aunt Winnie there. My dad would join us when he could, carrying a promise to take me to a Cardinals game at the old Sportsman’s Park, just renamed Busch Stadium.

Stan Musial had retired the previous year but they still had some elite all-stars on the team, including the hard-boiled Bob Gibson; steady Kenny Boyer; Bill White, who eventually became president of the National League; Curt Flood, the centerfielder who changed baseball forever by legally challenging baseball’s reserve clause; and Lou Brock, the prolific base stealer acquired from the Chicago Cubs in one of the most one-sided trades in baseball history.

I always slept in the basement at Aunt Winnie’s house, adjacent to the coal chute, often waking up with residual black dust on my cheeks. No matter. It was the day of the game. After a breakfast of Sugar Pops my dad and I walked down the steep hill to Manchester Road, toward the Mississippi River, and climbed up on the city bus, heading toward our connection and eventual destination at Grand Boulevard and Dodier Street. By the time we got near Busch Stadium, it was getting warm, scorching in fact, on its way to the high 90s. My dad bought me a wool St. Louis Cardinals cap from a street vendor, several sizes too large, in bright red with the iconic redbird logo. A heavy pair of Sears binoculars — which I still have — hung uncomfortably on my neck.

We picked up a scorecard listing the starting lineups. All the usual names were penciled in, except for the one I wanted to see more than any other, Tim McCarver. In his place was a reserve catcher named Bob Uecker. Could it be true? Is it possible that I had come all the way from New Orleans to see my hero, and he wouldn’t be in the lineup? Had he been traded? Had he been injured? I thought it was a fluke. I was confident the, manager Johnny Keane, would change his mind and McCarver would somehow be perched behind the plate that day.

The first thing I saw as we walked up the ramp and through the opening to our seats was the famous home run porch in right field — a trademark of Sportsman’s Park. Our seats were good. My dad made sure of it. He always saw to it that things were near perfect for me. We were on the third base side, about halfway up and partially under the high overhang. The old stadium was intimate and cozy. It felt like we could reach out and touch the players. Comfortably in our seats, we were ready to watch our Cardinals pummel the San Francisco Giants.

Looking down on the field, I saw a big guy in a loose cotton button-down shirt, interviewing Willie Mays. It was Dizzy Dean. Pee Wee Reese was standing nearby, chatting it up with some players around the batting cage. Soon the lineups were exchanged by managers Alvin Dark, a multi-sport athlete with Louisiana ties, and Keane, who would resign at the end of the season to take the same job with the Yankees.

Not known to me at the time, Harold Peter Henry “Pee Wee” Reese was more than just an eight-time all-star shortstop. He was one of the first white players to embrace Jackie Robinson when he arrived in New York. And he stood proudly at the side of Robinson when the boos rang down from racists, at home and on the road. They remained friends until Robinson’s death in 1972.

As the Cardinals took the field, my heart sank. As expected, McCarver’s number 15 wasn’t behind the plate. Instead it was the number 9 of Bob Uecker. All I knew about Uecker  was what I had read on the back of a baseball card. And it wasn’t much.

As the Giants trotted out their own all-star lineup of Mays, Willie McCovey, Duke Snyder and Orlando Cepeda, it was quickly obvious that this was not going to be a good day for the Cardinals, who went on to lose the game 14-3. There was plenty of action, though. Mays, earning a whopping $85,000 in his prime, uncharacteristically dropped a fly ball. Curt Flood slammed hard into the center field fence pursuing a sure double, which he caught, before being knocked out cold. Harvey Kuehn had five hits for the Giants while, totally in character, Uecker was 0-4. Counting Dean and Reese, there were no less than a dozen eventual hall-of-famers on the field that day. It would have been a lifetime of first-game bragging rights for any pre-teen baseball fan, even if his team had been mercilessly embarrassed.

And it would not be the last time I crossed paths with Bob Uecker.

As a young stringer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, I ran into him at a few events in New Orleans, once at the famous and exclusive Sugar Bowl seafood party, another time at Commander’s Palace, and much later at spring training in Florida. He was always cordial, calling me “Spike.” I am not sure if he recognized me or simply called every young male sportswriter by the same nickname. I even told him the story about his Cards getting crushed 14-3 in St. Louis, which he remembered vividly. And later, when I lived in Dallas, I saw him occasionally at Arlington Stadium when the Brewers were in town to play the Rangers and he was broadcasting. Chance meetings all.

After abandoning my “career” in journalism, I got into the construction equipment business and eventually relocated to the Milwaukee area. On the way from my office in Menomonee Falls to our home near Okauchee Lake in Nashotah, I would sometimes drive by Uecker’s home off Pilgrim Road and wave to him when I saw him in his yard. He would always wave back though I’m certain he had no idea it was “Spike” behind the wheel.

And, of course, I would listen to Bob and his broadcast partner, Pat Hughes, whenever the Brewers were playing on those beautiful summer nights in the Lake Country of southern Wisconsin. Bob was the best ever at making a bad game good.

Known for his appearances on The Tonight Show, his role as Harry Doyle in the movie Major League, and his hall of fame broadcasting career, Ueck was also a skilled salmon fisherman with a nice rig on Lake Michigan. In those days, the lake’s eastern shore was a world class salmon fishery. I spent many days casting for kings and cohos on those nausea-inducing swells.

Like calling a bad baseball game, when the fish were nowhere to be found, you could hear Uecker on the ship-to-shore radio cracking jokes and telling stories with his dry Midwestern wit. I guess the Coast Guard was also amused because they never put a stop to his entertaining diversions. Everyone loved Ueck.

I ran into him at the marina a few times, never troubling him with lengthy conversation, but always happy to have seen him. Bob enjoyed home-smoked salmon for breakfast and would frequently offer a sample to anyone who was around at 5 a.m. A day on the lake was better when it started with Ueck.

I saw him several times at Kuhtz General Store and Tavern, right across Okauchee Lake from my home, near the shoreline where Norwegian Ole Evinrude invented the first practical outboard motor in 1907. Like the great Marquette University basketball coach, Al McGuire, he loved the chili at Kuhtz. So did I. But I never saw him drink anything harder than Diet Coke while entertaining anyone within earshot.

His accomplishments and successes in sports entertainment are too numerous to mention. But what greater aspiration can any human being have than spending their life making people laugh, sometimes on the field, as a player who once led the league in passed balls and errors while catching only 59 games? And what greater distinction can one have than being loved by most everyone who knows you? His self-deprecating manner was legendary. He never promoted himself, he promoted laughter. He seemed uncomfortable in a serious world.

While I thought Ueck belonged to me, and to the people of the Milwaukee area, where he was born, played and broadcasted baseball, fished, and lived and, last January, died, he actually belonged to all of America. For more than 50 years, I have welcomed in each baseball season, thinking of freshly cut grass, the smell of leather, and my connection with Ueck. But it will be quite different this April.

Ueck was part of my life. We certainly were not friends. I am not sure we needed to be. I just knew him a little. And that was enough.