by Joe Buck
The biggest criticism of my dad was that he anticipated plays too much, and sometimes they didn’t unfold the way he expected: “That ball is out of here . . . no! He caught it!” He could get away with that on the radio in St. Louis, but when he did it on national TV, people crushed him for it.
Once, he thought a runner would be safe at home and he said, “They’re not gonna get him!” But they did get him.
McCarver was not impressed, and he was undermining him. In the eyes of most people at the time, McCarver could do no wrong. Every mistake my father made got magnified, and since he was so uncomfortable, he made more mistakes than he ever had. And his age was starting to show for the first time—not so much because he lost his fastball but because his sensibilities were 1970s and local, and he was broadcasting in the 1990s for a national audience.
Before one game of the 1990 National League Championship Series in Pittsburgh, singer Bobby Vinton sang the national anthem. Well, he sang most of it. He flubbed some of the lyrics, and the melody, but the crowd cheered for him anyway, and my dad, on CBS, cracked, “Well, when you’re Polish and live in Pittsburgh, you can do anything you want with the words.”
I was in college, watching with my buddy Lee Dabagia. Lee said, “He’s going to get some shit for that.” And he did. He got back to his hotel room that night and there was a footprint smashed into his pillow. He was really just trying to make a joke to take the heat off of Bobby Vinton, who screwed up the anthem. It might have worked on local radio in 1975, but it was the wrong joke to make on national TV in 1990. He got ripped for that. The pressure on him was rising. It was hard for our family to take.
—
At the end of the 1991 Cardinals season, as my dad got ready to do the playoffs for CBS, I rode out to California with Todd Zeile in his Jeep. It was a costly trip for me. I had injured my back playing pickup basketball and my L5-S1 disc, the very bottom disc, was bulging. It was cutting off the nerve to my left leg. By the time we got out there, I was in so much pain.
I went to a KC and The Sunshine Band concert with a guy named Bo Howell and a college friend of my buddy Preston. Preston went to Kansas. His friend’s name was Paul Rudd.
I always enjoyed hanging out with Paul, just as I always enjoyed hanging out with a friend Preston had introduced me to in high school. His name was Jon Hamm.
Today, the names Paul Rudd and Jon Hamm are familiar to most of you. At the time, they were just guys I knew. Preston’s sister, Sarah, actually dated both of them, though not at the same time. Sarah ended up being a successful actress herself, but you gotta admit, when it came to her dating life, she was a hell of a casting director.
But back then, dating Jon Hamm and Paul Rudd was not that big a deal. We were just all in the same circle. When Preston would visit me at Indiana, he would bring his buddy Paul with him. Rudd had long, flowing hair—like, down to the middle of his back. We hung out and hit it off. We became instant friends.
Anyway, the day after the concert, I couldn’t sit up. That nerve to my leg had shut off. If I tried to sit up, my leg would just flop. I had paramedics take me out of the house, and I spent two days in a Hollywood hospital, and that’s where I watched Game 6 of the World Series between the Twins and the Braves.
That’s the game that ended with Twins star Kirby Puckett hitting a game-winning home run to force Game 7 the next day. As it cleared the fence in the Metrodome, my dad made one of the most famous calls of his career:
“And we will see you tomorrow night!”
The call was just perfect. It was memorable, spontaneous, unique, and got right to the point of what that home run meant. He didn’t even have to tell viewers to tune in for Game 7, because it was implied.
As I watched in my hospital room, I was in awe. That’s a hard home run to call, and here is why: Puckett’s ball had to clear a Plexiglas wall at the Metrodome. But behind the Plexiglas were people in white shirts waving these white Homer Hankies that the Twins gave out that year. From the broadcast booth, it’s virtually impossible to tell where the top of a Plexiglas wall is. It’s hard to tell the difference between a ball hitting the wall and coming back, or going over. And if you wait to make sure it’s gone, you can lose the timing that makes it a great call.
My dad didn’t wait. As soon as the ball cleared the Plexiglas: “And we will see you tomorrow night!”
As I watched on TV, I thought, “Man, that was a hell of a call.”
It reminded me of his call when Ozzie Smith hit a game-winning home run against Tom Niedenfuer in the 1985 National League Championship Series. Ozzie, a switch-hitter, was batting lefty. Ozzie had never hit a left-handed home run in his career. He hit this one down the line, off a cement pillar above the wall. It bounced back on the field, and the Dodgers right fielder fielded it and threw it in, like he was trying to fool the umpire. A lot of announcers would have been fooled, too, or at least would have paused.
Yet my father saw it right away, and he told fans on the Cardinals broadcast: “Go crazy, folks! Go crazy!” If you walk up to a Cardinals fan today, three decades later, and say, “Go crazy, folks!” that fan will know exactly what you mean.
Viewers don’t think about this, but broadcasters do: You can’t be wrong in a big moment like Kirby Puckett’s home run. That stains you for a lifetime in this business. If my dad had said, “We will see you tomorrow night!” and the ball actually bounced off the wall for a double instead of a game-ending home run, he would have been fired. I’m sure of it.
And the reason I’m sure is that he was fired anyway.
He did Game 7 with McCarver, an all-time classic—Jack Morris pitched ten shutout innings for the Twins, who beat John Smoltz and the Braves 1–0. That was the last baseball game my dad did for CBS. We all knew it was over. I felt terrible for him, but I felt a little relieved, too.
—
After my dad was fired, I wrote him this long letter that he kept with him. I wrote, “I know this is eating you up.” Every Monday, Martzke would nitpick his mistakes and drop his age in the column to let viewers know he thought my old man was washed up: “Jack Buck, 65 . . .” or “Jack Buck, 66 . . .”
He had gone from local to national and from radio to TV, and that was hard to do. It all drove him into being somebody that he wasn’t. He worried about what he was saying. He knew if he said something wrong, or even if he didn’t, Tim might give him a verbal smackdown on the air. It’s a tough way to do that job.
In my letter, I told him that he had already hit the broadcasting equivalent of a game-ending home run with his call on Puckett’s homer. He had accomplished so much in his career. It was time for him to put a towel around his neck and enjoy himself—sit on the dugout bench and just take it all in.
Of course, he didn’t do that. This was a man who would interrupt his own dinner to chat with fans. He never really shut it off. He wasn’t about to change just because he got fired. He kept doing Cardinals games, and I was so lucky that I got to do them with him for parts of eleven seasons. I got a lot of that time back that I’d lost when he was away.
I was on the charter with him. I was on the team bus with him. I was in the team hotel with him. Wherever the Cardinals played, I was in the booth with him and Mike Shannon.
And we had so much fun. Once, at a breakfast program for people who ran the Cardinals’ TV and radio affiliates, I teased him about his ugly sport coat.* I should have known better than to start a one-liner war with my father. He stepped to the mic and said that after he found out I was a bed wetter, he bought me an electric blanket for Christmas.
I got to see firsthand the people he touched and the way he treated people in this business. Some broadcasters would blow right by people, but he made a connection with everyone in his path.
This is a competitive business. There are only so many jobs, and there are many more people who want them. It can lead to some ugly moments. But I’ve never had
to worry when somebody said, “Oh, I worked with your dad once.” I knew the next line was never, ever going to be “He treated me like crap.” It was usually “I’ve never worked with a nicer guy in my life.”
Part 3
Thanks, Mr. Murdoch
Chapter 6
A Fourth Network
In December 1993, after my third year of doing Cardinals games, I got a huge break. But I didn’t realize it at first. I was too baffled to understand what was happening.
I was hosting a call-in show for KMOX when the news came across the wire: FOX had won the rights to the NFL’s NFC package. I couldn’t believe it. FOX? FOX didn’t do major events. That’s because FOX wasn’t a major network. It was where you found Joan Rivers, an adult cartoon show called The Simpsons, and Al Bundy sticking his hand down his pants on Married . . . with Children.
The NFL belonged on CBS, where Pat Summerall reminded viewers to “stay tuned for 60 Minutes—except on the West Coast.” And other than Monday Night Football, the NFC was the jewel of the NFL’s TV packages—the conference had won ten straight Super Bowls and featured most of the league’s marquee teams and biggest markets.
I expressed my astonishment and outrage to the tens of people who were listening to my show that night. KMOX was owned and operated by CBS. My listeners and I deserved an explanation!
The explanation came soon enough: “Hey, dumbass! Rupert Murdoch wrote a bigger check.”
Oh, is that how it works?
I was so busy being upset that I didn’t think about the fact that FOX would need announcers for these games. And I was an announcer. And . . .
Hey, wait a minute!
What if . . .
—
FOX Sports was run by an Australian named David Hill. He was basically building a network sports division from scratch. That was a big task, but it also meant David had the freedom and budget to hire the best people in the business. And since CBS no longer had an NFL package, David could poach a lot of CBS’s best talent.
David quickly hired the great Ed Goren of CBS to be his top lieutenant. Then David and Ed hired CBS’s top NFL broadcast team of Summerall and John Madden. That was brilliant, not just because they were the best, but because everybody knew they were the best. That shut up a lot of critics. It brought FOX Sports instant credibility. Fans could stop worrying that Bart Simpson would broadcast the Super Bowl. It was like if people said you couldn’t put together a rock band, and then you brought in Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
David also hired producer Bob Stenner and director Sandy Grossman, who worked with Summerall and Madden at CBS. That was also brilliant. It smoothed the transition for Summerall and Madden.
FOX would have as many as seven games a week. Summerall and Madden would do the best matchup, for the biggest audience. Then David hired Dick Stockton and Matt Millen for the number two team.
That was a great start. But it was only a start. FOX Sports was like an expansion team that spends big money on top free agents but doesn’t have a farm system. Hill had to hire a bunch of lower-level announcers and producers—and quick.
Was I interested? I guess so, in the sense that everybody was interested. I didn’t think I had a chance. I didn’t really think I deserved one. I’d never done the NFL. I’d also never done college football. Or high school football. Or Tecmo Bowl. I’d never done football in my life.
At the Super Bowl a few weeks later, the most popular man in town was Ed Goren. Everybody and their mothers bombarded him with audition tapes.
Well, in my case, it was just my mother.
I did not attend the Super Bowl. But my dad was there to do the game for CBS radio, and my mom went with him, and she brought a tape of my work to give to Ed’s wife, Patti, whom she knew. My mom said, “You really ought to hear my son, Joe. He’s good at doing baseball.” All I had really done was baseball and college basketball, unless you count the time I did a horse-jumping show, and what the heck, let’s just count that. It was not the best horse-jumping broadcast in history, but I studied enough to fake my way through it.
My mom never told me she was bringing a tape to Patti Goren. She didn’t tell my dad, either. I think she knew he wouldn’t approve. He would have told her to mind her own business.
Ed liked what he heard on the tape. But there was still the small problem that I had never done football. So he invited me to do a live audition at the new FOX football studio to see if I was any good.
To help me get ready, my dad had a videotape of a Saints game sent to us by a CBS affiliate in St. Louis. Bobby Hebert was the quarterback. My father and I sat in a living room in Florida during spring training and I did the game off TV with him. He had done decades of football over the years. I thought he was even better at football than he was at baseball. He had done Monday Night Football on the radio with Hall of Fame coach Hank Stram, and he did the NFL for CBS television and other networks. He was trying to teach me how to do it. He told me I was saying too much for a television presentation. I was telling our imaginary viewers the Saints were in the I-formation, or had split backs, or so-and-so was lined up in the slot. My dad said to keep it simple. I’d announce the down and distance, and maybe point out if a receiver was in motion, then be quiet until the play developed. I didn’t need to say, “Hebert drops back to pass.” Anybody watching the game could see he dropped back to pass.
I went out to Los Angeles to audition. I was twenty-three.
—
I rarely get nervous for a broadcast, but I was nervous for that audition. I knew it would determine the next chunk of my career, and maybe my life. I was young and married, with no kids and a huge opportunity in front of me.
At the audition in a television studio, I was introduced to Tim Green, who was just out of the game and was tackling his law degree. He obviously knew the game but had never broadcast anything in his life. At least I had been a broadcaster. Tim hadn’t done anything.
At one point, they told us if we hit the talk-back button, we could talk to the producer, Bob Stenner.
Tim said, “What’s the talk-back button?”
He had no idea. This would be like getting on the pitcher’s mound, and the manager says to get the signal from the catcher, and you say, “Which one is the catcher?”
But I couldn’t fault Tim. It was all new to him.
We would watch video of a game from the previous season and do a fake broadcast. They gave us the names, numbers, heights, weights, and colleges for all the players—all the stuff broadcasters would typically get.
Once we started rolling, I was not nervous. I was a little bit out of my element, but I figured everybody was. It’s weird doing a game off TV in a studio. But the pressure didn’t cripple me. They rolled the game and pumped in fake crowd noise, and we just did it. This wasn’t radio. I didn’t have to create this picture for listeners. I had to accent the action.
I knew, as the game went along, that it was going well. I was young, but I had been around the business long enough to know when a broadcast is going well and when it’s not. I felt comfortable, not rushed or forced. I was anticipating the action and getting my facts right. I felt like I did during a baseball game—whatever happened, I knew what to say.
When Tim and I finished, we put our headsets down. George Krieger, an executive who worked with Ed and David, told me: “We’re going to hire you. Do you have an agent?”
I thought: “An agent. Right. I guess I need one of those.”
I hired Jim Steiner. He didn’t have any broadcasting clients, but he lived in St. Louis and I knew him. He didn’t have much leverage with FOX. There was no competition for my services. Jim got me a few perks, which I appreciated, but that was all he could realistically do. FOX thought I was lucky to be hired at all, and FOX was right.
Tim Green did not get an offer that day. He and I went to Denny’s after our audition and we sat there: me knowing I
was getting hired, him unsure. I was excited, but I couldn’t let it show, because I didn’t want him to feel bad. But pretty soon, he did get an offer from FOX. And we were paired together for two years, which was great.
We did one preseason game as practice. It never aired—it was just for us to get some work in. I called the game exhibition football on the (fake) air, and I was told that was wrong. It was preseason. Apparently, that sounds more important.
Our first real game was the 1994 season opener at Soldier Field. As I heard somebody in my earpiece counting down to the first segment, I thought: “What in the hell have I gotten myself into?” I didn’t know if I could do it. But within a few minutes, I stopped thinking about it. I just did the game.
Tim was so new to broadcasting that I was basically his on-air tutor. When he said something, I would give him a thumbs-up or thumbs-down—you can only imagine how the old-guard TV critics would have reacted if they knew that. And I didn’t even really know what I was doing. So my dad would tell me what to tell Tim, and then I would tell him.
But Tim listened to me. I’ve learned, working with a lot of ex-athletes on the air, that for the most part they want a scoreboard. They want to be critiqued. They are used to being coached, and they want that. I don’t overdo it, but when it’s appropriate, I will say something.
Summerall and Madden were the number one team. Dick Stockton and Matt Millen were number two. We were the number three or four team, depending on who was doing the ranking. But I felt we would only move up over time. I hit it off with the executives. I felt comfortable.
I also felt I was working at the right network. Only FOX would have hired me at that age to do the NFL when I had never done football.
I quickly learned that it was great to work for a place that was starting from scratch, because FOX was not married to some of the stupid policies that were standard at other networks. Everybody in the history of the sports broadcasting business had fudged expense reports. FOX’s solution: no expense reports. We got a certain number of dollars per day. FOX had a car service pick us up at the airport and take us where we needed to go. Nobody could claim it took six cabs and $427 to get from the airport to the Hyatt. FOX cut the bullshit.