Lucky Bastard

by Joe Buck

  We were in the dugout, watching the Pirates take batting practice. Bonds was with Pittsburgh at the time, and he was putting on a show in BP. Bonds was young, but he had already shown he was an all-time great player, and also a jerk. At least, that was my take on it.

  I shared my view with Don. I said, “The guy is so good, so much better than everyone else, and he just seems to hate being here. He’s such a surly prick.”

  Baylor said, “Barry? C’mon.”

  I said, “Yes. Barry Bonds. He stares right through you.”

  He said, “Come here.”

  Baylor grabbed my hand and walked me to the batting cage. Bonds finished his batting practice. He saw Don and gave him this big hug, like you might give an old buddy.

  Don said, “Hey, I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Joe Buck. He’s one of our broadcasters. He’s the son of another one of our broadcasters, Jack Buck.”

  Barry leaned back. He looked at me, and looked at Don, and said:

  “So?”

  That was it. He didn’t shake my hand. He didn’t say anything else.

  Don and I walked back to the dugout.

  I said, “As I was saying . . .”

  Baylor said, “Wow, that was unbelievable.”

  I said, “Well, there you go.”

  It was a bad moment for me, because it proved what you sometimes suspect as a media member: A lot of these guys want nothing to do with you. But over time, I have learned: If they don’t want to talk to me, so what? I’m not going to beg. Enough guys will talk. You still do your job.

  Most of the time, a guy with Bonds’s attitude is not going to give you anything anyway. So we don’t grab the guy kicking and screaming into our production meeting or an interview, because it’s a waste of time. We can’t waterboard guys until they tell us which pitches they like to hit.

  And then there are players who desperately care what you think. That can be strange, too. I remember when Ken Griffey Jr. played for the Mariners, and he was the most popular player in baseball, for good reason. He had his hat on backward during batting practice, he always had this huge smile, and he looked like he was having the time of his life. He was playing a kid’s game for a living. He knew it and he loved it.

  Then, in 2000, he got traded (at his request) to Cincinnati, his hometown. And that kid—his nickname actually was the Kid—seemed worn out. He had battled injuries in Cincinnati and was never the same player he had been in Seattle. Some fans turned on him.

  On a Cardinals-Reds broadcast one night, I said, “You know, Griffey was the most marketable guy for a reason, because he was lovable when he was with Seattle. And now it just looks like he’s not having any fun playing baseball anymore.”

  I didn’t say much more than that. It seemed like a mild criticism. I certainly didn’t expect what happened the next day.

  Griffey was around the cage for batting practice. He walked up to Mike Shannon and asked, “Which one of these guys is Joe Buck?” Shannon directed him toward me.

  Griffey was looking at me, talking to people on the team, and looking back at me. I could tell that he wanted to say something.

  But he still wouldn’t come up to me.

  Finally, I went to Griffey and said, “Is there something you want to say to me?”

  He said, “Yeah, I got something I want to say to you. My wife was listening to the Cardinals’ broadcast last night, because the Reds broadcasters hate me. She can’t listen to them. You said that it doesn’t look like I have any fun playing this game.”

  I said, “That’s just what it looks like to me, as an outsider. I don’t know you. I’m just talking about how you looked when you were with Seattle and how you look now.”

  He said, “Well, how can you say that?”

  I said, “It’s just an observation.”

  He said, “Well, let me tell you why I’m not having any fun. I got traded to my hometown. People don’t want me there. I get death threats.”

  He went on and on and on.

  I said, “That’s why I said what I said.”

  So he was mad I said he wasn’t having fun, then he started telling me why he wasn’t having fun. I guess that can happen when a guy isn’t having fun.

  We talked it over and moved on to other topics. Then, at the end of the conversation, he said, “All right, I’ll put on a smile for you tonight.”

  I said, “OK.”

  I thought he was joking. But then the game started, and soon the PA announcer said: “Now batting for the Reds . . . Ken Griffey Jr.!” and I looked down.

  Griffey walked from the on-deck circle to home plate, stopped halfway, and looked up at our booth. Then he gave this huge, wide, fake-ass grin, as if to say: “Look at me, I’m smiling!” Then he put his head down, walked in, and went to the plate.

  It was weird, but it was also funny and kind of endearing. Here was one of the best players of the last fifty years openly admitting that words could hurt him.

  Chapter 9

  We Are Blessed

  I was lucky that my rise to prominence in baseball broadcasting coincided with the revitalization of the Yankees. They were considered dysfunctional for most of the eighties and early nineties, but starting in 1996, they went on one of the great runs in baseball history. That was my rookie year on FOX’s MLB coverage, the year I’d been so excited to broadcast the World Series, and it was Derek Jeter’s rookie year with the Yankees.

  I would do more of Jeter’s games than of any non-Cardinal over the years. He was always professional with us, but I never got to know him that well. That was part of Jeter’s persona, and maybe part of his success—he never got too close to the media.

  Before his last All-Star Game, in Minnesota in 2014, we had some fun with this. I walked into the American League clubhouse, said hi to Miguel Cabrera on camera, walked past Mike Trout and mentioned him, then got to Jeter.

  Jeter said: “Get out of here. We’ve got a game to play.”

  I thought it was funny—anybody can show a live television interview, but who shows getting rejected for an interview? And Jeter was in on the joke. He was sort of winking at his own reputation for keeping the media at arm’s length.

  Some people online said, “That was awesome. Jeter just showed up Joe Buck.” Showed me up? I wrote it! Some people just don’t get that stuff. They thought he was serious.

  Jeter and I were never close. But of all the baseball players that I’ve ever covered, I think Jeter was the best all-around package. When you look at what he did, where he did it, and how he did it . . . it’s astounding. It became vogue in the last few years to say Jeter was overrated. I think it’s just our society and our nature now to tear guys down like that.

  Keith Olbermann, a lifelong Yankees fan, did this whole rant toward the end of Jeter’s career about how overrated he was. Stupid. Jeter was the captain of a Yankee team in a much more intensely scrutinized world, and if the bases were loaded and you had a one-run lead in the ninth inning, you’d want the screaming shot hit at him. He’d make the play. He was a clutch player, however you define clutch. He didn’t hit a home run in every big moment, but he handled those moments as well as anyone.

  He also did it in New York. He didn’t make a lot of missteps. Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle could get drunk and carouse and nobody wrote about it. Jeter played in an age when people were dying to write about that stuff, but he rarely waded into controversy. He could be distant, but he was respectful. I’ve never been more impressed with a player talking into a microphone than when George Steinbrenner died during the All-Star break and Jeter took the mic when the Yankees returned home and talked from the heart as his career was winding down.

  I got a little frustrated with Jeter because I think he always had a little bit more to give—not on the field, but with his personality. I think he was just so programmed to not reveal anything that he became a
boring quote. That was probably for self-preservation, which was totally understandable but kind of a shame. When you watched him talk about Steinbrenner that day, you realized there was more there, a guy who could talk so eloquently. It’s hard to stand there and talk from the heart in front of a crowd like that.

  Was he Babe Ruth? No. Was he Ozzie Smith at shortstop? No. But he was a great player, and he had a presence that really helped those teams thrive in New York. Do you think Joe Torre thought he was overrated? Jeter and Mariano Rivera controlled that Yankees clubhouse. Think of all the controversies that could have derailed the team and didn’t. I just think people don’t get what Jeter meant to the Yankees and to the game.

  —

  My dad was sixty-seven years old when CBS fired him from its number one baseball team in 1991. That is, of course, a reasonable retirement age, even for a man who counted every penny he had. I didn’t really expect him to retire, but I did urge him to ease off a bit. I wanted him to enjoy the rest of his life and appreciate everything he had done in his career.

  He didn’t see it that way. He kept doing Cardinals games and Monday Night Football on the radio. He had Parkinson’s and diabetes, but he never considered retiring.

  Some days, he seemed like he was doing great, and sometimes he was clearly struggling. If you know anybody who has had Parkinson’s, you probably know: Sometimes it’s unthinkably awful, but there are times during the day, when the person is rested and all the medicines and stars are aligned, he can function pretty well. For my dad, that was the afternoon. He would take a nap before he went to the ballpark. You had to tiptoe around the couch so you didn’t wake him.

  He couldn’t get enough of being around the batting cage or introducing himself to new players. He just loved being around the scene. He would get his insulin shot from the Cardinals trainer Barry Weinberg, eat peanut butter in the clubhouse, and talk to George Kissell. George was just about the only person who worked for the Cardinals longer than my dad did, in almost every capacity, from minor-league manager to minor-league instructor. He was a legend in St. Louis.

  My dad would joke about his physical condition. He would say, “At night, I don’t say good night to my wife—I say good-bye.” He would climb into bed with my mom and do play-by-play of his different medicines and ailments playing baseball against one another:

  “Sinemet is on the mound . . . Pacemaker is on first . . . insulin’s on third. Here comes Sinemet with the pitch . . .”

  He worked well into his seventies, and it became pretty clear he would work until he couldn’t work anymore. He always felt he had something to give. He proved it in one of our country’s darkest hours.

  —

  On September 11, 2001, I dropped Natalie off at school. She had just turned five. I found out on the radio about the Twin Towers being hit. When the first plane hit, I thought it was an accident—at that time, no one’s minds automatically jumped to terrorism. I thought, “Oh, my God. Some plane got terribly off course and slammed into the World Trade Center.” I went home and started watching this tragedy unfold on TV, and when the second plane hit, I, like everyone, knew it had to be terrorism.

  I remember driving down to Busch Stadium when baseball resumed after the six-day layoff, thinking, “I have a wife and two kids, and I’m going into this public place with fifty thousand people. We’re sitting ducks. Anything could happen.” I felt myself getting obsessed about what might happen next. I was nervous driving down there. It felt like the end of the world was imminent.

  I was going to do the game on TV, and my dad would do it on radio. But first, there was a pregame ceremony.

  —

  My father wrote a lot of poems late in his life. Some were really clever. Some were kind of silly. Some were dramatic. The poems were pretty simple—it wasn’t like he had mastered iambic pentameter—but he enjoyed writing them.

  So when 9/11 happened, he wrote a poem about it. I wasn’t surprised. He was intensely patriotic, and 9/11 hit him on a really profound level. He must have read his poem to somebody with the Cardinals, because they asked him to read it before the game.

  He was an emotional person on his calmest day. We used to joke that he would cry at the sight of a good kick return. To hear his own voice echoing through this stadium, reading a poem about terrorism and about what was just done to the United States, while his hands were shaking because of Parkinson’s . . . I didn’t think he would get through it.

  I went out of my way to find him before he went down there, to say, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  He said, “I want to do this.”

  I said, “You’re going to cry.”

  He put his paper down, and he put his finger one millimeter from my nose and gave me this dead-serious look, with his eyes narrowed, and he said, “I will not cry.” His teeth were clenched.

  I said, “You’re going to cry.”

  And he said, “I will not cry. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars.”

  I said, “OK. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars.”

  He went down there and read it:

  Since this nation was founded under God

  More than two hundred years ago

  We have been the bastion of freedom

  The light that keeps the free world aglow

  We do not covet the possessions of others

  We are blessed with the bounty we share

  We have rushed to help other nations

  Anything, anytime, anywhere

  War is just not our nature

  We won’t start, but we will end the fight

  If we are involved

  We shall be resolved

  To protect what we know is right

  We have been challenged by a cowardly foe

  Who strikes and then hides from our view

  With one voice we say

  We have no choice today

  There is only one thing to do

  Everyone is saying

  The same thing and praying

  That we end these senseless moments we are living

  As our fathers did before

  We shall win this unwanted war

  And our children will enjoy the future we’ll be giving

  He didn’t cry.

  But I did.

  He came back up and stuck his hand out, like: “Where’s my hundred?”

  I just slapped him on the hand. I didn’t have a hundred dollars on me.

  That poem meant a lot to people, especially in St. Louis—but really, to baseball fans all over. The 9/11 attacks felt like a tragedy on two fronts. First and foremost was the incomprehensible murder of three thousand innocent people. But there was also the sense that the American way of life was under attack, and that we were doomed to live in fear. Our faith in one another, and in our country, was being tested. The poem kind of gave the signal that it was OK to enjoy baseball, or any kind of entertainment, again.

  And he had the stature and authority to make the point. My father was, in many ways, the embodiment of the American dream. He grew up poor in the Depression, worked his way through college, and served our country in World War II. He was shot during his service, but he recovered and built a career, mostly in our national pastime.

  As corny as it may sound, everything in his life kind of led to that moment, and he funneled it into that poem. People remember Mike Piazza’s home run for the Mets in the first game in New York after those attacks, and they remember my dad’s poem. In some small way, they both made America feel whole again.

  —

  Baseball was on the way to one of its strangest and most memorable finishes to a season. It was certainly so for me. But the first postseason moment I remember from that year was beyond strange. It was horribly embarrassing.

  In Game 5 of the 2001 National League Division Series, Arizona’s Tony Womack hit a series-winning
single against St. Louis. As he celebrated on the field, a woman joined him and he hugged her.

  And then I asked him if the woman, who was actually his wife, was his mom.

  Uh . . . did I say mom? I . . . uh . . . meant . . . uh . . .

  I was mortified. That was about as big, bad, awkward, and stupid as a live TV interview can be. You have to be a moron to say that. It was like accidentally walking into the women’s restroom on national television. Or asking a woman when the baby is due, and having her say she isn’t pregnant.

  I said something like “Oh, my God. I’m sorry. Well, she’s a fine-looking lady!”

  How often do you see a broadcaster put his size 11 shoe in his mouth like that?

  This was 100 percent my fault.

  But I can explain. Sort of.

  Tony’s dad had died that year, around Father’s Day. It really hit Tony hard. We were telling the story on the air right before he got the series-winning hit. He came around to home plate. At FOX, we love to take the viewers where they can’t otherwise go, as quickly as possible, so as soon as the game ended, we threw a headset on him.

  I was still up in the booth. I was thinking about his parents, his father dying, and the emotion of the moment. He was sobbing into the arms of this woman. I was interviewing him from the booth, and thus looking at them from up high. In the celebration, they all seemed like kids to me. Subconsciously, I was thinking, “Well, I’m sure he’s not married, he’s just a kid having fun playing Major League Baseball.”

  So I said on the air, “Hey, Tony, how does that feel?”

  He said, “Oh, man, that’s the biggest hit of my life. Unbelievable, ending a playoff series like that.”

  “Who are you hugging down there? Is that your mom?”

  I could sense very quickly that I had done something wrong. When Tony said, “No, man, that’s my wife,” I went into full-on “Oh shit!” mode.