Lucky Bastard

by Joe Buck

  I said, “Are you coming to Texas?” I didn’t know if she was traveling with her dad. I was going through a divorce. She was going through a divorce. People saw us together, and she was rubbing my neck. It was enough to start a rumor in our big old small town that we were together: Jack Buck’s son and Mike Shannon’s daughter. It would have been the St. Louis baseball equivalent of Julie Nixon marrying David Eisenhower, except that it wasn’t true. Erin is like my sister. There was never even a thought of that.

  As it turned out, Erin was not planning to fly to Texas. So I got her onto the FOX charter, and she continued to treat me.

  I felt better every day. I felt relief on two fronts: I could keep my job, and I didn’t have to come clean about what had actually happened. (Until now.)

  By Game 6 in St. Louis, I was really feeling like myself. That was good, because it turned out to be one of the best baseball games ever played. It would have been an awful viewing experience if I hadn’t had my voice.

  The Rangers led the series 3–2, and they led the Cardinals 7–4 in the eighth inning. The Cardinals scored once in the eighth and twice in the ninth to tie it, 7–7. The Rangers took a 9–7 lead in the tenth, but the Cardinals scored twice in the bottom of the tenth. It was wild.

  Then, in the bottom of the eleventh, the Cardinals’ David Freese hit a game-winning home run to force Game 7, and I knew what to say:

  “We’ll see you tomorrow night!”

  I tried to say it with the exact inflection my dad had two decades earlier.

  Serious baseball fans knew it was a reference to my father’s famous call of Kirby Puckett’s home run to force Game 7 in 1991. I had actually said, “We’ll see you tomorrow night!” once before, in 2002, a few months after he died, when the Giants blew Game 6 of the World Series against the Angels. But this was different. It fit just perfectly because it was in St. Louis, David Freese was a St. Louis kid, and it was Game 6 of a World Series that forced Game 7. It was twenty years later, almost to the night.

  Not long after the Freese home run, I was with my daughter in a mall in St. Louis. We walked into an “art” store that had some sports memorabilia in it. We walked in because we had a few minutes to kill while we waited for a movie. There was a cool canvas of Freese’s follow-through. He had signed it, and he had written: We Will See You Tomorrow Night. Joe Buck. That’s really the only time a player has acknowledged one of my calls like that.

  I didn’t plan to say it. It was kind of bouncing around back there in the back of my head. I was reading the outfielder. I saw the outfielder’s shoulders slump, and as he turned, it just came out. I don’t know how. It’s not as if I was planning on a St. Louis kid hitting a home run to force Game 7. But that call turned into one of the most popular of my career. For me, it meant I was back.

  —

  I was nominated for a Sports Emmy that year. I had a weird personal history with the Emmys. The first time I was nominated, I assumed I wouldn’t win, but I did. Then I won several in a row, and with each passing year, I thought, “Oh, I got this.” Then somebody else won, and I felt like an asshole. By 2011, I stopped caring so much.

  So I sat in the crowd at the awards show and assumed I wouldn’t win. But I did. I appreciated it, because I had recovered from this professional nosedive, and my bosses were there to see me win. But it also told me not to seek validation from Emmys. After all, they gave me one after one of the worst years any broadcaster has ever had.

  Part 7

  Climbing Up Again

  Chapter 17

  Happy Days Are Here Again

  When I turned forty-four—the same age my father was when I was born—Trudy gave me the most amazing gift. She had seen the old Dan Caesar story in the Post-Dispatch—the one that made me cry when I was twenty years old. She took one quote from the article and painted it on canvas:

  “Why is a kid, still in college, showing up on what people consider the premier local team network in baseball? The reason is simple, and it’s spelled B-U-C-K.”

  More than two decades later, those words made me cry again. We all try to teach our kids lessons. This was Trudy teaching me. I was devastated by Dan’s story when it was published. From Trudy’s angle, it was a compliment.

  Of course I am lucky to be my father’s son. Why run from it?

  My girls make me feel so lucky every day. Natalie has a great sense of humor and is not scared to step on a stage. But she is also a deep soul and protector of her younger sister. She is a natural singer and entertainer, and she makes people laugh.

  Trudy is so smart and driven that sometimes I wonder if she is mine. She has always been mature beyond her years—some of her teachers have said she could babysit some of the others in her class. I really believe Trudy can win an Oscar and Natalie can win an Emmy. Hey, I’m a proud dad—I’m biased. But I believe that’s possible for them. They are far more talented than those they came from. And they can quote me on that when they write their own books someday.

  For Father’s Day 2015, Trudy and Natalie made me a video. My mom was in it, along with close friends from throughout my life. They gave it to me in Tacoma before I left the hotel for final-round coverage of the US Open. The girls did it and edited it together as a total surprise to me. By the time I finished watching the video, I was a puddle. That was one of my best days as a father.

  —

  I worried about my voice all the way into 2015. Now I can finally get through a game without thinking about it at all. It took four years for me to call a big moment in a game, where my voice gets louder and louder, and just do it without that voice in the back of my head saying, You better not go there, man. It’s not going to be there.

  When I got my voice back, I made a decision: I would emote as much as I wanted. I just thought, “Screw it, I’m just going to yell, because I can and I should. These are big moments. I’m not going to downplay them anymore. I’m just going to let it go. If people think that means I’m rooting for the other team, I don’t care.”

  I also decided if I wanted to be goofy, I would be goofy. I’ve been in this business for twenty-five years now, and in a way, I’ve been in it my whole life. I should know how to do the job by now, right? It’s a lot more fun when you stop worrying about how people will react.

  It also helps to be in love.

  —

  In the summer of 2012, Troy and I were doing a Broncos-49ers preseason game in Denver. Peyton Manning had just joined the Broncos, and so we spent some time talking about Manning, and also Manning, and Manning’s passes, and Manning’s move from Indianapolis, and I think we also talked about Peyton Manning.*

  Afterward, I was walking through the players’ tunnel with Steve Horn, Troy, statistician Ed Sfida, and spotter Dave Schwalbe. As we approached the Broncos locker room, a blond-haired reporter was standing against the opposite wall.

  I locked in on her from about thirty yards away.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Whatever I felt was unlike anything I had before. I had to know who that was. I asked Schwalbe if he knew, and he spit her name out immediately. He may have locked in before I did.

  “Oh, her name is Michelle Beisner,” he said. “She works at NFL Network.”

  I was going through a lot at the time. My divorce had recently been finalized. It was my first year back after losing my voice. I was still trying to figure out how to have a social life, particularly a dating life, with daughters who didn’t want to share their dad with anyone.

  I immediately put together a list of people who might know if Beisner was married, single, or had recently escaped from prison. I settled on the NFL Network’s Rich Eisen, who is a great friend. Like a desperate high school dweeb, I called Rich and asked for a scouting report. What was she was like? What is her dating status? Is she well liked at the NFL Network? I stopped just short of begging for her Social Security number and home address.

  Rich
told me that she was a great woman, liked by all. She had no airs about her. She was just sweet and really cool.

  He said he would tell her I was asking about her. And he did. But, because he is Rich Eisen, always looking for sources of amusement, he made it a game. He told Michelle that there was someone at another network “in the booth” who was interested. But he didn’t say who it was.

  She said she was flattered but was living with her boyfriend of four years in Los Angeles. Then Rich asked if she wanted to know who was interested.

  She rattled off a list of whoever came to mind. She went through a lot of names: “Aikman? Costas? Michaels?” How about Curt Gowdy, Michelle? Oh, wait, he’s dead.

  Then she finally said: “Please don’t tell me it’s Joe Buck.”

  Rich had to inform her that it actually was Joe Buck.

  “Why would you say that?” he asked. “He is a great guy and a good friend of mine.”

  She said, “I don’t know why I said that. I have never heard anything bad about him. He just seems a bit arrogant and smug.”

  Rich did not tell me her entire response. He left out the last part. He just told me she was living with her boyfriend.

  I’m kind of amazed I didn’t walk away at that point. I have never been the most confident person when it comes to dating. But something told me I just had to meet her.

  —

  I wore out Rich’s cell phone asking for any detail he could give. I saw former NFL Network reporter/host Kara Henderson at a Rams game (Kara was engaged to Rams general manager Les Snead) and I figured she might know something. I tried my best not to sound like a serial killer as I asked whether Beisner’s relationship was stable. When you are chasing something, it seems natural to ask ridiculous questions of people who can’t answer them.

  I was so desperate for an answer—and not just an answer, but the answer I wanted to hear.

  As far as Kara knew, Michelle was taken. That was not the answer I wanted to hear.

  In October, the Cardinals were playing the Giants in the National League Championship Series. Game 1 was on a Sunday night in San Francisco. Coincidentally, the 49ers were hosting the New York Giants in the feature game on FOX. The execs at FOX hatched this idea: I would do Niners-Giants at Candlestick Park at 1:00 P.M. Pacific, then take a streetcar to AT&T Park for the evening MLB playoff game at five.

  After all that time when I could barely hear my own voice, I would do two games in one day. I was excited. I felt like Deion Sanders, who once scored an NFL touchdown and hit a major-league home run in the same week. I’m guessing Deion would not buy that comparison. (And I didn’t mention it to McCarver—Deion once dumped a bucket of ice water on him.)

  In the afternoon, I was in the booth a couple of hours before kickoff and looked down.

  There she was.

  The siren of the sidelines.

  The Aphrodite of the AFC!

  (OK, I’ll stop.)

  I picked up a pair of binoculars for the first time in seven years just to watch her demeanor on the sideline. She is laughing! She laughs. SHE IS A LAUGHER. Laughing: What she does! She was smiling as she did her work. Upbeat! Happy! Nice! Within forty-five minutes, she was up in the press box at Candlestick.

  Candlestick was great for TV cameras—I can still see Dwight Clark in the back of the end zone and Joe Montana scrambling to find him.* But for a member of the media, it was a shithole. It was cramped, and there was only one elevator. There was also only one bathroom.

  At one point, I looked out of our booth down below to the media lunch line and she was there. I leaned in to Aikman and said, “She is down there. I am going to meet her.” It’s one thing to act like a geeky high school kid who has a crush—quite another to do it with Troy Aikman. But there I was.

  My plan: Act like I needed coffee. Never mind the Keurig machine in the booth. I hurried to the bathroom and made sure my hair was placed just right. I stood by her and waited for her to turn around as I timed my coffee pour with hers.

  I said, “Hi.”

  She said, “Hi. Talked to Rich Eisen lately?”

  I said, “Why? Because I am stalking you through him?”

  She laughed and said yes.

  I said, “So what’s your story?”

  This was pretty forward by my standards.

  She said, “Well, I live with my boyfriend.”

  I said, “Well, that’s stupid.”

  That was really forward by my standards.

  She laughed, and we talked for a minute and that was it. I did the game, then hopped on the cable car that was traveling six miles an hour so FOX could broadcast my trek from one game to the other. That was dumb and insulting to the viewers—acting like they care so much about who is calling the game—but we did it. I walked into AT&T with literally eight minutes to spare—just enough time to open my scorebook, hastily write down the lineups, and get ready to roll.

  I think that day would have made my dad proud. He was a workaholic. He never turned down a chance to do a game. I think he would have enjoyed me coming back from my vocal problems to do two games in one day. And he probably would have appreciated that the whole time, all I could think about was a beautiful woman.

  —

  Well, I was hooked. My crush from the eye contact had tripled after our brief encounter.

  A month later, I was in Green Bay and walked into the auditorium where we held our production meetings with Horn and Pam Oliver, our sideline reporter. The only other person there was Michelle.

  I introduced her to Steve by saying, “This is Michelle Beisner, and she stupidly lives with her boyfriend.”

  She hesitated, and then said, “Well, that may be changing.”

  Holy wait what hold on now wait huh what?

  SO YOU’RE SAYING THERE’S A CHANCE?

  Life! Hope! Sunshine! Rainbows! I asked if she wanted to meet for a drink after our respective production dinners. She hesitated and said to call her at the Hilton and leave a message telling her where I would be. This would have been the greatest news of all time, except for one small detail:

  She wasn’t staying at the Hilton.

  She had intentionally told me the wrong hotel so I could not find her, because she was still unsure if her existing relationship was truly ending. It’s admirable, when you think about it. It showed her integrity, which I would later learn is as solid as anyone’s I know.

  Of course, I was not about to sit in my hotel room and admire her integrity. That night at dinner, I kept texting Rich to see if my drink with her was still possible. He was texting her responses to me, and my responses to her, for about fifteen minutes, when he realized he had done enough. He said, “Look, I like you both. You guys work it out.” He gave me her number and gave her mine. That is when the stalking really began.

  It started in true twenty-first-century fashion as a texting relationship, a friendship at this point. Nothing crazy. Just fun. I loved her sense of humor. Beautiful, works in sports, AND funny? What? Tell me she likes porn and I will faint.

  A few weeks later, Michelle was scheduled to work a game in St. Louis. Unfortunately, I was supposed to be back in Green Bay at the same time. Michelle is a foodie. She texted me that she was coming to my city, and did I know any great restaurants that she had to try? I said I did know a few restaurants, but she would only get the names if I got to take her. Smooth, Joe!

  She agreed . . . as long as she could meet me there.

  No, I said. I had to pick her up at her hotel.

  She relented, but made it clear it wasn’t a date. It was supposed to just be a work dinner, filled with talk about football and the Cover 2 defense. As it turns out, she wanted to meet me at the restaurant so she would have an out. She wanted to be able to leave as soon as the check came, in case I talked too much or smelled of urine.

  About seven minutes into our ride
to Paul Manno’s restaurant, I was already talking way, way too much. I was unloading. It was a complete meltdown. I told her everything I ever wanted to tell anyone about my life, and my divorce, and my kids, and my father, and my job. I drove by every house I ever lived in . . . it all came spilling out, fast. I needed a time-out and she needed a snorkel.

  But ten minutes into dinner, I knew I had to marry this woman. I cannot explain why. I just knew.

  After dinner, we went to the bar at a restaurant called Café Napoli. It was the wrong place. It was packed, and people were coming up to me, and it was awkward. I had my finger in her jean belt loop. She had her hand on my belt. We didn’t know each other well at all, but we both knew there was a connection. I couldn’t get close enough.

  We went to her hotel for another drink. The guy who sings the anthem at St. Louis sporting events was there closing down his spot from his band’s night. I introduced Michelle, and then he and I sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” together in the lobby. I had never felt so carefree in my hometown in my life. I didn’t care who saw me. I belted it out and made her laugh.

  I was all in, immediately.

  She was not.

  She really was not in a position to start anything with me, and she made that clear, too—frequently. Every reminder was like a slap in the face, but I kept coming back for more. We moved ahead in fits and starts until the Super Bowl in New Orleans. She was there to cover it, and I was there to cover her. Not physically. I was just dying to be near her. Her relationship had officially ended, but now I had to deal with her “mourning” phase.*

  I didn’t consider how our potential relationship would look to the people in our business. I honestly did not care. I was divorced and had been separated for a few years. But she cared. The last time her coworkers saw her in public with a guy, it was someone else. Now she was going to show up at a Super Bowl with an older guy from another network?

  Even though we had been aboveboard the whole way, she didn’t like how it looked. I understand. It’s hard for a woman in this business, and Michelle has fought to establish credibility. She was a Denver Broncos cheerleader from ages twenty to twenty-six, and the cheerleader stereotype follows her wherever she goes. Now she would be dating the guy who calls the Super Bowl at FOX. She did not want to look like a climber.