STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The Milwaukee Brewers hold a 2-games-to-1 lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers in baseball's National League Championship Series. If the Brewers should win this series - and Dodgers fans will insist on the if - if they win, the Brewers would reach the World Series for the first time since 1982. One man is celebrating already.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: What would a World Series mean?
BOB UECKER: Another ring (laughter).
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
That is the voice of Bob Uecker, one of baseball's great voices. And he happens to be a long-suffering Brewers fan. Uecker has been calling games for Milwaukee since 1971. He was a player, too, though. His playing career started there in '62.
INSKEEP: Long ago, Uecker starred in an ad where an usher removes him from his good seat at a ballgame. Must be in the front row, Uecker says, only to be taken back to the cheapest of cheap seats - high up, up, up. That self-deprecating style fit a catcher who had trouble catching. He once explained to Johnny Carson his technique for handling the knuckleball.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON")
UECKER: The easiest way to catch it was to wait until it stopped rolling and just pick it up.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: His likeability earned him a role as a play-by-play announcer in the film "Major League." In his most famous line of the movie, he fibs to the radio audience about a wild pitch that misses the strike zone by about a city block.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MAJOR LEAGUE")
UECKER: (As Harry Doyle) Just a bit outside.
INSKEEP: This season, though, he's been enjoying real Brewers success.
MARTIN: There's video of him in the locker room after one of the team's biggest wins. The players crowd around him, this man in his 80s, dumping beer on his head.
INSKEEP: Of course.
MARTIN: Here he is reacting to a Fox Sports Wisconsin reporter.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SOPHIA MINNAERT: Bob, you've seen more Brewers baseball than anyone. What makes this team special?
UECKER: Well, they're all we's. There's no I's in here. And I mean, to be treated like one of them all the time, I think that's special for me.
INSKEEP: Remember - there is no I in Uecker. Bob Uecker's Milwaukee Brewers face off against the Dodgers once again tonight in Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF TITUS ANDRONICUS SONG, "LONELY BOY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
