"Get up! Get up! Get outta here! GONE!" Those beautiful words are coming back this week.
Most importantly, Bob Uecker's voice provides our soundtrack of summer again.
People could cope with a bad Brewers season. Most people did get used to it. It was easier to stomach because Uecker was still on the air. I almost hated the idea of the Brewers getting better because I knew he would not tell as many stories because he never would let himself get in the way of crucial moments in an actual important game.
In seven years of covering the Brewers, I never saw a winning season. Yet I still made an appointment to listen to Uecker. It went so far as planning trips around him. My family lives in western Illinois (yet they are not awful drivers.) When I would venture to see them I would always leave at 1 p.m. because that was the start of the game. For that three and a half hour drive I would hear Uecker describe stories of his childhood and stories of Johnny Carson.
The Carson stories were true, the childhood tales were embellished a bit.
I remember one afternoon where the Brewers were down six runs or so and he still got me from Rock Falls, Ill. to Milwaukee with his thoughts on Singin' Cowboy Gene Autry. The concept is not interesting but Bob drove it home as I drove home.
When I got my job at Fox 6, I told my sports-crazy brothers that I had just been to a huge Packers event followed by an NBA game. "Hey, that's great." They were not all that impressed.
A week later when I told them I had interviewed "Mr. Baseball," they may as well have carried me around on their shoulders. He is beloved in America but that voice and those stories are Wisconsin's treasure. Having Bob Uecker make fun of me in the press box goes down as one of my life's great moments.
Because of health concerns for Bob, Wisconsin spent much of its summer without Uecker. He comes back to a team that is not really in the race and yet it is a must-listen. I can say that with all the high-def and visual effects that try to bring flash to our media, all you need is Uecker and microphone, and you have a great summer.
In more than 20 years of covering everything from the NFL to dominoes, John Pearson has loved finding the offbeat stories that bring out what makes coaches and athletes human.
The most boring story he ever saw was a story about Michael Jordan in which the angle was, "Michael Jordan is a good basketball player." That's not exactly breaking new ground.
Speaking of "off the beaten path," Milwaukee is the only place John had heard of before working there. From 1998-2005 John saw everything, except a Brewers winning season. Those times have changed and now he is thrilled to be writing about Milwaukee again for OnMilwaukee.com.
In his five years in Alabama, John grew up enough to marry his wonderful wife Amy, and the two of them are in love with their baby girl, Parker.
