Jack Buck

[brian_igo]

I live far enough from St. Louis to pick up KMOX late at night if the weather is good, and I've never been a Cardinals fan. But a few nights during the summer when the weather was good, I happened to tune in KMOX and catch Jack Buck calling a Red Birds game and I found it impossible to touch the dial.

When Jack Buck passed away earlier this week, I didn't mourn as many St. Louisians and Cardinal fans did. But his death was another reminder that the giants of an era are leaving us. Listening to baseball on radio was once the only way you could follow the game as it happened. It took a decade or four of television coverage that only became more banal every year to appreciate the art of radio play by play.

If you are a baseball fan or a fan of radio who missed the show when it was new, you really owe it to yourself to track down a tape of Red Barber, Jack Brickhouse, Ernie Harwell, Vin Sculley or Jack Buck in their prime. The funny part is, they most often did their best work in the insignificant game baseball fans are first to forget.

Anyway, it had been a few days and I hadn't seen a notice about the passing of Jack Buck here, and thought it should be noted.


Brian

[Joubert[$]]

Good call of your own, Brian, to go along with Buck's great calls over the years. I like that the Cards flag was at half-mast even in other ballparks. I also like that Buck left us a pretty darn good sportscaster in his son.

Thank you for not mentioning Harry Caray in the same sentence.

[jsgoddess]

I, too, listened to Jack Buck at a distance on KMOX.

I grew up listening to baseball on the radio, hearing the beautiful rhythms a talented play-by-play announcer can achieve. I'd sit with my father as he smoked his pipe on the porch, and we'd listen to the Indians lose by moonlight.

When I try to follow baseball on TV, I glory in the patterns, in the crisp whites of the uniforms and the patterned green of the grass. But the TV people think I'm stupid, and that I can't follow the game on my own.

One night, as my husband and I drove up 71 from Louisville, he was fiddling with the radio. I told him to stop on a station that really wasn't coming in well at all because beyond the squeal and chitter and static, I could hear the strange and wondrous inflections of Jack Buck.

My husband and I don't have TV. We tune in Tom Hamilton every night, either on the radio or via computer. (No, he isn't one of the greats, but he is exuberant.) Good radio announcers fill in the blanks, describing the action in crisp detail, but not too much. They talk to convey information, not just to talk.

And Jack Buck wasn't just good. He was magnificent.

Julie

[sleeper54]

There was a special section published in the Friday edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch devoted to the life and times of Jack Buck.

Go to the bottom of the home page and click on the 'Special Section' link to be taken to the web edition of that tribute.

Lots of warm, funny, and moving stories...:-|


tom