Lucky Bastard Read online

  DUTTON

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  Copyright © 2016 by Joe Buck, Inc.

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  DUTTON is a registered trademark and the D colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Buck, Joe. | Rosenberg, Michael.

  Title: Lucky bastard : the story I can't tell on TV / Joe Buck, with Michael

  Rosenberg.

  Description: New York : DUTTON 1852, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016011271 (print) | LCCN 2016040924 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781101984567 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781101984581 (trade paperback) | ISBN

  9781101984574 (eBook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Buck, Joe. | Sportscasters—United States—Biography.

  Classification: LCC GV742.42.B855 A3 2016 (print) | LCC GV742.42.B855 (ebook)

  | DDC 796.092 [B] —dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016011271

  Ebook ISBN 9781101984574

  All photographs courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  Version_2

  To the strong women who have shaped me: my grandma Lillie; my mom, Carole; my sister, Julie; my daughters, Natalie and Trudy; and my wife, Michelle, who has changed my life and shown me how happy I can be.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Can You Hear Me Now?

  Chapter 1

  Uh-Oh

  Part 2

  Jack’s Kid

  Chapter 2

  The Adventures of Jasper Pennypucker

  Chapter 3

  Now Playing Jack Buck . . . Jack Buck!

  Chapter 4

  My First Professional At-Bat

  Chapter 5

  Cold Winds

  Part 3

  Thanks, Mr. Murdoch

  Chapter 6

  A Fourth Network

  Chapter 7

  Big Jumps

  Chapter 8

  Thrills and Chills (and Steroids)

  Chapter 9

  We Are Blessed

  Part 4

  Good-bye, Dad

  Chapter 10

  The Last Fight

  Part 5

  The Top

  Chapter 11

  This Thing Is Huge

  Chapter 12

  Married . . . with Children

  Chapter 13

  Buck Rhymes with Suck

  Part 6

  The Bottom

  Chapter 14

  Grandstanding

  Chapter 15

  The Split

  Chapter 16

  Vocal Discord

  Part 7

  Climbing Up Again

  Chapter 17

  Happy Days Are Here Again

  Chapter 18

  The Mountaintop

  Chapter 19

  So What!

  Photographs

  About the Author

  Part 1

  Can You Hear Me Now?

  Chapter 1

  Uh-Oh

  If you bought this book just to confirm that I am an idiot, I have bad news for you:

  You will have to wait a few pages.

  Hang in there. You can do it.

  —

  In 1994, I started broadcasting NFL games on FOX. I had never broadcast a football game in my life, yet FOX liked me enough to give me a chance.*

  With live broadcasting, you can prepare as much as you want, and that can make it a little easier, but at some point you just have to do it. You never know what situations might arise, and you don’t even really know what skills you have. I quickly learned that the good Lord blessed me with one of the most important physical gifts for any sportscaster: a good bladder.

  You have probably never thought about this. You probably watch game after game, night after night, eating and drinking without any concern at all for when the guys doing the game get to pee. But we’re human. We pee. I don’t think Bob Costas and Al Michaels will mind if I tell you this.

  I suppose that, like with everything else, each announcer has his own style. Jim Nantz may unzip and say, “Hello, friends!” before firing at the urinal. I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t asked Jim. But sometimes, finding a chance to pee is harder than you might think, especially in some of the older stadiums, where the bathrooms are not always conveniently located.

  You have a limited amount of time during a commercial break to get to your destination and get back. You may have to fight your way through sportswriters, which doesn’t make them happy, but they can miss a play and survive. I can’t.

  Veteran broadcasters understand that in many cases, it is wise to start unzipping before you even arrive. You have to be efficient, or you pay a price later. My father told me: “Never run to a microphone.” You don’t want to be out of breath. So you have to be able to get to the bathroom fast, catch your breath while you pee, and then calmly walk back into the booth.

  In December 1994, my otherwise trusty bladder betrayed me. What can I say? Even the great organs have a bad day at the office once in a while. I was doing a Packers-Falcons game in Milwaukee’s County Stadium. It was a memorable game for a number of reasons. The Packers used to play games in Milwaukee every year, but this was their last home game there. Packers star Sterling Sharpe got injured on what seemed like an innocuous hit, and it ended his career.

  At some point during that game, unbeknownst to viewers but extremely beknownst to me, I had to pee so bad that I could barely talk. The problem was that, at County Stadium, the football press box was really far from the restroom. You had be Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible to get there in time. There was a catwalk, some kind of pulley-and-ladder system—there might have been a zip line. It was rough.

  With a few minutes left in the first half, I was dying. I had to go so bad. But in football, we have a mix of longer and shorter commercial breaks—and the way the game went, all of our commercial breaks at the end of the half were only thirty seconds long. There was no way I could get out of the booth, to the bathroom, and back in thirty seconds. I had a solid forty-second stream in me, plus that long commute. Forget it.

  Every time we went to break, I asked, “How long is this one?”

  Thirty seconds.

  “Jesus!”

  At some point I explained my problem to my spotter, Gary. A spotter is the person who helps me during an NFL telecast “
spot” who made the catch, who made the tackle, or who blocked a field goal.

  I said, “Gary, I’ve got to go, and I’ve got to go now.”

  He was like, “I don’t know what to do.” This was not a scenario they address in spotter school.*

  I said: “I’ve got to pee. I can’t hold this any longer. This is not going to work.”

  Then I said: “Give me something.”

  Gary handed me a water bottle. Nice thought, and I appreciate the ingenuity, but no. Not going to work. It’s December in Wisconsin, I’m wearing this big parka, and anyway, I can’t hit that target. It’s too small. Who am I—William Tell?

  I knocked the bottle out of Gary’s hand. I was beside myself, but I was still calling the game. I said, “All right, next break, I’m going to open this parka. Give me the trash can.”

  He said, “Really?”

  I said, “Hand me the fucking trash can in the next break. If it’s not more than thirty seconds, I’m peeing in the trash can.”

  All right, Joe!

  Play stopped. We went to commercial.

  I said, “How long is this break?”

  Thirty seconds.

  I demanded the trash can. There was a young woman in the booth, and I asked her to leave. I put the trash can in front of me, I unzipped, I was ready to go, and . . .

  Oh no.

  Not now.

  Stage fright!

  You’ve got to be kidding me. I couldn’t pee. I was in the booth, I had my parka open, I didn’t know what cameras were on me, and I couldn’t bring myself to pee.

  I was standing there, unzipped, waiting for the floodgates to open, but they wouldn’t. It was like the Heinz commercial when you have to wait for the ketchup to come out of the bottle.

  Finally they’re counting down: Ten . . . nine . . .

  And suddenly it’s Niagara Falls.

  On the first play from scrimmage after the break, Brett Favre took a snap as I kept peeing. People thought broadcasters had their dicks in their hands when they called Favre’s games—this time I actually did. Favre looked to his right and threw to Sharpe down the sideline.

  “He’s going to go for a touchdown!” I said as I kept peeing in the trash can.

  —

  Wow, you do kind of sound like an idiot.

  What? That’s not the story about me being an idiot. That was just a man heeding nature’s call while calling a touchdown. We’re only getting warmed up here.

  —

  The first time I did play-by-play for a major-league team, I was twenty years old. It was 1990. The St. Louis Cardinals were playing at Shea Stadium in New York. My father, the famous broadcaster Jack Buck, let me borrow his private plane to travel to New York, because my own private plane was in the shop, getting its gold-plated cupholders shined.*

  I was working with an announcer named Al Hrabosky. The Cardinals were playing a doubleheader, because there had been a rainout. We wouldn’t be on air for the start of Game 1, because other programming was already scheduled.

  The producer said, “We’re going to come on the air at six. Whatever is going on, whether we’re in the middle of Game 1, between games, or into Game 2, we’ll come in wherever we are, recap what’s happened to this point.”

  OK, that sounds great.

  Wait. What?

  “How do we do that?” I asked.

  He said, “Well, we’re going to run highlights and you’ll just talk through the highlights.”

  That sounds simple, except that I had no idea how to do it.

  They said, “You’ll find your way through it.”

  Well, if the producer says I will find my way through it, then I will. He must know what he’s talking about. He’s the producer. He produces. That’s his job.

  So I did what I thought you were supposed to do when you went on TV: I slapped too much makeup on my face. The stage manager, Becky Solomon, was making me up, and it was heavy stuff. I felt like Liza Minnelli.* I was in this little booth in Shea Stadium on a scorching-hot summer day. I felt like I was broadcasting in an oven.

  At 6:00 P.M., we were in the ninth inning of Game 1. I thought, “Oh, my God. They’re going to run a recap of the entire game and I’m going to have to talk through it, and I’ve never done highlights.”

  So we came on the air. I said, “Welcome to Shea Stadium! Here we are in the ninth inning of this doubleheader. We’ll look back when we can here and show you how we’ve gotten to this point.”

  I went through the highlights, and I was awful. I had no idea how to do them. It was just terrible television. But at least I got through it.

  I thought, “The worst is over.”

  ADVICE FOR YOUNG BROADCASTERS: Never tell yourself “The worst is over.”

  When the game ended, they said, “OK, in between the games, you and Al are going to do a little stand-up.”

  Stand-up? Like Richard Pryor?

  I said, “What does that mean?”

  I was told, “We’re going to stand up and talk about what you’re going to see. In the second segment, Al is going to jog down and interview one of the players on the field, and you’ll throw it to him.”

  Uh, OK.

  I did the stand-up, mimicking what I had seen on TV as a boy, and finished with: “When we come back, Al is going to go down to the field and talk to one of the players.” We went to commercial. Al ran out of there. Now it was just me. I was sweating. The makeup was running onto my shirt. It was like Broadcast News, when Albert Brooks sweats through the newscast.

  We were getting ready to go on the air. The producer was in my ear:

  “Five . . . four . . . three . . .”

  I said, “Welcome back to Shea Stadium!”

  But I was sweating so much that my earpiece popped out of my ear and fell to the floor.

  I should have just said: “I don’t know what I’m doing! If you think I only got this job because my father is a beloved broadcaster, you’re right! You all win! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to lie down for a bit.”

  I was talking gibberish, repeating myself, and I was completely on my own. Thankfully, I could throw it to Hrabosky. Or so I thought.

  “Now,” I said, “let’s go down to the field and check in with Al Hrabosky, who has a special guest. Al?”

  Al?

  Hello?

  Al.

  Al . . . ?

  AL!

  The red light in front of me was still on. I knew from watching The Brady Bunch that this meant I was still on TV.

  Al couldn’t find his microphone in the dugout. People working on our broadcast were trying to tell me I couldn’t go to him, but I couldn’t hear them because my earpiece was on the floor.

  —

  Ha-ha, that’s so pathetic—

  Nope! That’s not the story that confirms I’m an idiot either.

  That’s just a little dose of my own embarrassment for your reading pleasure.

  I could tell you about the time I interviewed a player who was standing next to a woman, and I said, “Is that your mom?” and he replied, “No, man, that’s my wife.”* But even that is not the story that confirms I am an idiot.

  OK. Here we go.

  —

  In some ways, I’ve always felt like I took after my grandfather Joe Lintzenich. He played for the Chicago Bears in the early 1930s and served in the Navy in World War II. He was a loyal husband, a loving father, and a wonderful grandfather.

  Also, he was bald.

  Yes: bald. Nothing scares a man more than that word. It trumps audit, terrorism, and herpes. Nobody wants to be bald. Go ask any man, “Who would you rather look like: Brad Pitt or Telly Savalas?” Nobody says, “Kojak!”

  Bald people just look weird. I’m not worried about offending bald readers here, because half of them are patting th
e tops of their heads, convincing themselves they aren’t that bald, and the other half know they look weird, which is why they go to great lengths—sometimes ridiculous lengths—to avoid going hairless up top. It doesn’t matter how much money they have either. Look at Donald Trump. He is a billionaire, but what he really wants is hair. That’s why he goes around the country with that dust mop on his head.

  You know what? I understand. I have been so deathly afraid of my retreating follicle troops that, when I was twenty-three, I asked the Cardinals manager—who shall remain nameless, especially to those who later watched him manage the Yankees to four world championships—about his hair plugs. I had seen (redacted)’s hairline do its dance move—two steps back and one step forward. I could tell he’d had plugs.

  I got the name of his guy, called, and set up an appointment for a postseason sprucing-up in October 1993. Just a little sprinkling the infield, if you will. My first wife, Ann, and I flew from our hometown of St. Louis to New York and stayed at a friend’s apartment in Manhattan, and I went in for the operation.

  There is a medical term to describe the operation: fucking barbaric. I’m not the toughest guy in the world, or even in my broadcast booth, but I’m not a whiner. I have had a broken neck, two back surgeries, dental surgery, and a fractured sternum, and I haven’t complained too much. But this hair thing is otherworldly.

  It starts by “numbing up” the back of your head with around fifteen shots of Novocain. They keep giving you more shots of Novocain until the pain subsides. Pro tip: The pain NEVER subsides. There is a reason that “get scalp pierced with a needle” is not on anybody’s bucket list. And after you get the shots in the back of the head, you get shots in the front of the head. Those hurt even more.

  Not long after the third shot goes in, you hear a voice of reason inside your head, asking: “What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you really doing this for HAIR? Who CARES? You don’t really need hair! Woody Harrelson and Bruce Willis get work and get laid! They are doing FINE!” But you can’t cancel an appointment when you are in the middle of it.

  The procedure involves moving hair from the back of your head to the front. It’s like if Hannibal Lecter took up gardening.