“Just a bit outside…”

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

As I was scrolling through the news feed on Thursday morning, I saw the sad news that Bob Ueker had passed away.

Well, it was sad in that he had died, but he was 90 and was doing what he loved right up until the end, so it’s more of an “Aww, that’s too bad,” and less of an “Oh, what a tragedy” sort of situation, but he will be missedd.

Even if you don’t follow the sport of baseball at all, you’ve probably still seen or heard of Bob Ueker at some point over the years. Although his career as an actual Major League Baseball player was quite uninspiring, he made the most out of his post-playing career. He spent 50 years as an announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers, but outside of the game, he also did commercials, guest hosted “The Tonight Show,” made a memorable appearance at “Wrestlemania” where he got “choked out” by

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Andre the Giant, and had a number of appearances on TV and in film. He even had a starring role on the ABC sitcom “Mr. Belvedere,” playing the dad George Owens on the show, where he portrayed a sportswriter.

But the most famous of his roles has to be as the long-suffering Cleveland Indians playby- play man Harry Doyle in the movie “Major League” back in the 1980s.

His call of a fastball that missed the plate by three feet and hit the backstop in the air as “just a bit ouside” has become ingrained into the lexicon of sports fans of all kinds, many of whom have probably forgotten or never knew the origin of the phrase..

He actually has a ton of funny zingers in that movie, my personal favorite of which is, “Ball four… ball eight… and ‘Wild Thing’ Ricky Vaughn has walked the bases loaded.”

He was never afraid to poke fun at himself, especially his futility as a backup catcher and a terrible batter. His lifetime batting average was .199, rounded up to .200 to be nice, which is still pretty terrible if you know baseball stats.

A great line he told Johnny Carson once was, “When I came up to bat with three men on and two outs in the ninth, I looked in the other team’s dugout and they were already in street clothes.”

Another clever quip was, “When I looked at the third base coach to get my sign, he turned his back to me.”

Another funny one… “I was so bad in 1965 that my baseball card came without a picture.”

The best part of that one is you can’t even be too sure that ol’ Bob was joking.

We’ll miss you, Uek!