Ever since Babe Ruth was waddling around the bases, there have been grim predictions about baseball's future: Time has passed on the national pastime, too leisurely, too bucolic.Last year's World Series TV ratings, and this season's batting averages, both hit 50-year lows.
Baseball, they say, is dying.But never mind the current World Series between two of the game's stalwarts, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Want to feel better about baseball's health? Just go to a Milwaukee Brewers game.There, in Major League Baseball's smallest market, cheese curds sweat under floodlights, frozen custard unspools into batting helmets, hometown Miller flows liberally, and on the stadium's second level is the most authentic Milwaukee touch of all: the broadcaster they call "Mr.Baseball." In six undistinguished seasons as a catcher in the majors, Bob Uecker never played an inning for the Brewers.
But during half a century as the team's play-by-play announcer, he's become equal parts mayor and mascot in the city of his birth, all the while declining offers from bigger markets – laying off pitches, as it were.In the 1980s Yankees owner George Steinbrenner tried to recruit Uecker.
"Steinbrenner sent a couple of people out to talk to me about joining the Yankees," he said, "but I loved Milwaukee.Born and raised here!"Uecker began his major league career in 1962 with the Milwaukee Braves before the franchise moved to Atlanta.
"I was the first player from Milwaukee to ever be signed by the Braves," he said."I was also the first Milwaukee native to be sent to the minor leagues by the Braves!" If Uecker's on-field inadequacies hampered his playing career, they've provided some of his best material in a lengthy and lucrative second career as an actor and comedian.
Employing a bone-dry wit, he made more than 40 appearances on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show." He said, "I did 'Tonight Shows,' you know, whenever they wanted.I would leave here on a Sunday a...