Feb 14, 2025 By Richard Robbins 4 min read

With the Super Bowl out of the way and March Madness on the horizon, we’re clearly on the way to a new season of baseball.

It’s time to consider … broadcasters Bob Uecker and Bob Prince, two knights of the mic. Both are enshrined at Cooperstown. One – Uecker – will be honored by his team, the Milwaukee Brewers, this year with a memorial sleeve-patch and other honors. Uecker, a former major league catcher, died last month. Prince, meanwhile, can’t even make his team’s roster of officially-recognized greats. Prince died in 1985.

The Pirates need to step up to the plate, and while blasting one out of the park, exuberantly declare, “And you can kiss it goodbye!” in honor of The Gunner. Prince more than deserves a place in the Pirates’ Hall of Fame. His life demands it.

More on that later. First, Uecker.

“Ueck” spent six seasons in the bigs. Six very mediocre seasons. He amassed a lifetime batting average of .200, with 14 home runs and 74 runs-batted-in. He led from behind when his club, the St. Louis Cardinals, won the 1964 World Series.

Against the Yankees that year, Uecker watched from the bench during all seven games. (The Cards’ regular catcher, Tim McCarver, led the club with a .478 batting average and a team high 11 RBIs. McCarver became a stellar big league broadcaster in his own right.)

Uecker is a cherished figure because he was a funny, funny man. And because he loved the game.

“Mr. Baseball” appeared alongside Johnny Carson over 200 times, making him an all-time Tonight Show favorite. He told Carson that the best way to corral a gyrating Phil Niekro knuckleball was to “pick it up” after it stopped rolling toward the backstop.

Speaking at Cooperstown, Uecker deadpanned that he thought he should have been inducted as a player. The fact that he initially signed with the Braves for $3,000 bothered his dad. “He didn’t have that kind of dough. But eventually he scraped it up.”

“I was named Minor League Player of the Year,” Uecker said on another occasion. “Unfortunately, I had been in the Majors for two years at that time.”

Playing broadcaster Harry Doyle in the movie “Major League” he delivered the line, “Juuussst outside,” so perfectly that it’s became a catch phrase uttered at nearly every game, pro or amateur.

A “Uecker seat” is any seat in any sport far enough away from the action to warrant using binoculars to see what’s going on.

After 54 years and dying of cancer, Uecker called his last game in October. The Brewers lost to the Mets, 4-2, knocking Milwaukee out of the playoffs. And afterward, in the clubhouse, the Brewers’ slugging left fielder Christian Yelich was in tears, not because of the lost ballgame, but because he sensed that Uecker had reached the end of the line.

“He’s been such a big part of the Brewers,” Yelich stammered in reply to a question, “and all of our lives.”

Brewer owner Mark Attanasio marveled at Uecker’s resiliency. Even on days when he underwent radiation treatment, Uecker was ready for a night’s worth of calls and one-liners. “I think a part of that is he just got energized being at the ballpark, being around the guys.”

Bob Prince called Pirates games from 1948 to 1975. He was the last true Voice of the Pirates; by comparison, Milo Hamilton, Lanny Frattare, and Greg Brown were and are placeholders.

He meant a lot to the players. As evidence, take a look on YouTube to the clubhouse interviews he did following Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. He also meant a lot to the fans of western Pennsylvania, where his voice was everywhere on the soft nights and scorching days of summer.

“We had ’em aaalll the way,” Prince insisted even after close Pirate victories.

To his great credit, Frattare maneuvered Prince back into the booth for a final bow on May 28, 1985. The Pirates scored nine times during one of the two innings he called.

A month later Prince was gone.

This will be the fourth summer of Pirate Hall of Fame classes. Prince should have joined the likes of Roberto Clemente and Honus Wagner in the first class. For two plus generations, players aside, Bob Prince was baseball in Pittsburgh.

Like Uecker in Milwaukee, Prince gave his all to the game, and to the team he loved.

Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.