He was the voice of so many great sports moments. He will be missed.
God rest his soul.
I was lucky enough to listen to many of their broadcasts, and somewhere in my parents' house is a great highlight record that Buck amd Carey did to commemorate the Cardinals' championship season of 1967. I listened to it so often I had all of their classic calls memorized.
Buck and Shannon made a great broadcasting team as well.
The Hall of Famer underwent lung cancer surgery Dec. 5, then went back in Barnes-Jewish Hospital Jan. 3 to have an intestinal blockage surgically removed. He never left the hospital. He was 77.
"He had a great life," Joe Buck said. "He didn't waste one minute of one day. He did everything he could. He packed two lifetimes into one lifetime. He went from poor to wealthy in his lifetime yet he never changed."
On May 16, Buck underwent another operation to eradicate a series of infections, including pneumonia, that kept recurring, and was placed on kidney dialysis. Joe Buck said his father died at 11:08 p.m., with his family by his side.
"He continued to fight to his last breath," Joe Buck said. "He made us proud every day. He battled for his life. He did it with dignity and with pride."
Jack Buck started calling Cardinals games on radio in 1954, teaming first with Harry Caray. Nationally, Buck called everything Super Bowls to the World Series to pro bowling for CBS, ABC and NBC.
"I wouldn't change a thing about my life," Buck wrote in a 1997 autobiography. "My childhood dreams came true."
Buck's gravelly voice - crafted in part, he said, by too many years smoking cigarettes - described to a national radio audience the indescribable end to Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.
"I don't believe what I just saw!" he yelled after Los Angeles outfielder Kirk Gibson, barely able to walk, hit a two-run, game-winning homer off Oakland's Dennis Eckersley.
Buck was also behind the microphone for the first telecast of the American Football League and at the NFL championship "Ice Bowl" in 1967.
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"There only is and always will be just one Jack Buck," said former Cardinal Jack Clark. "He's a Hall of Fame announcer and a Hall of Fame person. He was in the game when it was at its purest. His calls of Stan Musial, (Bob) Gibson, Ozzie (Smith) and all the way up to Mark McGwire are classics. He was a class man and a class human being."
It was Buck who told Cardinals fans to "Go crazy, folks, go crazy!" when Smith homered - his first ever left-handed - to win Game 5 of the 1985 NL Championship Series.
Buck chose to pause - not speak - when slugger Mark McGwire tied Roger Maris' single-season home run record in 1998. Then, he said, "Pardon me for a moment while I stand and applaud."
"It was a thrill just to be interviewed by the man and sit down and talk to him," Arizona ace Curt Schilling said. "He was living baseball history."
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Buck shipped out for Europe in February 1945 and was wounded the next month in Germany. Back home a year later, Buck went to Ohio State and launched his broadcasting career at the school's radio station.
"When I went on the air to do a sports show at WOSU, I had never done a sports show before," Buck wrote in "That's a Winner," his autobiography. "When I did a basketball game, it was the first time I ever did play-by-play. The same with football. I didn't know how to do these things. I just did them."
In 1954, Buck beat out Chick Hearn - who went on to become an institution with the Los Angeles Lakers - for a job with the Cardinals.
Buck left the Cardinals booth for a year in 1960, instead working for ABC. He later had a falling out with the network, which led him to not return a phone call that could have landed him the first play-by-play role on the network's "Monday Night Football."
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In 1990, Buck began a two-year stint as lead baseball announcer for CBS. All the while, Buck continued to call Cardinals games. He was joined in the booth by his son, Joe, in 1991. Joe Buck is now the lead baseball and football play-by-play announcer at Fox.
Buck often read his poetry work on the air and, on occasion, to crowds. When baseball resumed last year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Buck, a tear in his eye, read a patriotic poem during a pregame ceremony at Busch Stadium.
Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame's broadcaster's wing in 1987, Buck later became a member of both the Broadcasters' and Radio halls of fame. He was awarded the Pete Rozelle Award by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1996 and received a lifetime achievement Emmy in 2000.
Buck, who had six children with his first wife Alyce, and two with wife Carole, is survived by his second wife; sons Jack Jr., Dan, and Joe; and daughters Beverly, Christine, Bonnie, Betsy and Julie.
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My mother is a die-hard Cardinal fan and I'm sure she's mourning Jack's passing. He was like a member of the family.
Do not abuse the keywords. A little humor is ok, but I am not lying when I say if we find users adding tasteless keywords or creating work for the moderators one of two thins is going to happen. Either someone is going to get suspended or banned over something really stupid or John is going to remove the functionality altogether.
Save it for when it can be really funny, and make it rare and infrequent, ok? That way functionality doesn't get removed and I and the other moderators aren't put in the position of doing something we would rather not do. Thanks.
An awesome and gracious baseball town St. Louis is, with sportsmanship second to none, in no small part due to KMOX and their crew. Its stadium is the most beautiful to be found, the heart of the city... and Jack Buck was and is its soul. May St. Louis never forget that.
I watched a tribute tonight on Fox Sports Midwest. The statue of Buck at Busch Stadium has become a impromptu shrine, with hundreds of people leaving messages, flowers, and baseball memorabillia. I saw one sign that said, "And so long for just a while," how he ended the broadcast each night. I miss him already.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had an annecdote that illustrated Buck's generosity. A couple of years ago, despite failing health, he attended a CF charity tournament at a local golf course. Jack was too ill to play, but he spent more than seven hours in 100-degree heat, greeting participants and fans and signing autographs for anyone that wanted one. He left late in the afternoon to attend a family birthday party. When he returned home that evening, he immediately called the tournament organizer to see how the event turned out.
Jack was also a frequent visitor to the VA hospital in St. Louis, visiting sick and wounded vets and passing out sackloads of Cardinal caps and other memorabilia. Many didn't know that Buck himself was wounded in combat during WWII; he never forgot our nation's veterans and their contributions to our freedom.
Thanks for your time, Jack. Baseball, broadcasting and the human condition were better for the time you spent with us....
It's amazing the impact Jack Buck had on this city. He was probably St. Louis's most well-known and best loved citizen. For almost fify years he was a big part of this community, and not just broadcasting baseball games. Jack Buck was very involved in his community, very generous, very down-to-earth. The service personnel--the "little people"--at ballparks, restaurants, hotels, etc., all around the country loved him, because he was so generous and friendly. Buck was extremely witty, a terrific sense of humor, a great storyteller. And he was a great American, very patriotic, a man who served his country well in battle.
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, it's nothing but Jack Buck on TV, radio, and newspapers here in St. Louis. Well deserved.