Contemporary Authors

• Tony La Russa Talks Baseball Strategy with Joe Buck Dollar-Help, Inc. (St. Louis, MO), 2002
• Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV Dutton (New York, NY), 2016

1. Lucky bastard : my life, my dad, and the things I'm not allowed to say on TV LCCN 2016011271 Type of material Book Personal name Buck, Joe, author. Main title Lucky bastard : my life, my dad, and the things I'm not allowed to say on TV / Joe Buck ; with Michael Rosenberg. Published/Produced New York : Dutton, [2016] Description viii, 295 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm ISBN 9781101984567 (hardcover) 9781101984581 (softcover) CALL NUMBER GV742.42.B855 A3 2016 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 2. Tony La Russa talks baseball strategy with Joe Buck. LCCN 2002511798 Type of material Book Personal name La Russa, Tony. Main title Tony La Russa talks baseball strategy with Joe Buck. Published/Created St. Louis, Mo. : Dollar-Help, Inc., c2002. Description 220 p. ; 22 cm. ISBN 0971091005 Shelf Location FLS2015 169233 CALL NUMBER GV875.7 .L42 2002 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLS2)

• wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Buck

  Joe Buck
  Joe Buck.jpg
  Joe Buck on the field at Busch Stadium
  Born Joseph Francis Buck
  April 25, 1969 (age 48)
  St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.[1]
  Education Indiana University Bloomington (did not graduate)
  Spouse(s) Ann Archambault (1993–2011)
  Michelle Beisner (m. 2014)
  Children 2
  Parent(s) Jack Buck and Carole Lintzenich
  Sports commentary career
  Genre(s) Play-by-play
  Sports National Football League, Major League Baseball, USGA

  Joseph Francis "Joe" Buck (born April 25, 1969) is an American sportscaster and the son of sportscaster Jack Buck. He has won numerous Sports Emmy Awards for his work with Fox Sports, including his roles as lead play-by-play announcer for the network's National Football League and Major League Baseball coverage, and is a three-time recipient of the National Sportscaster of the Year award.[2] Since 1996, he has served as the play-by-play announcer for the World Series, each year, with the exceptions of 1997 and 1999.

  Contents

  1 Early life and education
  2 Career
  2.1 Before Fox
  2.2 Fox Sports
  2.2.1 Hiring at Fox
  2.2.2 Major League Baseball on Fox (1996–present)
  2.2.3 NFL on Fox (1994–present)
  2.2.3.1 Fox NFL Sunday (2006)
  2.2.4 Two-sport, same-day doubleheader
  2.2.5 Fox USGA
  2.3 HBO Sports (2009–2010)
  2.4 Other notable appearances
  2.5 Controversies
  2.6 Vocal cord ailment
  3 Personal life
  4 References

  Early life and education

  Buck was born in St. Petersburg, Florida (where the St. Louis Cardinals, for whom his father broadcast, then conducted their spring training) and raised in the St. Louis area, where he attended St. Louis Country Day School. He began his broadcasting career in 1989 while he was an undergraduate at Indiana University Bloomington.[3]
  Career
  Before Fox

  Buck called play-by-play for the then-Louisville Redbirds, a minor league affiliate of the Cardinals, and was a reporter for ESPN's coverage of the Triple-A All-Star Game. In 1991, he did reporting for St Louis' CBS affiliate KMOV. Also, in 1991 Buck began broadcasting for the Cardinals on local television and KMOX Radio, filling in while his father was working on CBS telecasts. In the 1992–93 season, he was the play-by-play voice for University of Missouri basketball broadcasts.

  Buck continued to call Cardinals games after being hired by Fox Sports, initially with his father on KMOX and later on FSN Midwest television. As his network duties increased, however, his local workload shrank, and prior to the 2008 season it was announced that he would no longer be calling Cardinals telecasts for FSN Midwest. This marked the first time since 1960 that a member of the Buck family was not part of the team's broadcasting crew.[4]
  Fox Sports
  Hiring at Fox

  In 1994, Buck was hired by Fox, and at the age of 25 became the youngest man ever to announce a regular slate of National Football League games on network television.
  Major League Baseball on Fox (1996–present)
  Joe Buck (right) with President Barack Obama and Tim McCarver (left) during the 2009 MLB All-Star Game in St. Louis

  In 1996, he was named Fox's lead play-by-play voice for Major League Baseball, teaming with Tim McCarver, who had previously worked with his father on CBS. That year, he became the youngest man to do a national broadcast (for all nine innings and games, as a network employee as opposed to simply being a representative of one of the participating teams) for a World Series, surpassing Sean McDonough, who called the 1992 World Series for CBS at the age of 30. McDonough had replaced Jack Buck as CBS' lead baseball play-by-play man after he was fired in late 1991.

  On September 8, 1998 Buck called Mark McGwire's 62nd home run that broke Roger Maris' single-season record. The game was nationally televised live in prime time on Fox. It was a rarity for a nationally televised regular season game to not be aired on cable since the end of the Monday/Thursday Night Baseball era on ABC in 1989.

  During Fox's broadcast of the 2002 World Series, Buck paid implicit tribute to his father, who had died a few months earlier (he had read the eulogy at his father's funeral) by calling the final out of Game 6 (which tied the series at 3–3, and thus ensured there would be a Game 7 broadcast the next night) with the phrase, "We'll see you tomorrow night." This was the same phrase with which Jack Buck had famously called Kirby Puckett's home run off Braves pitcher Charlie Leibrandt which ended Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. Since then, Joe has continued to use this phrase at appropriate times, including Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, in which the Boston Red Sox famously rallied off New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera in the 9th inning to avoid elimination. When David Ortiz's walk-off home run finally won it for the Red Sox in the 12th inning, Buck uttered, "We'll see you later tonight," alluding to the fact that the game had extended into the early morning. He also used the phrase at the end of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series when the Cardinals' David Freese hit a walk-off home run in the 11th inning against the Rangers to send the series to a seventh game (it was actually 20 years and a day since Kirby Puckett's home run). The similarity of both the call and the game situation resulted in mentions on national news broadcasts.

  Another notable Red Sox game in the ALCS was in 2013, Game 2 against the Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park. The Red Sox were trailing 5–1 in the bottom of the eighth inning, with the bases loaded with David Ortiz at-bat. Ortiz hit a game-tying grand slam off Tigers' closer Joaquín Benoit. His call: "Hard hit into right, back at the wall," and then he calls, "TIE GAME!" as the ball flies over Torii Hunter, who flipped over the outfield wall.[5]

  Buck is currently paired with John Smoltz as his color analyst, and Ken Rosenthal and Erin Andrews (Buck's sideline reporter on NFL coverage) are the field reporters. Besides working with Tim McCarver for 18 seasons (1996–2013), Buck also worked with former MLB player and current MLB Network/Fox Sports analyst Harold Reynolds and baseball writer/insider Tom Verducci for 2 seasons (2014–2015). About a month or two after the 2015 World Series, Reynolds and Verducci were demoted to the #2 team and John Smoltz moved up from the #2 team (with Matt Vasgersian) in order to take Reynolds and Verducci's places.

  Through 2016, Buck has called 18 World Series and 17 All-Star Games, the most of any play-by-play announcer on network television. (However, his former partner McCarver called more of each event as an analyst, 24 and 22 respectively.)
  NFL on Fox (1994–present)

  Soon after arriving at Fox, Buck became the play-by-play man on the network's #4 NFL broadcast team, with Tim Green as his color commentator. After three years, he stopped doing NFL games to concentrate on his baseball duties full-time. During the 2001 season, Buck occasionally filled in for Curt Menefee as the network's number-six play-by-play man.

  Buck became Fox's top play-by-play man in 2002, replacing Pat Summerall. He is currently teamed with Troy Aikman as color commentator and Erin Andrews as the sideline reporter. (Buck also worked with Cris Collinsworth from 2002 to 2004, before the latter's move to Showtime, NFL Network, and NBC.) Buck is only the third announcer to handle a television network's lead MLB and NFL coverage in the same year (following NBC's Curt Gowdy and ABC's Al Michaels). By 2002, his Fox duties forced him to cut his local Cardinals schedule to 25 games. (Eventually, Buck left the Cardinals altogether to join Fox Sports "full-time" in 2008.)
  Fox NFL Sunday (2006)

  On August 14, 2006, Buck was named the host of Fox's pregame NFL show, Fox NFL Sunday and postgame doubleheader show. According to the Nielsen ratings system, viewership was down for the entire season.[6] Fox announced in March 2007 that Buck would no longer host Fox NFL Sunday in 2007, concentrating on play-by-play for the week's marquee game.[7]
  Two-sport, same-day doubleheader

  On October 14, 2012, Buck called a doubleheader, first with the New York Giants-San Francisco 49ers game at 4:25 PM, then traveled via trolley for the seven-mile journey across town to call Game 1 of the NLCS between the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Francisco Giants.[8]
  Fox USGA

  In April 2014, it was announced that Buck would team with Greg Norman to anchor Fox's new package of United States Golf Association telecasts, most prominently the U.S. Open tournament.[9] The pair made their broadcast debut at the Franklin Templeton Shootout (an event also hosted by Norman) on December 12–14, 2014.[10] Norman was fired by Fox and replaced with Paul Azinger in 2016.
  HBO Sports (2009–2010)

  On February 5, 2009, Buck signed with HBO to host a sports-based talk show for the network called Joe Buck Live, with a format similar to that of Costas Now, the monthly HBO program previously hosted by Bob Costas.[11] The show's debut on June 15, 2009, made national headlines due to the tension-filled banter between Buck and guest Artie Lange, a comedian from The Howard Stern Show, who made several jokes at Buck's expense.[12] Two more episodes aired in 2009. In March 2010, Buck told a St. Louis radio station that HBO might be planning to cancel Joe Buck Live, adding that he "won't really miss" the program and that it involved "a lot more effort and hassle than I ever expected".[13] HBO subsequently confirmed the show's cancellation to Broadcasting & Cable.[14]
  Other notable appearances

  In the late 1990s, Buck hosted a weekly sports-news show, Goin' Deep, for Fox Sports Net cable. He also called horse racing and professional bass fishing events early in his Fox career, as well as the network's first Cotton Bowl Classic telecast in 1999.

  Since 2001, Buck has hosted the "Joe Buck Classic", a celebrity pro-am golf tournament that is played each May to raise money for St. Louis Children's Hospital.[15]

  In 2007, Buck filmed a pilot episode for a prospective late-night talk and comedy program with former Saturday Night Live writer and director Matt Piedmont. Piedmont and Buck wrote and produced the pilot with Piedmont directing, filming in New York City and Los Angeles and featuring Molly Shannon, David Spade and Paul Rudd. Buck co-hosted the program with Abebe Adusmussui, an actual New York City taxi driver.[16] The pilot was not picked up as a series, however.

  Buck has also appeared in various national television commercials for such clients as Holiday Inn and Budweiser beer. One of the more memorable spots for the latter had Buck goaded into using the catchphrase, "Slamma-lamma-ding-dong!" A 2008 commercial for National Car Rental had him using the catchphrase, "Now that's a good call". Buck has also done local commercials in the St. Louis market for the Suntrup chain of automobile dealerships.

  He also contributes occasional opinion pieces to The Sporting News, and is a key contributor on Team 1380 on the ITD Morning After program in St. Louis.

  In the week before calling Super Bowl XLVIII, Buck starred in a Web video for Funny or Die in which he tries to report on the game from New York City but continues to get interrupted by locals who dislike him.[17]

  In 2014, Buck was named as the new host of NFL Films Presents, to coincide with the program's move from ESPN2 to Fox Sports 1.[18]

  Buck published an autobiography, Lucky Bastard, in 2016.[19]

  He has appeared in several television programs as himself, including Pitch, American Dad!, Family Guy, Conan, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and Brockmire; the film Fever Pitch (also starring Jimmy Fallon); and in the "Carpet Brothers" sketch on Funny or Die Presents as The Legit Don Stritt.[20] Buck's voice is also heard in recorded conversations between Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky calling Game 5 of the Yankees-Indians ALDS in 1997. The tapes were released at the height of the scandal involving Lewinsky and President Bill Clinton.[21]
  Controversies

  Buck is generally regarded as "one of the most heavily criticized" announcers in sports,[22] with various fans complaining that he is biased on his calls towards or against particular teams.[22][23][24] Buck attributes this to the fact that most fan bases, especially Major League Baseball fans, are used to hearing local announcers and not those working national broadcasts:[23] "Fans are used to hearing their hometown guys. When you come at it objectively, people aren't used to it."[24]

  Reporting from the field following the game in which Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' single-season home run record in 1998, Buck began his postgame interview on Fox by requesting (and getting) a hug from McGwire, which led to criticisms of Buck's on-air professionalism from some sources.[25]

  In January 2005, Buck drew fire for his on-air comments during an NFL playoff game between the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers. After Vikings wide receiver Randy Moss simulated mooning the Green Bay crowd in the end zone, Buck called it a "disgusting act." The moon was actually a response to Packer fans, who traditionally moon the Vikings players aboard the team bus, which Buck did not mention.[26] Buck's comment also indicated that he incorrectly believed that Moss had in fact mooned the fans. It prompted Red McCombs, then the owner of the Minnesota Vikings, to request that Buck be removed from covering their upcoming playoff game, saying that Buck's comments "suggested a prejudice that surpassed objective reporting."[27] Buck also received criticism from other members of the media who felt he "over-reacted" and was being "inconsistent" given his network's history of programming.[28][29][30][31]

  In 2007, Buck was scheduled to call eight regular season MLB games out of a 26-game schedule for Fox (along with a handful of regional Cardinals telecasts on FSN Midwest). In an interview with Richard Sandomir of the New York Times, he defended his reduced baseball commitment:[32]

  If you or the casual fan doesn’t want to consider me the No. 1 baseball announcer at Fox, it’s not my concern ... I don’t know why it would matter. I don’t know who had a more tiresome, wall-to-wall schedule than my father, and I know what it’s like to be a kid in that situation ... He was gone a lot. He needed to be. I understood it. So did my mom. Because my career has gone the way it’s gone, I don’t have to go wall to wall. ...While I’m deathly afraid of overexposure, I’m more afraid of underexposure at home with my wife and girls.

  In 2008, Buck drew criticism for comments he made during an appearance on ESPN Radio's The Herd with Colin Cowherd, in which he admitted to spending "barely any" time following sporting events he doesn't broadcast and facetiously claimed that he preferred watching The Bachelorette instead.[33]

  In June 2015, Buck announced he had quit his Twitter account. Buck explained that he quit Twitter because he found himself engaging negative people and allowing criticism to affect how he was doing his job.[22] He would return to Twitter four months later to engage in friendly banter with a Kansas City Royals fan who started a petition to have him removed from the Fox broadcast team for the Royals' appearance in the 2015 American League Championship Series.[34]

  Also in June 2015, Buck and co-announcer Greg Norman were criticized for their "mistake-filled, error-prone mess" in covering the 2015 U.S. Open in golf.[35] In particular they were questioned for prematurely anointing Dustin Johnson as the winner "at the start of a back nine".
  Vocal cord ailment

  In 2011, shortly after broadcasting Super Bowl XLV for Fox, Buck claimed to have developed a virus on the nerves of his left vocal fold. Despite the ailment, which according to Buck "came out of the blue" and hampered his ability to raise his voice, he continued to broadcast baseball for Fox during the 2011 season, and resumed as the network's lead NFL announcer that fall.[36][37][38][39]

  In 2016, Buck revealed that the problem was not due to a virus, but rather to vocal cord paralysis likely caused by anesthesia used during multiple hair transplantation procedures.[40]
  Personal life

  From 1993 to 2011, Buck was married to Ann Archambault, with whom he had two children.[41] He married NFL Network reporter and former Bronco cheerleader Michelle Beisner on April 12, 2014.[42]

• fox Sports - http://www.foxsports.com/presspass/bios/on-air/joe-buck

  Joe Buck
  Lead NFL, MLB & USGA Play-By-Play Announcer
  Follow Joe Buck
  Fox Sports

  Joe Buck is FOX Sports’ lead play-by-play announcer for the network’s MLB, USGA and NFL coverage. He calls several of the FOX Sports’ biggest event, including the Super Bowl, World Series, MLB All-Star Game, U.S. Open Championship and more.

  Joe Buck, lead play-by-play broadcaster for the NFL on FOX since 2002, called his fifth Super Bowl in February 2017 from Houston with analyst and Pro Football Hall of Famer Troy Aikman and sideline reporters Erin Andrews and Chris Myers. Buck and Aikman, alongside Andrews, comprise FOX NFL’s lead broadcast team for all regular-season and postseason games. When calling FOX MLB, Buck, a seven-time Emmy Award winner, works alongside analyst and first-ballot Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz.

  The 2016 NFL season was Buck and Aikman’s 15th together, and the two hold the distinction of the NFL’s longest-running broadcast team. As the lead voice for FOX NFL since 2002, Buck worked with analysts Aikman and Cris Collinsworth for three seasons (2002-04), and since 2005 has been partnered exclusively with Aikman.

  He also serves as the lead announcer for FOX Sports’ United States Golf Association (USGA) coverage, including for the prestigious U.S. Open Championship, a role he assumed in 2015 – FOX Sports’ inaugural year of USGA rights.

  A seven-time Emmy Award winner in his 23rd year with FOX Sports, Buck, who bounded onto the national scene as a 25-year-old, has held lead FOX MLB play-by-play duties since 1996. In addition to calling marquee regular-season contests, he is also behind the mic for the All-Star Game and postseason. At age 27, he became the youngest play-by-play announcer to call the World Series. Heading into Super Bowl LI in February 2017, Buck has called four Super Bowls, 19 (16 consecutive) World Series and 21 MLB League Championship Series for FOX Sports.

  In working his 15th MLB All-Star Game with three-time Emmy Award-winning analyst Tim McCarver in July 2013, the duo totaled more All-Star Games than any other broadcast pair. Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek are second with seven. Buck called his 16th All-Star Game in 2014, placing him first on the all-time list of play-by-play announcers, surpassing Gowdy’s 14.

  In addition to his lead play-by-play role, Buck served as host of FOX NFL SUNDAY, America’s most-watched NFL pregame show, and THE OT, the nation’s most-watched NFL postgame show, in 2006. That season, FOX NFL SUNDAY traveled to the site of each week’s biggest game, allowing Buck to both host the pregame show and call each game. It marked the first time in sports television history that a broadcaster hosted an NFL pregame show while simultaneously handling play-by-play duties.

  Joe is the son of late broadcasting legend Jack Buck, whose career spanned parts of six decades. Jack and Joe are the only father and son to each call the Super Bowl on network television. The younger Buck’s last Super Bowl assignment, in February 2017 during which the New England Patriots mounted the biggest comeback and Super Bowl history and forced the Super Bowl’s first ever overtime, is the most-viewed program in U.S. television history.

  Buck’s impressive FOX MLB resume includes the 1996, 1998 and 2000-16 World Series; the 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003-05, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2015 American League Championship Series; the 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 National League Championship Series; the 1997, 1999, 2001-16 All-Star Games; and the Cubs-Cardinals game on Sept. 8, 1998, when Mark McGwire hit his historic 62nd home run and set what then was a new single-season home run record.

  Buck joined FOX Sports in 1994, and along with analyst Tim Green, formed one of the NFL on FOX’s six original NFL broadcast teams. Just 25 years old in 1994, Buck was the youngest announcer to call a full slate of NFL games on network television. The two worked together for FOX’s first four NFL seasons.

  Buck was a local radio and television announcer for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1991 to 2007. His broadcasting career began in 1989, while he was an undergraduate at Indiana University. That year he called play-by-play for the Louisville Redbirds of the American Association, a minor-league affiliate of the Cardinals, and was a reporter for ESPN’s coverage of the Triple-A All-Star Game. Buck also hosted a talk show for HBO Sports, “Joe Buck Live,” in 2009, and hosts “Undeniable with Joe Buck” on DirecTV’s Audience Network. He is a partner in J. Buck’s, two popular sports bars in the St. Louis area, with his sister Julie.

  Active in many national and local charities, he hosts The Joe Buck Classic golf tournament, which benefits St. Louis Children’s Hospital and helps fund its imaging center. Since it began in 2000, the annual event has raised more than $5 million. Buck also works closely with the Parkinson’s Foundation, Mathews-Dickey Boys’ & Girls’ Club and City of Hope.

• IMDb - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0118374/bio

  Joe Buck
  Biography
  Showing all 14 items
  Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (2) | Trivia (7) | Personal Quotes (1)
  Overview (3)
  Date of Birth 25 April 1969, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA
  Birth Name Joseph F. Buck
  Height 6' 1" (1.85 m)
  Mini Bio (1)

  Joe Buck was born on April 25, 1969 in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA as Joseph F. Buck. He is an actor and writer, known for 2004 MLB All-Star Game (2004), Undeniable with Joe Buck (2015) and 2005 MLB All-Star Game (2005). He has been married to Michelle Beisner since April 12, 2014. He was previously married to Ann Archambault.
  Spouse (2)
  Michelle Beisner (12 April 2014 - present)
  Ann Archambault (23 January 1993 - 2011) (divorced) (2 children)
  Trivia (7)
  Son of the late St. Louis Cardinals announcer Jack Buck (1924-2002)
  Broadcasts baseball on Fox.
  Children: Natalie and Trudy
  Graduated from Indiana University in 1991 with a B.A. in English and a minor in telecommunications.
  At age 25, he was hired by Fox Sports in 1994 to call National Football League games, becoming the youngest announcer to handle a regular package of NFL games on network TV.
  Won the Sportscasters' Emmy for Play-by-Play in 1999 and 2001.
  Asked for and received a hug from Mark McGwire on national TV after McGwire hit his then-major league record 62nd home run.
  Personal Quotes (1)
  In the air in left field, back at the track at the wall we are tied.
  See also

  Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites | Contact Info

• washington post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/02/05/joe-buck-knows-he-may-be-the-most-hated-man-in-super-bowl-li/

  Early Lead
  Joe Buck knows he may be the most hated man in Super Bowl LI
  By Cindy Boren February 5

  Joe Buck is calling his fifth Super Bowl. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Advertising Week New York)

  He’s the man you love to hate.

  Admit it.

  When Joe Buck is calling an NFL game or a baseball game on Fox, he feels the hate on social media and, after all these years, he’s cool with it.

  “I get more frustrated than I get hurt by it,” Buck told Ana Marie Cox in a New York Times magazine interview. “It’s like, come on, I’m just the guy in the suit telling you your team lost.”

  Super Bowl LI is Buck’s fifth and he has called 19 World Series.

  “When you’re in that position you’re going to take a lot of heat — if you call that heat,” he told Esquire last fall. “To me it’s just social media noise. Personally, people couldn’t be nicer, but when they’re in their Cubs blanket or Indians hat, you’re doing it for the network, you’re kind of the enemy. I would say I take more than certainly most, but I’ve also done more than most. I’ve got a great life because of it and I’m happy to put up with it.”

  [Joe Buck says an addition to hair plugs nearly killed his career]

  Still, this is a tough environment in which to work.

  “I’ve navigated a lot of pitfalls over the years. But in this day and age there’s not a lot of leeway for making mistakes, whether it’s actual mistakes, or being politically incorrect or saying something that could be taken the wrong way. It’s a tough minefield to walk through. For all the other guys: be careful what you wish for, because there’s a lot of holes out there you have to try and miss.”

  He found one problem area last fall, when he came under fire for attempting to talk about San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was kneeling during the national anthem.

  “If you want to get yourself into trouble, start talking about racial inequality and police brutality during the course of a football game,” Buck told Cox, noting that his comments came at the instigation of a producer. “You’re trying to wedge it in, by the way, coming back from a commercial break where you’ve got literally nine seconds before the next play. What I try to do is to think about that moment and then write something down, that I know that when we come back, I go to that little corner of the stuff that I prepare. It’s really hard to make a Van Jones-level point between second and third down.”

• tv guide - http://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/joe-buck/bio/245372/

  Birth Name: Joseph Francis Buck
  Birth Place: St. Petersburg, Florida, United States
  Profession: Sportscaster

  Where to Watch
  Add to Watchlist

  Overview
  News
  Biography
  Video Clips
  Credits
  TV Listings

  Fast Facts

  Son of legendary St. Louis Cardinals announcer Jack Buck; did the play-by-play for one inning of a Cardinals-Mets game on his 18th birthday when his dad left the booth and told him to take over.
  Began broadcasting career by calling play-by-play for Louisville Redbirds, a Cardinals minor-league team; began calling Cardinals games on KMOX TV and radio in 1991.
  Hired by Fox Sports in 1994 at age 25 to announce NFL games and became the youngest person to call pro games.
  At 27, became the youngest play-by-play announcer to call a World Series.
  Won his first Sports Emmy Award in 1999 for Outstanding Sports Personality.
  When he stopped broadcasting Cardinals baseball in 2008, he ended a 54-year run of Bucks (either Joe or his father) handling coverage of the team's games.
  Hosted an HBO series, Joe Buck Live, which was canceled after three episodes; the 2009 premiere was infamously hijacked by comic Artie Lange. Because of the Lange episode, as well as the general strain of booking guests, Buck was relieved when the show was dropped.
  His Joe Buck Golf Classic raises money for St. Louis Children's Hospital.

  Relationships

  Ann Archambault Buck — Ex-wife
  Jack Buck — Father
  Carole Buck — Mother
  Julie Buck — Sister
  Natalie Buck — Daughter
  Trudy Buck — Daughter
  Michelle Beisner — Wife

  College

  Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, United States (BA in English, 1991)

  Details

  Birth Name: Joseph Francis Buck
  Birth Place: St. Petersburg, Florida, United States
  Profession: Sportscaster

  Trending Tonig

• sports illustrated - https://www.si.com/tech-media/2016/10/06/joe-buck-fox-book-hair-plugs-surgery-voice

  Joe Buck reveals that hair plug addiction nearly cost him his career
  0:47 | Tech & Media
  Joe Buck reveals real cause of voice loss in 2011
  Quickly

  Buck has said that a virus cost him his voice for part of 2011, but that was a lie. His loss of speech was a side effect of a hair transplant procedure.

  Share
  Richard Deitsch
  Richard Deitsch
  Thursday October 6th, 2016

  Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck feared for his broadcasting career five years ago when he suffered a paralyzed left vocal cord. The ailment struck him a few weeks before the start of the 2011 baseball season, and it wasn’t until October of that year that he truly felt his voice was back. At the time, Buck told people that he had developed a virus in the laryngeal nerve of his left vocal cord.

  But that was a lie.

  This is the story of what really happened, revealed for the first time here and explored in more detail in his upcoming memoir, Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, And The Things I’m Not Allowed To Say On TV. The book will be released on Nov. 15 (you can pre-order using link above) and was written with Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Rosenberg.

  As a young man, one of Buck’s overwhelming fears was losing his hair, and the possibility soon consumed him. So at age 24, in Oct. 1993, he flew to New York City to get his first hair replacement treatment. He writes that, after the procedure, “I, Joseph Francis Buck, became a hair-plug addict.”

  Buck said that whenever he had a break in his schedule—usually between the end of the NFL season and the start of baseball—he would fly to New York to have a plug procedure.

  “Broadcasting is a brutal, often unfair business, where looks are valued more than skill,” writes Buck. “I was worried that if I lost my hair, I would lose my job. O.K., that’s bulls----. It was vanity. Pure vanity. I just told myself I was doing it for TV.”

  Tech & Media
  Media Circus: Why are NFL ratings down so much?

  A few weeks before the start of the 2011 baseball season, Buck underwent his eighth hair replacement procedure. But something went wrong during the six-hour-plus procedure. When he woke up from the anesthetic, Buck could not speak. He believes his vocal cord was paralyzed because of a cuff the surgery center used to protect him during the procedure. A doctor not part of the operation theorized to Buck that the cuff probably got jostled during the procedure and sat on the nerve responsible for firing his left vocal cord. Buck was also going through personal stress at the time, as his marriage to his high school sweetheart was ending. That stress, Buck theorizes, could have made him more susceptible to nerve damage.

  Panicked, Buck sought a voice specialist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St, Louis, Dr. Bruce H. Haughey, who told him he had a paralyzed vocal cord and there was no guarantee on when his voice would come back.

  Given his embarrassment over what had happened, Buck lied to his bosses, to the media, to friends. He told people that he had a virus and that his voice would come back. “I was too scared and embarrassed to tell them the truth,” Buck writes. “But I’m doing it now.”

  In an interview on Wednesday with SI.com, Buck further explained why it was important to him to reveal publicly this episode in his life.

  “When I started thinking about writing a book, this was the main reason why,” Buck says. “It wasn’t about stories with my Dad. I wanted to detail the time in my life where I had a lot going on and I was stressed, a time when I started to take anti-depressants and was going through a divorce. Then I had this situation with my voice that rocked me to my knees and shook every part of my world. I’m 47 years old now and willing to be vulnerable sharing a story. Whether the book is read by one person or one million doesn’t concern me. Getting this out and being honest, really telling my story, that was was the impetus behind this.”
  Sam Greenwood/Getty

  Stories about Buck from 2011 described him as having a virus that struck the laryngeal nerve in his left vocal cord. “This is a nerve issue,’ Buck told The New York Times in 2011. “It’s not like I have polyps or a strained vocal cord. I’m waiting for one of the longest nerves in the body to recover. Nobody has said this is something that won’t come back, but they told me it could take six, nine or 12 months.” Buck continued to discuss the impact of losing his voice as late as last year (see this profile in Cigar Aficionado) but never the reasons why. Few people knew the truth beyond Buck’s immediate family and some close friends, including his NFL broadcast partner, Troy Aikman. Most people at Fox Sports will learn of this upon reading this piece.

  “I was lying,” Buck said of the stories about his vocal cord issues. “I think people bend the truth all the time, unfortunately. It was really for self-preservation and ego for me. As I look back, I gave partial truths. Where I lied was when I said the reason why. People would ask, ‘Why is your vocal cord paralyzed?’ I said it was a virus. I didn’t say it was an elective procedure to add hair to the front of my head. It was embarrassing. There’s an embarrassing element to that. Any surgery done to improve one’s looks is not really something someone wants to talk about. So it’s very cathartic to get this out. There are a lot of people across the country, for as silly as this sounds, who obsess about hair loss. I would tell myself I needed to look younger, I needed to have thicker hair, I don’t want to look older than I am. The truth of it is that it was an ego thing, whether I was on TV or not.”

  In the book, Buck candidly discusses taking Lexapro to relieve his anxiety from the stresses of his personal and professional life. Eventually, Dr. Hughey referred him to a doctor in Boston named Steven Zeitels, a professor of laryngeal surgery at Harvard Medical School and the director of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation. Zeitels had worked with well-known voices including Adele, Bono, Roger Daltrey and Dick Vitale, among many others.
  Tech & Media
  ESPN mulls moving Mike Greenberg from Mike & Mike to own morning TV show

  As part of the treatment, Zeitels injected Buck with a long needle and filled his vocal cord with Restylane, a filler-like substance most often used for lip enhancement. Buck returned to Zeitels every three months for additional shots. The doctor told him the more he used his voice, the more the vocal cords would swell from usage and the better he would sound. Buck’s voice got a little better in August and September of 2011, though nowhere near where a network-level announcer should be. Buck said because of the equity he had built up Fox Sports and by having a strong relationship with his bosses, he was allowed back on the air when he should have been replaced by other announcers. By October, his voice was rapidly improving. Buck said by Game 6 of the 2011 World Series between the Cardinals and Rangers, he felt like his old self. He does, however, still think about the strength of his voice prior to working games today.

  Buck said he has not had hair replacement surgery since 2011, though he would contemplate doing it again. The one thing he’d change if ever had another procedure is that he would not go under any general anesthetic. Not being awake during any kind of medical procedure now scares him.

  “I am an extremely lucky and blessed person, but I’m pretty self-aware,” Buck said. “I’m a flawed, hard-working, hard-trying person. I didn’t write this book to change anyone else’s life. I wrote this book to be as open and as honest as I can be. If there is any mission statement, I wrote it to give viewers and people who think they know me a better and clearer picture of who I really am. If you read it, great. If not, that’s great, too. But I am just glad that it’s out there.”

• NY Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/magazine/joe-buck-knows-why-you-hate-him.html

  Joe Buck Knows Why You Hate Him

  Talk

  Interview by ANA MARIE COX FEB. 1, 2017
  Continue reading the main story
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  Joe Buck Credit Dilip Vishwanat for The New York Times

  I really didn’t want to ask you about being hated, but — truly — when I told people I was going to interview you, the first thing out of everyone’s mouth was “I hate that guy.” You’ve taken this reputation with some humor, but has anything ever really gotten to you? I get more frustrated than I get hurt by it. It’s like, come on, I’m just the guy in the suit telling you your team lost.

  You’re in the enviable position of having a job that, if you wanted, could be your entire life. Is it? Years ago, I did an interview with Colin Cowherd, and he asked what I do at night. I live like a normal human being! I have kids, we’re doing homework, I watch “The Bachelor.” In the industry, that was like heresy. If that had been my only purpose in life — to call home runs and touchdowns — I’d lead a pretty shallow life.

  In your memoir, you write about suffering from a paralyzed vocal cord from a “surgical procedure,” which we find out is hair-transplant surgery. That was the sensational detail from your book, but you also talk about going through depression, which is a much more vulnerable thing to talk about. Men are wired to just put up with it. At that time, I was pretty much sure that my voice wasn’t going to come back and my career was over, and I was dealing with the guilt and stress of breaking up a marriage that I had had since I was 23. It really weighed me down. And the idea that I couldn’t talk and couldn’t be heard enough to order a Starbucks, it drove me into a solitary confinement of my own making. I ended up on Lexapro and going to therapy.

  Buck is a play-by-play announcer for Fox Sports’ N.F.L. and M.L.B. coverage, including Super Bowl LI. His memoir is “Lucky Bastard.”

  Age: 47

  Occupation: Sportscaster

  Hometown: St. Louis

  His Top 5 “Jr.s”:
  5. Cal Ripken Jr.
  4. Cuba Gooding Jr.
  3. Sammy Davis Jr.
  2. Absorbine Jr.
  1. Martin Luther King Jr.

  Your job is to talk, but I’m fascinated by the choices of when you choose not to. There’s that viral clip from the Cubs’ National League championship when you were silent for almost three minutes. How do you make the decision about when to be quiet? You don’t need a running dialogue from me over that. It’s almost musical: There’s a rise and fall, a crescendo, and if it’s staying up there, you don’t need me. It’s TV.

  Has there ever been a time when words have failed you? In 1999, when Ted Williams came out and saluted the fans at the All Star Game at Fenway, I had a huge lump in my throat, and the producer is yelling in my ear to talk, and I couldn’t, thankfully, and it was much better. But usually I’m so wired to see and react and talk that I can usually come up with something if I have to. If I forget who No. 17 is for Green Bay, I can fill in the time with other words while I get down to my board with my eyes to remind myself that 17 is Davante Adams. If I start in, and I’m blanking on who it is, I can say, “Catch at the 15, Green Bay’s got a first down set up by ... Davante Adams.” You can eventually get there. I do it all the time.

  How far have you ever gotten away from talking about sports? It’s really hard to go off topic. When Colin Kaepernick was kneeling during the national anthem, my producer said I had to cover it. If you want to get yourself into trouble, start talking about racial inequality and police brutality during the course of a football game. You’re trying to wedge it in, by the way, coming back from a commercial break where you’ve got literally nine seconds before the next play. What I try to do is to think about that moment and then write something down, that I know that when we come back, I go to that little corner of the stuff that I prepare. It’s really hard to make a Van Jones-level point between second and third down.

  We have a little bit of time: Would you like to share an opinion on Kaepernick? The point that I would make is it’s easy for somebody like me to be critical of Colin Kaepernick, but I haven’t suffered some of the same issues that Colin Kaepernick has. On some level, it’s like, how dare I weigh in on what Kaepernick is doing or feeling? Having some sort of an open dialogue about taking a knee, that’s what I was always hoping for, and I think he got there.

  Interview has been condensed and edited.

  Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week.

  A version of this article appears in print on February 5, 2017, on Page MM50 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Joe Buck Knows Why You Hate Him.

• Penguin Random House - http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2134719/joe-buck

  J B
  About the Author

  Joe Buck grew up in St. Louis, where he still lives. He has two daughters, Natalie and Trudy, and is married to fellow sportscaster Michelle Beisner.

Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV
Sue-Ellen Beauregard
113.12 (Feb. 15, 2017): p95.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV. By Joe Buck. Read by the author. 2016. 7hr. Books on Tape, CD, $35 (9781524702465).

Sports junkies know Buck from his announcing gigs on national television and are most likely aware that he is the son of the late, legendary broadcaster Jack Buck. In this memoir, Buck tries to establish himself as a regular guy by telling us that "Joe Buck rhymes with dumb fuck." He then goes on to relay stories that aptly fit that description, such as talking about numerous hair-transplant surgeries that resulted in a paralyzed vocal cord and telling how he peed in a trash can during a broadcast of a Green Bay Packers game. He is at his best when discussing personal family issues, including his relationship with his dad and daughters. As might be expected from a professional announcer, his reading is smooth and flawless; he dials up the enthusiasm when necessary and occasionally mimics his reporting of some memorable games, including his call of the final out in game seven of a World Series. Buck comes across as affable and sincere--two good qualities for a narrator.--Sue-Ellen Beauregard

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Beauregard, Sue-Ellen. "Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV." Booklist, 15 Feb. 2017, p. 95. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485442625&it=r&asid=2d11e04778688d9626ab732032732ab9. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A485442625

Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say On TV
263.40 (Oct. 3, 2016): p113.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say On TV

Joe Buck. Dutton, $28 (320p) ISBN 978-1-10198456-7

In this entertaining memoir, sportscaster Buck writes a tongue-in-cheek memoir about bonding with his father, sportscaster Jack Buck; the importance of family; and a worthy profession he feels fortunate to be in. Buck considers how lucky he was that his father was the adored "Voice of the St. Louis Cardinals," and acknowledges that he learned broadcasting from his idol and never considered any other job. His debut gig was as a commentator for the Cardinals Triple-A team at age 19. His meteoric rise, complete with a few hiccups, is well chronicled here, from his first game with the Cardinals in 1990 to his current high-flying status as the lead Fox Sports announcer for the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Major League Baseball All-Star game, and the U.S. Open. Buck sings the praises of legends Mel Allen, Harry Caray, Bob Costas, Al Michaels, and Vin Scully. With a comic yet reverent approach to his life and broadcasting, Buck effectively captures the merging of his career and the popularity of American sports. (Nov.)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say On TV." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 113. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466166632&it=r&asid=4b27893ad51541d83286b681e16e4a8e. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A466166632

Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV
Wes Lukowsky
113.1 (Sept. 1, 2016): p39.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV. By Joe Buck. Nov. 2016. 304p. illus. Dutton, $28 (9781101984567). 070.4.

Joe Buck broadcast his first major-league game when he was 20 years old. In a little more than five years, he had become the lead announcer on Fox broadcasts of both big-league baseball and NFL football. He's a capable, pleasant voice in the broadcast booth whose personality never outshines the game he's describing. This autobiography is much the same, with one exception: in print, he unleashes his inner stand-up comic, sprinkling the text with surprisingly funny and often self-deprecating wit. He also discusses his father, the late Jack Buck, who is in the broadcast wing of both the baseball and football Halls of Fame, and acknowledges Dad's help in getting him started. Naturally, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes broadcast trivia here, as well as wonderful anecdotes about star players and big games. Buck is well known, and this is very pleasant autobiography that will generate considerable interest among those who watch MLB and the NFL on TV.--Wes Lukowsky

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lukowsky, Wes. "Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 39. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463755064&it=r&asid=e522fffb8a17d340f466c8e6009b9f6d. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A463755064

Play-by-player Buck joins Fox's NFL bookend shows: will continue announcing games
Paul J. Gough
395.35 (Aug. 15, 2006): p6.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 e5 Global Media, LLC
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/
NEW YORK -- Fox Sports will turn to play-by-play announcer Joe Buck to front its top-rated pregame and postgame shows with the move of former host James Brown to CBS.

Buck will join co-hosts Terry Bradshaw, Jimmy Johnson and Howie Long for "Fox NFL Sunday" and "The OT" on all but three telecasts, when he's off doing play-by-play for Fox's postseason baseball coverage. Subbing-for him will be Curt Menefee, who joins the network hosting the halftime show and the postgame coverage.

Buck also will keep his role as play-by-play announcer for the network's first broadcast team with Troy Aikman and Pam Oliver. Fox said it marks the first time a broadcaster will host an NFL pregame show while also handling play-by-play duties.

The move gives Fox Sports the push it has needed to move the pregame show onto the road, where it occasionally has been during the postseason.

"It's something that we've wanted to do forever," said Fox Sports President Ed Goren, who made the Buck announcement with Fox Sports chairman David Hill on Monday at News Corp. headquarters on Sixth Avenue.

The commitment to move the pre- and postgame shows from the Los Angeles studio to the stadium isn't insignificant, but Hill said that he was confident that Fox Sports would get all the bugs worked out. One big help: Bradshaw, Johnson and Long will be able to keep track of the games via a bank of TVs supplied by DirecTV.

For his part, Buck said he's looking forward to the challenge and minimized his role.

"These guys (pointing to Bradshaw, Johnson and Long) are the show," Buck said. "I'm just there to tee them up and have some fun."

Buck, who has been with Fox Sports for 13 years, also will continue as play-by-play announcer for Major League Baseball on Fox.

Also paired on NFL broadcasts are Dick Stockton, Daryl Johnston and Tony Siragusa; Kenny Albert, Brian Baldinger and Chris Myers; Sam Rosen and Tim Ryan; Ron Pitts and Terry Donahue; and Matt Vasgersian, JC Pearson and Jay Glazer. Stockton, Pitts and Albert have been working NFL games since the beginning of the network's sports division in 1994.

Gough, Paul J.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Gough, Paul J. "Play-by-player Buck joins Fox's NFL bookend shows: will continue announcing games." Hollywood Reporter, 15 Aug. 2006, p. 6+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA151057309&it=r&asid=230ff79d8be59e31a6060420fafadb62. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A151057309

Q & A: Joe Buck: Top Utility Player for Fox Sports; Emmy-Winning Broadcaster in Sweet Spot as He Takes On NFL Football Anchor Duties
25.36 (Sept. 25, 2006): p58.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 Crain Communications, Inc.
http://www.crain.com/about/index.html
Joe Buck is the voice of Fox Sports broadcasting. The four-time Emmy winner is Fox's top play-by-play announcer for Major League Baseball, on the first team for broadcasting National Football League games, and this year, he has also been handed the reins as the anchorman for Fox's NFL pre-game show. More than just a distinctive voice, though, Mr. Buck has emerged as one of the most genial personalities in TV sports, as comfortable calling games as he is representing Fox Sports. With the new NFL season just under way and the baseball playoffs and World Series about to start in October, Mr. Buck has a lot to do. Nevertheless, he took some time to share his views on Fox Sports with TVWeek correspondent Allison J. Waldman. Here is an edited transcript of that interview.

TelevisionWeek: How does it feel to be the main man for Fox Sports, the lead voice in both baseball and football?

Joe Buck: It feels great. There's a side of it that's intimidating, there's a side of it that's exciting, there's a side of it that I don't really know what's around the corner. So when I look at it, when I accepted the roles a couple of months ago, I did it knowing that I would be well fortified, with a lot of great people working around me. I'll be leaning on them and, hopefully, they can lean on me. To me it's just an extension of what I'm already doing. I'm not dropping out of the sky from Mars doing this work. I've been a part of Fox Sports since 1994, and I've been doing a lot at the network since the start-and this is just another piece of the puzzle. I'm very excited about it.

TVWeek: I've read that your first love is baseball, but you're a football fan, too. As a broadcaster, do you have a preference?

Mr. Buck: People ask me that, but they're so different. You know, with baseball there isn't as much importance attached during the regular-season games like there is in the NFL. Still, there's nothing like October baseball. There's nothing like the playoffs, going through each round, getting to the World Series. You hope to get a seven-game series, where you can have six months poured into one pitch in the ninth inning of Game Seven, and there's nothing like that in any other sport. That's what I love about it. With the NFL, I did a game the other day, Dallas against Jacksonville, that was thrilling. It was the first game of the year, but you only have 16 games in a schedule and every game takes on importance. You don't get that in baseball. So the postseason in baseball is thrilling, and the regular season in football is intense. I like both.

TVWeek: As someone who does play-by-play for both sports, do you bring different skills to different games?

Mr. Buck: Absolutely. Baseball is just a very different pace by virtue of how the game is played-you have a pitch, then a delay, and then a pitch, then a delay. The NFL to me is more rat-a-tat action. The majority of my work in baseball is filling the dead time. It's filling that in-between time with something humorous or pertinent or statistically driven that makes the broadcast entertaining. Football is different in that it's a rhythm thing. I set up the play, give the down and distance, report what happened on the play, Troy Aikman, the analyst, explains what happened, then I set up the down and distance for the next play. The role of a play-by-play guy is sometimes to get out of the way. The crowd is going crazy in the NFL and we have great audio on the field where you can hear the quarterback making the call at the line of scrimmage. There's nothing I'm going to say that's more entertaining than that. I think you have to get out of the way a little more. Those moments rarely come in baseball. You have to do more in baseball and keep the action moving with your voice. There's a lot of down time in baseball.

TVWeek: One of your new jobs is anchoring the NFL pre-game show with Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson. That's one more hat for you to wear.

Mr. Buck: Fortunately, I have a big head.

TVWeek: What kind of a challenge is it corralling those three big personalities?

Mr. Buck: I'm figuring it out as we speak. We did a couple of rehearsals and then we did it on the air last Sunday. But you can't get a feel for what that show is all about until you're under fire and you do it when it counts. We've got one now under our belts, but it'll take some adjusting. I have to figure out where I fit in and what I need to do to be entertaining, to get out of the way, sometimes to cut off the conversation and go to a commercial. I don't think I have to be totally a straight man in that regard, but I have to be entertaining in my own way. But that's not my show; that's their show. I'm there to further the conversation, maybe introduce something that they're not thinking about, take them on a different path than they were anticipating-basically, keeping everyone on their toes. Of all the things I can say about what I figured out after the first week, it's that I need to keep everybody jumping a little bit, keeping everybody on the edge of their seat on the set, and hopefully make it entertaining for people who are watching back at home.

TVWeek: Fox is doing that show differently this year. It's now live and on location, right?

Mr. Buck: We're doing it live at the game site, and that really brings in an entirely new dimension to the show. It's good and tough. It's not a controlled environment like a studio. This past week I probably lost five pounds of water weight just by sweating in Jacksonville, Fla. Outside of that, you have crowds and bands and cheerleaders; it's like a circus. Because of all that, it takes on a different feel than the version of the show we've been doing for 20 years.

TVWeek: How do you think Fox has developed as a sports entity, both in football and in baseball, including how the network markets the games?

Mr. Buck: I'm obviously biased, but I know this: When we jumped into football-and I say "we'' because I was one of the batch of people they hired back then-there were people who thought the world was coming to an end because Fox had football. They said we'd put Bart Simpson in the booth and what are they going to do to the Grand Old Game. What I think Fox did was revolutionize the way the game is carried on television by putting the Fox box, which it's now known as, in the upper corner of the screen with the score and the clock. If it's not there it doesn't feel right, no matter what network you're watching. Everyone does it now. Dick Ebersol [NBC Sports president] said at the time, "That's just going to drive people away because they're going to know the score and that's going to turn people off.'' Like you're supposed to keep it a secret until you decide when the people should know about it. He was wrong; it didn't work out that way. It's now the standard in the industry. The marketing of these sports is important, trying to bring a hipper feel with some of these younger athletes-baseball in particular. Fox is, in my opinion, the leader in the industry. ... They've set a new standard and people have been trying to catch up ever since.

TVWeek: What about how Fox covers baseball in particular?

Mr. Buck: Baseball, I think, needs a little more handholding. Not in a bad way, but I think we would all agree that the NFL now, with the ratings and the numbers and the money that's being thrown around from networks to the NFL to cover their sport, is staggering. It's that way for a reason. I personally believe that baseball is on a huge upswing and is on the beginning of a big uptick for the sport, but I think you need to go above and beyond to try to make sure people hang in there with you for a three-, sometimes four-hour broadcast. It's a long telecast and it's a long season. There are 162 games; there's a lot there that you have to overcome to get people to hang in there with you. I think our ratings have proven that people are hanging with us. It's been the one sport other than the NFL where the ratings haven't eroded over time on our game of the week. It is what it is. When we cover baseball, we try to make it as exciting as we can and have fun with it and still be deferential to the history of it when we can. We want to be true to it and how networks have covered it in the past, but we like to spice it up whenever we can.

TVWeek: Do you think baseball lends itself to developing personalities more than other sports because you can focus on faces and close-ups?

Mr. Buck: There's no doubt. That's exactly something that we've talked about the last three years when we get together at Fox to discuss how we're going to cover baseball. We want people to realize the great things that are going on with a lot of these players, not just on the field but off the field, too. And you can develop their personalities. With the NFL, time gets away from you. But they have so many other ways to market themselves away from the game. Guys have local TV shows ... [former NFL player] Jerome Bettis, for instance. I'm sure NBC fell in love with him when they saw his show in Pittsburgh. But during the telecast itself, I don't think there's any doubt that you have more of a chance to talk about who these people are during the game of baseball than the NFL.

TVWeek: Is that why celebrations are more prevalent in football-the touchdown productions that Chad Johnson of the Cincinnati Bengals has come up with, for instance? Is it a way for the players to create personalities that set them apart from the rest because the game doesn't lend itself to that?

Mr. Buck: I think that's fair. Things like that and sack dances, they don't bother me. I mean, everything has its limits, but I wish there was some of that stuff in baseball, to be honest with you. I think baseball, the players themselves, are starting to get it a little more. In the past, it's always been keep the camera out of our clubhouse, keep it out of our dugout. Now Fox is interviewing managers during games. We're putting microphones on players. That's the kind of stuff that doesn't go on in the NFL. There's a big difference. We can put a microphone on Derek Jeter if we want and have him play with a microphone recording his every word and then go to it during the game. In the NFL, once the game starts we're on our own and have to wait till the end.

TVWeek: Speaking of personalities, aside from being the voice of Fox, you've ventured into commercials now. How does it feel when people want to touch your throat?

Mr. Buck: I realize that it doesn't matter how many World Series I've done, or big moments that I've called-if you're in a Holiday Inn commercial where guys are touching your throat, that's all anybody wants to talk about. That and the "Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong'' commercial I did with Anheuser-Busch are remembered. I love doing that stuff because it shows another side of me; it shows more personality from me.

TVWeek: Your Dad, Jack Buck, was a Hall of Fame broadcaster and did St. Louis Cardinals baseball games for nearly 50 years. What did he think about personalities in the broadcast booth?

Mr. Buck: One thing my Dad told me, and I totally believe it more every year, nobody has ever tuned in a broadcast to listen to the announcers. They tune in to watch these teams play. If you don't show up, not a lot of people will miss you. I think you have to pick your spots, and on television you have to accent the action-you are not the action. I realized that from the beginning, and I saw that firsthand from watching my father, who treated his whole career that way. Believe me, I realize that and definitely try to keep that in mind every time I walk into a booth.

TVWeek: When was the first time you realized that your Dad was something special?

Mr. Buck: I was 3, and my Mom says I went up to the TV and started screaming because I thought my Dad was stuck inside the television. I was not a very smart kid. I think growing up it's almost like you don't know any different. People couldn't wait to talk to him, and I was like, "Yeah, that's my Dad.'' They all wanted to know what kind of a guy he was. Was he a jerk or a nice guy? I think I realized what a nice guy he was when I saw how much people wanted to be around him, and not just because he was a great announcer but because he was a great guy. That was the most important lesson my dad ever taught me. It was a great way to grow up.

CAPTION(S):

On the diamond: Joe Buck is Fox Sports' top baseball play-by-play announcer. * Spreading the love: Mr. Buck is a fan of both baseball and football, despite and because of the differences in the sports.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Q & A: Joe Buck: Top Utility Player for Fox Sports; Emmy-Winning Broadcaster in Sweet Spot as He Takes On NFL Football Anchor Duties." TelevisionWeek, 25 Sept. 2006, p. 58. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA152084907&it=r&asid=442ad17e79957b9800166b83980fe3d4. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A152084907

Two cents
135.6 (Feb. 7, 2005): p36.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 NewBay Media LLC
http://www.nbmedia.com
"If I'm a baseball broadcaster for the St. Louis Cardinals and I found out in the team hotel, on a bus, talking to a guy, that someone's on steroids, is that something I would tell the fans? My answer to that was no, it's not my job, and I stand by that."

Fox Sports play-by-play announcer (and Cardinals broadcaster) Joe Buck, elaborating on his "I'm not a journalist" response to a question about steroids posed by Bernard Goldberg on HBO's Real Sports'

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Two cents." Broadcasting & Cable, 7 Feb. 2005, p. 36. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA128603215&it=r&asid=8e992d89784c8b79b507dcc32a5f6c37. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A128603215

Not passing on Buck
408.24 (Feb. 6, 2009): p2.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 e5 Global Media, LLC
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

HBO Sports is drawing on Emmy-winning Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck to replace Bob Costas at the network. Buck will host a quarterly talk show for HBO Sports beginning in May. It will replace "Costas Now," which the NBC sportscaster did at HBO for much of the past seven years. Costas left HBO Sports this week to take a gig at the MLB Network.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Not passing on Buck." Hollywood Reporter, 6 Feb. 2009, p. 2. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA194332586&it=r&asid=bf0af5a23cfa2152b2d0ba96c385c326. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A194332586

Talkin' Baseball -- and Football, Too
Mike Malone
Born: April 25, 1969 in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States
Nationality: American
Occupation: Sportscaster
136.41 (Oct. 16, 2006): p29.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 NewBay Media LLC
http://www.nbmedia.com
By Mike Malone

Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck keeps several balls in the air

To paraphrase the old Bo Jackson/Nike commercials, Joe knows baseball--and Joe knows football, too. Joe Buck, that is, Fox's lead play-by-play guy for both the NFL and MLB. And as if juggling two live broadcasts wasn't enough, he recently added another ball: hosting Fox's new high-volume, high-testosterone pre-game show, NFL Sunday .

"Last night, I had my first dream about the pre-game show," Buck says. "I was arguing with our director about something. I can't for the life of me remember what it was about, but I woke up stressed."

Buck, of course, is the son of legendary baseball and football announcer Jack Buck, who died in 2002. At 37, Joe already has a solid career under his belt. He started out calling minor-league baseball while at Indiana University and joined Fox to do NFL games in 1994. He moved on to Major League Baseball and called his first World Series in 1996. When Joe worked the Super Bowl in 2005, the Bucks became the only father and son to have called the NFL final.

Cracking the Fraternity

NFL Sunday , shot live in front of a screaming crowd each week, is Buck's latest challenge. Besides doing commentary in an atmosphere that's akin to a college bar on nickel-beer night, he has had to crack the tight fraternity of co-hosts/NFL vets Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson. "There's been pressure on me to fit in right away, not do too much or too little, not be boring or make them mad," he says. "It's a tough balance to find, and it's only going to come with time."

To expedite the process, Buck and the boys get together off the set--enjoying long dinners, hoisting glasses at the hotel bar and trading barbs all the while. "It's something we don't do enough in today's broadcast world," Buck says.

Just as the gang is hitting its stride, Buck is off for three weeks to do the baseball post-season. The broadcasts feature super-slo-mo and an on-screen device to mark the strike zone. But Buck says the games, not the gadgetry, are what make for good television. "If they're boring, there's not much we can do to make it more exciting," he says. "We've got to just cover the game as best we can and hope we get good series."

Asked which sport he'd cover if he had to pick just one, Buck doesn't miss a beat: "Ice dancing." But seriously, he says, nothing matches the hold-your-breath tension of post-season baseball--except, perhaps, the any-given-Sunday intensity of the NFL. "I'm starting to lean more in the football direction, only because it's a new challenge with the studio show," he says. "But I'd do either sport for the rest of my life and be the happiest guy in the world."

The "It Factor"

Charmed as his career has been, Buck has occasionally run afoul of his viewers. Many complained that he overreacted to NFL receiver Randy Moss' pantomimed mooning of the crowd in 2005, calling it "a disgusting act." And Buck, a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan, admits that hugging Mark McGwire on-air after the St. Louis slugger broke the home-run record in 1998 was unprofessional. But he maintains that such stumbles are only human.

"Nobody is going to do countless hours of live sporting events and not make mistakes," he says. "You'd be a robot; you'd be boring. When you make a mistake, you regroup and move on."

Fox Sports President Ed Goren isn't complaining. "When you look at broadcasting personalities, there's the It Factor--something you can't teach," he says. "Joe has It. He's a rock-solid play-by-play broadcaster, and, like a great athlete, he makes the people around him better."

Buck, who enjoys helping his daughters with their homework and reading "junk" murder-mysteries when he's not consuming or dispersing sports reportage, hopes to continue being a two-sport man for the next bunch of decades. Even the hectic schedule doesn't really feel like work.

"People say, 'My God, how are you doing all this?' But there are a lot of people around this country doing a lot harder jobs than I am," he says. "As long as they want me to continue, I'll keep going."

Joe Buck

Mike Malone

Lead play-by-play announcer, NFL on Fox, MLB on Fox

Education: B.A., English and telecommunications, Indiana University, 1991

Employment: NFL on Fox: play-by-play: 1994-96; MLB on Fox: lead play-by-play: 1996-present; NFL on Fox: lead play-by-play: 2002-present

Personal: B. April 25, 1969; married; two daughters

Mike Malone

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Malone, Mike. "Talkin' Baseball -- and Football, Too." Broadcasting & Cable, 16 Oct. 2006, p. 29. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA152860627&it=r&asid=76961372c5d06f23bdc1f24531fb0582. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A152860627

The Buck Starts Here
Staff
66.6 (June 2015): p126.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
http://www.golfdigest.com
Byline: WITH GUY YOCOM Photographs by John Loomis

THE BUCK STARTS HERE

As Fox prepares for its first U.S. Open, JOE BUCK shares his secrets on taking relief, keeping profanity off the air, and knowing when to shut up.

County stadium in Milwaukee, Packers game, and it's freezing. I'm broadcasting the game, and the second half is taking forever. The bathroom is a mile away, and I've really got to go. My teeth are floating. There's a timeout, and someone hands me an empty soda bottle. I knock it out of his hand and soldier on. There's another timeout, and I continue to suffer. The two-minute warning comes; there's still not time. At this point I'm jumping up and down and pressing my knees together. The game resumes, and then there's another timeout with seconds to play. There's a woman stage manager in the booth, and I point to the door and say, "Out." Someone brings in a trash can and lines it with a plastic bag. Suddenly I'm Jim Carrey pulled over by the cop in "Dumb and Dumber." It just doesn't end, even when we're back from break. How does this story wrap? Details will be in a book I'm writing that's due out next year, though I will say, the achievement will never be matched by any broadcaster, ever.

That's a heck of a way to begin this interview, but it comes to mind because at the U.S. Open we're going to be on the air 11 hours a day for four days. I'll be on for six hours each day, with four two-minute breaks per hour. So I'll be scouting where the restrooms are the way caddies chart courses. And I might bring some Depends, just in case.

Fear of the unknown. That's what this U.S. Open is for me, and I haven't felt this way since I called my first World Series, in 1996. Back then I had this sensation in the pit of my stomach, this nervousness, that took me right to the edge. And that's how hosting the U.S. Open for Fox is. Having done 17 World Series and being in the broadcasting business for almost 25 years, it's not a literal fear. But it's something I think about every day and night.

We did these dry runs at Pinehurst, using a feed from Golf Channel. Greg [Norman] and I did 20 hours, and when it's over I get the tape, go home and watch it. My wife, Michelle, is there, as are daughters Natalie, 18, and Trudy, 15. Two minutes into it, Trudy says, "It sounds like you're doing football, Dad. Doesn't sound like golf." Note to self: new golf tone needed.

What I've found about Greg is that he's sort of a terminator. He's going at this endeavor with a commitment and focus I'm not sure I've seen anywhere else. He's attacking it like a competitor. I've seen many former athletes try announcing, and it doesn't always go well. They drift. They stumble or get flustered. Greg comes in lasered up and ready to go. He'll be good, trust me.

My experience in golf is long; my list of accomplishments small. I'm a member at Old Warson Country Club in St. Louis. One of the great clubs in America, host of the 1971 Ryder Cup and scene of my one and only triumph, a victory in the Old Warson member-guest. My partner, Mark Human, and I won our flight, which got us into one of those shootout things between the flight winners. A team is eliminated on every hole, and one by one they fell, until it was Mark, me and another team with a combined age of 107. I made the winning putt, a moment for the ages. Won a golf-bag travel cover, as I recall, and a $500 merchandise certificate. Which, as you know, buys you $200 worth of stuff in the pro shop.

My index is 5.0. I've been as low as 2, and it gets up around 8 when I'm running badly. Historically I'm a little reverse-sandbaggerish, because when I play lousy, I head for the parking lot instead of the computer to post my score. I'm a Wild Willie more than a Steady Eddie. I like to rip it. I broke my sternum hitting a golf ball, and the doctor who treated me said he could write a medical paper about it. My big miss is a block. It has been and always will be a part of my DNA. With acceptance comes peace.

'NAME THE GREAT COURSE IN A GREAT CITY , AND WE [BASEBALL ANNOUNCERS] PLAYED THERE .'

Speaking of the big miss, I was down in Cabo San Lucas and got a little bet going with Hank Haney at El Dorado. Hank hangs out there a lot, filmed one of his "Haney Project" shows there. We're friends, but the game is serious. At the time I was working on the one-plane swing with Mark Miller, a disciple of Jim Hardy. On the range, Hank is giving me the business. "One-plane swing, eh? You're so far from a one-plane swing, it's a joke." I then proceed to play unconscious against Hank. I'm burying him. On the 16th tee he looks at the scorecard, shakes his head and says, "Do you know what you're shooting?" I look, and I'm one under. For a 6-handicapper playing El Dorado from the tips, that's unconscious. I par the last three holes and bring it home in 71, my best score ever. Hank can't believe it. He starts peeling off the $70 he owes me, but I decide to let him off the hook. "How about you just sign my ball for me?" He signs the ball, which is on display at my home today.

But let's talk about the car wrecks, which far outnumber the triumphs. At Pebble Beach in 2007, I'm playing with Jay Delsing in the pro-am, and I'm having a terrible week. On our last hole at Spyglass Hill-we don't come close to making the cut-I have a tiny chance at redemption. I take a 9-iron and whistle it right at the flag. I'm holding my finish as the ball disappears. From up at the green comes that unmistakable groan, that Ohhh that tells you something bad has happened. My ball had airmailed everything by a mile. Jay sidles over and whispers, "On tour, what we do at this point is walk really slowly and hope that the pain subsides by the time you reach the green." Walk slowly I did, but the nightmare got worse. We get up there and discover my ball had hit an older woman, a devoted patron of 40 years there, square in the neck. She was OK and was very nice about it. Me, I left the Monterey Peninsula feeling like I'd committed one crime after another.

I know how that lady felt. When I was 5, we went with my dad [Hall of Fame broadcaster Jack Buck] on a road trip to Cincinnati. On the way into Riverfront Stadium, I begged my mom to get me one of those plastic batting helmets at the souvenir stands. She gave in, and as we took our seats just behind the third-base dugout, she told me that if a foul ball came, I needed to duck. Two innings later, Pete Rose comes up and rips one foul right at little Joe Buck. I ducked, but the ball hit me flush in the head. Thankfully I was wearing the batting helmet-with no padding. They took me to the aid station, but I was OK. Who had it rough for a few minutes was my dad, who couldn't leave the microphone.

'WHEN WE GO ON THE AIR , I KIND OF THROW A SWITCH IN MY BRAIN WHERE THERE'S NO PROFANITY .'

Pete Rose, by the way, should be in the Hall of Fame. Everybody deserves a second chance. He still follows the game passionately, knows minutiae about current players you wouldn't believe. Look, he's going to get in someday. We all know that. They might as well do it while he's alive to appreciate it.

In 2002, a writer I know, Dan O'Neill, did a story on me for Golfweek. We're at Old Warson and playing while he's interviewing me. There's a photographer there, and I'm nervous, feeling like I have someone else's arms. Standing on the tee of the 13th hole, a par 3, the photog says, "I think I've got all I need," jumps in his golf cart and drives in. My next swing, I make the only hole-in-one in my life. I whoop, my arms go in the air and Dan gives me a high-five. I look for the photographer and see his golf cart disappearing on the horizon. A Kodak moment, except there's no Kodak.

I'm playing with [NFL quarterback] Carson Palmer one year in the Tahoe celebrity tournament. I can't do anything right. Four-letter words are pouring out of me like I have Tourette's. When it's over, Carson and his brother, Jordan, say, "How do you do a broadcast without letting an F-bomb leak out once in a while?" As I told them, when we go on the air, I kind of throw a switch in my brain where there's no profanity. Throwing the switch has worked-so far.

I'm not one of those anti-cart fanatics, it's just that I've had two back surgeries, and a bouncing cart does me no good. I've also had a broken neck-I played with it for a week as a defensive tackle in high school before we realized it was broken-there's the sternum deal, and then I have an arthritic shoulder, so walking keeps me loose.

MAYBE IT'S FROM being around baseball so much, but I believe in sanctity of the clubhouse. Golf-wise, I believe that what happens at the club should stay at the club. I'm not a big 19th-hole hangout guy. Questions like, "Should the Seahawks have run the ball at the end of the Super Bowl?" are inevitable. But the stuff I hear on the course is unbelievable. Stuff about marriages and so on exceeds what professional counselors hear. Betray another person's secrets, and all is lost.

Rory McIlroy throws his 3-iron into the water at Doral, and it's cute. If Tiger Woods had done that, the media would have never let him up. The media dynamic with Tiger is interesting. The media are supposed to be objective, right? I've never taken it personally when a baseball or football player doesn't speak or open up to us-and there have been a lot. Move on to the next guy.

The happier my life at home has been, the happier I've been playing golf. I think that's true with everybody. Michelle thinks I get too unhappy over a bad round, but she has no idea how unhappy it made me before I met her. If you're coming home from a lousy day on the golf course to a lousy situation at home, that's true misery, because at the course you were counting on four hours of bliss. It sounds sappy, but if you come home to a great person, golf no longer seems like life and death.

First golf memory: St. Petersburg, Fla., 1980. Spring training home for the St. Louis Cardinals. I'm 10, and I'm with my dad, who I didn't get to spend a lot of time with because he was gone working so much. We're at a golf course, and he hands me a token for the machine that releases range balls into a wire basket. I thought it was the coolest thing. I remember the clatter of the machine as the balls came out. And the laughter of my dad as I chased after the balls when they overflowed the basket.

Never bite off so much in your job that you can't spend a lot of time with your family. My dad worked so hard. He slept in his own bed maybe half the nights of the year because of road assignments, but even when he was home, he was covering games. It put a lot of pressure on my mom. She brought in her parents to help out, and it took a village to raise us. I was lucky. Some kids, not having their fathers around, go off the rails. Me, I never wanted him to come home and have to deal with a discipline problem. So I kept my nose clean. But in the end, what I learned is never to risk being underexposed at home to be overexposed on the air. When we're finished here, I'm heading to Trudy's lacrosse game. Not that I'm father of the year or anything, but I've tried to keep that balance.

Great as my dad was-I would never have gotten my first job announcing if I didn't have the last name Buck-it's my mom, Carole, who has made the biggest difference. She was on Broadway back in the 1960s. She understands entertainment, has incredible instincts. When you're lucky enough to do high-profile events, you're surrounded by people telling you how good you are. You need that one voice you trust, one person who will tell you the truth. When my mom says, "That didn't sound like you. It wasn't your best," I listen.

' NEPOTISM CUTS BOTH WAYS. . . . IF YOU AREN'T VERY GOOD , THEY GET RID OF YOU TWICE AS FAST .'

Jack Buck fought through Europe during World War II. He crossed the bridge at Remagen. He got shot and was decorated. Rough, traumatic stuff. But for some reason he loved watching World War II movies. You'd think they would give him flashbacks, but even during the hairiest parts of "Saving Private Ryan," he just munched away on his popcorn. One part got to him: the scene where Ryan is old and visits the graves with his family. But the rest, he watched like it was just another movie. He was a tough guy.

In 1999, I won a sports Emmy for best play-by-play announcer. Floyd Mayweather was doing the presentation. He said, "And the winner is . . . " and opened the envelope. When he said "Joe Buck," he said it in a surprised way, as if to say, Who's that guy? I've been fortunate enough to win seven Sports Emmys, but Floyd's surprise is one reason I'm looking forward to the U.S. Open. It's a chance to sort of take it to the next level. It's not the goal, but I hope it's a happy consequence.

At the same Sports Emmys show in 1999, my dad got the Lifetime Achievement Award. He had diabetes, lung cancer and Parkinson's disease, but he got up there and stole the show. His hands shaking visibly, he said, "I shook hands with Muhammad Ali a while back. It took them 30 minutes to get us untangled." He said of his World War II experience, "If it were not for a French woman hiding me in her basement, I never would have made it out alive. The basement was in Cleveland, Ohio." Brought the house down.

Best athlete-golfer I've seen is Sam Bradford, now quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles. Jay Williamson, a former tour player and good buddy of mine, says that if Sam focused on golf, he could be on the PGA Tour within a couple of years. As far as playing the game goes, he's better than Tony Romo, John Smoltz, Rick Rhoden or any other nongolf athlete out there.

Of the possibility of performance-enhancing drugs in golf, I suggest you think of one name: Freddy Galvis. He's not a golfer but a player for the Philadelphia Phillies who was suspended for PED use. Google him and look at pictures of him. The drugs made no difference in his appearance. The days of steroid use and the bulging muscles and acne are long gone. The idea now is to use designer drugs that make you recover faster. I have no idea if anyone in golf is using them. What I'm saying is, you can't tell just by looking at a guy.

Best profession for playing golf: major-league baseball pitcher. Smoltz, Greg Maddux and those guys played more than PGA Tour players, every day except when they were pitching. And they did it with the blessing of their managers, most of whom also loved to play. There came a day when teams started discouraging it and stopped allowing them to put their clubs on the charter flights. So what did the pitchers do? They FedExed their clubs. Some teams have relented and just let them play.

Second-best profession for playing golf: baseball announcer. When I was broadcasting Cardinals games with Mike Shannon, we played the Olympic Club in San Francisco in 1998 just before the U.S. Open, when it was closed to members. Name the great course in a great city, and we played there. Tim Finchem could not have set it up better. In fact, there are very few American courses still on my bucket list. Spoiled rotten, is what we are.

Augusta national? Of course. Troy Aikman arranged it through Joe Ford, a wonderful guy and member there. We stayed in the cabins. The first day we played from the member tees and also played the Par-3 Course. The second day, Troy asked Joe if he'd mind if we played from the back tees. This was a month before the 2012 Masters, and the course was running fast, in prime condition. Joe said he didn't mind. The course was a beast, but on the ninth green, I was three over and headed for a career round. At that point, it started to sprinkle. Tiny drops, where you don't even break out the umbrella. Joe Ford knocks in his putt, looks at the sky and says, "I guess I've had enough of this rain. Let's get some soup, boys!" And he walks in. I'm speechless, thinking with all my power, Joe, please come back . But he kept going. Joe's aversion to rain probably saved me from a back-nine 56, though it stayed dry. The soup was terrific.

Later that day, who comes off 18 but the great football coach, Lou Holtz. He and another guy had gone off as a twosome that morning, first group off. They were the last group off the course. Lou said they played 72 holes, just went around and around.

My choice for best golf announcing moment I've seen might surprise you. It was from NBC's Dan Hicks when Tiger Woods made the putt to get into the playoff at the 2008 U.S. Open. Dan's words were, "Expect anything different?" It's a good line, but it was the timing that made it exquisite. Announcers have different styles. You can ride the front of the wave-be right on top of a call like a play-by-play guy in an action sport. You can dive into the middle of the wave, or ride the back of it-a pause before you give a reaction. Dan's call was on the back of the wave, and it couldn't have been better. That's the best way, I think. Pat Summerall did it like that. That's what I'm shooting for.

Best golf announcer, all time? Jim Nantz. He's got the right voice, the right tone, a great sensibility and an amazing way of mixing in history with what you're seeing. Nobody puts it in context like that guy. His institutional knowledge is unreal. Anybody who tries to be the next Jim Nantz needs to have their head examined, because that exact model is unattainable. It's too intimidating. My biggest fear is falling into a trap of trying to be like Jim. We'll try for the first Joe Buck, and see how that goes.

But I won't fall into that trap. I was hired to do Cardinals games at 20, did my first game at 21. I actually had to wait a while before I could do drop-ins for Bud Light, because I wasn't of drinking age. I worked with my dad and Mike Shannon, and you can imagine the temptation to try to sound like those guys. I didn't do it then, so I suppose I can find my own style now.

Nepotism cuts both ways. I got my start in baseball because I was Jack Buck's son. The downside, as we learned with Julian Lennon, is if you aren't very good, they get rid of you twice as fast.

I will not have an exclamation planned in advance for when the last putt falls. I planned a call one time-for Mark McGwire's 62nd home run-and it didn't happen because of where he hit the ball. I'm glad I went with something spontaneous.

Ok, there's one exception. If Tiger Woods happens to win, I just might say, "I don't believe what I just saw." That would be a small homage to my dad's call of Kirk Gibson's home run in the 1988 World Series. Let's face it, that expression would be hard to beat. It would be truthful. The way he's been playing and after what he's been through, I really wouldn't believe what I just saw.

On second thought, there's no way I'll say that. I copied one of my dad's expressions, his "See you tomorrow night," when I called Game 6 of the Cards-Rangers World Series in 2011. I'm not interested in becoming a Jack Buck cover band.

Best golf TV moment: Payne Stewart winning at Pinehurst in 1999. It was best personally because the birth of my second child was a month away, and watching Payne take Phil Mickelson's face in his hands and tell him, "You're going to be a father" was very powerful. It was awesome from a professional standpoint because the announcers had the good sense not to be talking. It's important to know what to say. Knowing what not to say, and knowing when not to say it, is every bit as important.

When Frank Chirkinian was running the golf telecasts at CBS, he had a rule for announcers never to talk while the ball is in the air. At Fox, one rule I'm hoping for is to never talk over natural sound. We'll have a lot of mics going at Chambers Bay, and you'll hear a lot of caddie-player conversation. I don't think there's anything an announcer can say that would trump the information and drama going on in those moments. If they go to one of those conversations while I'm in mid-sentence, I'll shut up and defer to what they're saying.

My dad always felt you should go just a little easy on the players. He said that doing what they do, as well as they do it, is incredibly difficult. I think that applies to golf. Why, when a guy turns pro, does he suddenly deserve to get ripped for occasionally making a mistake you or I make on practically every hole?

Another cool thing about golf is, I could stand at home plate at Busch Stadium and hit it completely out of the stadium with an 8-iron. Pretty much every immortal slugger in baseball history has come through there, and nobody has hit it a fair ball completely out of the park. And here I can do it with a golf ball, using a short iron, bad back, broken sternum and all.

So what would be the perfect ending at Chambers Bay? How about Rory, Tiger and Phil tied for the lead, Rory and Tiger in the group ahead of Phil. Those two finish and are waiting near the 18th green, waiting to see what Phil does. Mickelson nails his approach to the 18th green to 10 feet, and with the world on edge, strokes the putt that could define his career, his first U.S. Open after six runner-up finishes. The ball has that beautiful Mickelson roll to it. It creeps to the edge of the hole, teeters there for a second that seems like nine years, and then . . . you fill in the rest. The chances of this happening are on the other side of zero. But I can dream, can't I?

WITH GUY YOCOM Photographs by John Loomis

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Staff. "The Buck Starts Here." Golf Digest, June 2015, p. 126. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA420833404&it=r&asid=2222dbd6c86559472d4d40ebff08d577. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A420833404

The Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis
37.299 (Sept. 2007): p27.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 SJR St. Louis Journalism Review
http://www.sjreview.org/
Joe Buck, national sportscaster, will be the first recipient of the Jack Buck National Media Person of the Year award. The award honors Joe Buck's father, the late sports broadcaster Jack Buck. The Nov. 28 event will feature Bob Kuban's band, and Charles Brennan will be master of ceremonies. Individual tickets are $500 and $200. For more information call (636) 230-1973.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis." St. Louis Journalism Review, vol. 37, no. 299, 2007, p. 27. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA168872251&it=r&asid=9eacfdf11e4f8e98aa79578fa539a09b. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A168872251

Hall-Of-Fame Sportscaster Joe Buck Admits To Being A 'Lucky Bastard'
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 National Public Radio, Inc. (NPR). All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions page at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
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HOST: DAVE DAVIES

DAVE DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. Most of us have jobs where we have to behave ourselves. In Joe Buck's job, he gets to yell.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JOE BUCK: Bases loaded, two out. Hard hit into right, back at the wall - tied game.

DAVIES: Buck is one of the leading play-by-play broadcasters in sports. At the age of 47, he's done 19 World Series and four Super Bowls. He'll do his fifth in Houston next month. It's fair to say he grew up in the business. His father, Jack Buck, was a Hall of Fame announcer who also did World Series games. Joe Buck has won seven Emmy Awards, but he somehow gets more guff from fans on the internet than just about any broadcaster in sports. He's written a new memoir about his experiences in sports and life, including his addiction to hair plug transplants, one of which went south and nearly ruined his career. The book's called, "Lucky Bastard." The luck refers to the good fortune in Buck's professional career. The other part is from a twist in his personal story you'll soon hear about. I spoke to Joe Buck yesterday.

Well, Joe Buck, welcome to FRESH AIR. I want to begin by talking about the craft, what you do, broadcasting live sports. You write in this book that - you know, you do radio and television. And you write that television is an act. Radio is about being yourself. What do you mean?

BUCK: Well, I think when you do radio, like what we're doing right now, there's a certain amount of freedom that when you walk in and sit down and turn the mic on, it's you. It's all you. If I sit down in the broadcast booth and I'm doing radio, I can talk about the weather. I can talk about the popcorn vendor. I can talk about the uniforms that the two teams are wearing. I can talk about the size of the crowd, talk about who's up in the bullpen.

When I'm doing TV, it's more of a choreographed dance, in a way. So I've got to follow the pictures, or the pictures have to follow me. So there's a little bit more of a freedom when you're doing radio play-by-play as opposed to television. I prefer the television side of it. I started in radio. I enjoy the mental gymnastics that go along with matching voice to picture and vice versa and trying to accent the action as opposed to provide all of the action through my words. And that's really what play-by-play is.

DAVIES: So you can take a minute to think. In television, you don't want to repeat what everyone's saying, but you want to enhance their understanding, their enjoyment of it.

BUCK: Yeah, I think by its very nature, it's redundant, you know, being the play-by-play guy on television. The camera is really the play-by-play person. If you're the play-by-play announcer, I think it's your job to be better than just saying what's on people's TV screen. So if there's a ground ball to the right of the shortstop, name the shortstop - Derek Jeter or, in today's game, Francisco Lindor.

You can make an editorial comment about the play while it's going on. You don't have to be bogged down by the details because the camera is showing the groundball to short. So in the midst of that, you can say Lindor to - all you have to say is Lindor to his right, going to be a tough play, got him at first. As opposed to radio, I don't have time for that.

I have to say Lindor takes three steps to his right, backhands the ball, comes over the top, long throw. He got him. There's a subtle difference in there. But I think kind of being on the upbeat or, in a musical sense, kind of being off rhythm a little bit is preferable to me as opposed to having to go blow by blow, which is what radio requires.

DAVIES: All right, now I want to play a call of yours, which is exactly about this - accentuating what the audience sees, not repeating it. This is from 2008, the National League Championship Series, Phillies vs. Dodgers. This - our program is broadcast from Philadelphia, so I'm a Phillies fan. I remember watching this game.

And it's a homerun call. And I'm going to just say two things about what the audience sees because they're not going to hear this in your call. But what the audience sees is a homerun. The batter is Matt Stairs. He's a beefy guy with a compact swing, powerful swing. It's a tense moment. The Phillies are making a comeback in an important game.

So we see this compact swing drive the ball out. And then the other thing is this game is in Dodger Stadium, Chavez Ravine, where the bleachers are relatively small. And you can see the desert in the dark outside. And as the ball flies over the right field fence, you see the ball move from light into shadow. That's what the audience sees. Let's listen to your call.

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BUCK: Stairs rips one into the night, deep into right, way out of here. And Philadelphia gets a pinch-hit two-run shot. And the Phillies lead 7-5 in the eighth.

DAVIES: Now, I've remembered that call for eight years because it's just a lovely piece of baseball poetry. Stairs rips one into the night as you see the ball disappear into the shadows. You know, writers have time to craft phrases like that. You've got to do it in the moment. Is there a technique? Are there muscles that you develop for coming up with that quick, evocative turn of phrase?

BUCK: Well, I think the first thing is you have to be prepared. And if you're prepared, you can be relaxed. And I'm not giving you a canned answer. I've never thought about it in these terms, really. But I think if you are ready for a moment like that - and by ready, I mean you've got all the stats of Stairs at your fingertips if you want to go there. You know who's on the mound. You're aware of the game's situation. And now you can just sit back and watch.

It's when you're ill-prepared and you're on the edge of your seat and you're gripping and you're going, oh my God, where's Stairs' stats and yeah, he is a beefy, left-handed hitter and who's the guy on the mound and, you know, I'm lost in this game that you don't see that. I remember making that call. I remember that vividly. And it was one of those - it was like a thump. Those moments and that swing and that connection and that ball flying off his bat kind of hits you in the chest. And it takes a little bit of your breath away because it's a stunning moment in a really intense game. And so you better be ready for that to happen.

DAVIES: I have to ask about your voice. It's pretty distinctive. I mean, it cuts through that crowd noise in a way. Did you work on that? Did people talk about your voice when you were growing up?

BUCK: Well, I think most people associate me with my dad. And my dad was a Baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster and NFL Hall of Fame broadcaster, had a gravelly voice. (Imitating Jack Buck) He'd talk like this. Hey, how are you?

DAVIES: Yeah. No, it's different. It's a different voice from yours. I remember your dad, yeah.

BUCK: Yeah. And so when - you know, when I started with the Cardinals my first year, I was 20 about to turn 21. And I was getting all the nepotism complaints from the local media outlets, from a radio-TV critic in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, from the Letters to the Editor - can't believe we're subjected to Jack Buck's kid broadcasting these games. And every time you see kid and hear kid, you think, man, I have to not sound like a kid.

And so I went from talking up here - good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the ballpark. It's a great day for a game - to trying to consciously get my voice down here and say, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to - and I started to change my voice. And I went from, you know, sounding like I was going through puberty on the air to really sounding like a man.

DAVIES: You, in the book, name some other sports broadcasters that you admire - Mike Tirico, Al Michaels. You choose not to name people you don't think are so good. But I'm curious, what bothers you in an announcer that you feel isn't measuring up?

BUCK: Overtalking, doing too much, trying to prove to the audience that they did their reading, trying to make the call about themselves. The way I've always done it - right, wrong, good, bad, whatever anybody's opinion may be - is - let's take the Cubs winning the World Series for the first time in 108 years this past October. I could choose to make that call all about me, screaming and yelling and, you know, groundball to Kris Bryant, going to be a tough play, out at first. And for the first time in 108 years, the Chicago Cubs have finally won it all. They gather on the mound. Players jumping over - I don't want to say all that stuff.

I just want to state what happened. I want to do it an exciting way. I haven't always accomplished that, by the way. And I want to get out of the viewer's head. It's not about me. Nobody's tuning in - let's check the TV Guide listings and see what game Joe Buck is calling. Nobody cares. They want to see the Cubs. They want to see the Packers. They want to see the Cowboys. They don't care who's calling the game.

And so I've joked that if I get hit by a bus going into a game, they're still going to play. And the guys that bother me, without naming names, are the guys who sound like if they got hit by that bus, the game would be canceled.

DAVIES: (Laughter).

BUCK: And that's annoying.

DAVIES: Joe Buck broadcasts play-by-play of baseball, football and other sports for Fox Sports. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.

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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, we're speaking with Joe Buck. He is a play-by-play broadcaster for Fox Sports, and he has a new memoir.

You grew up in broadcasting. Your dad was Jack Buck, Hall of Fame broadcaster. And he was the play-by-play guy for the St. Louis Cardinals. St. Louis is a huge baseball town. And anybody who follows the game knows that the play-by-play guy for a baseball team is a major celebrity in a city. You're probably better known and loved than the mayor.

You had quite a bit of exposure to this life as a kid, didn't you? What was it like? Did you have the run of the stadium?

BUCK: Oh, I did. Yeah, the stadium was my playground. And I was down there with my dad night after night, not just in the summer, but even school nights. And sometimes school nights led to late mornings led to late arrival at school. Baseball in Busch Stadium, I guess for lack of a better term, it was my little romper room.

And so by that I mean I was in the broadcast booth during the game. If I got bored up there, when I was a little kid, I'd run down underneath by the dugouts on the inside part of the ballpark. And other players' kids would be throwing a tennis ball around, and we'd be throwing it at each other. And I - yeah, I had run of the place.

That was my spot. Every day after school or during the summer, I'd ride down with my dad at 3 o'clock. And then as I got a little bit older, I'd broadcast - at least do games into a tape recorder. He and I would listen to the tape on the way home. It was - it was just a great way to grow up. And I guess without knowing it, I was aiming myself for a life in sports and in baseball in particular.

DAVIES: What kind of advice did your dad give you when you were doing that? Do you remember any feedback?

BUCK: I do. It was - it was more basics. It was about my diction. It was about not every time describing a ground ball to shortstop as a chopper to short or whatever I might have been leaning on at the time. It was, you know, vary it up. It's a ground ball to short. It's a screamer to short. It's a laser to short. It's a looper (ph) to short. Whatever it is, change it up, but be grammatically correct, have proper diction.

And beyond that, he let me kind of find my own way. And thankfully, he did. You know, had he been on me - especially when we were broadcast partners later - but had he been on me like, here's how you have to do it, here's how I would've done it, try it this way, do this - I probably would have been like, time out. I can't handle all this. I'm not - I'm not comfortable. Or, you know, I would have been resentful.

But he didn't. You know, he found his own way. And he was hands off enough with me to let me know that he cared and let me know that he was in my corner, but he let me find it myself.

DAVIES: Anybody who's gone to ball games will from time to time look at dugouts between innings or whatever, and you'll see the bat boy, this young kid who has a uniform without a number, who, you know, picks up bats and picks up the pine tar rag. You had that job for the Cardinals?

BUCK: I did when I wanted it.

DAVIES: That's huge. What was it like being a bat boy?

BUCK: Oh my God, it was so fun. And, you know, I was this little chubby kid, which I talk about in the book. And the sad thing was the typical bat boy uniform didn't fit. They're made for, like, slender, normal-sized kids. And I would try it on in the Cardinal Clubhouse, and the Cardinals' equipment manager would be like, yeah, we're going to have to get you another size pants.

DAVIES: (Laughter).

BUCK: And he'd actually walk down by the players - I was wearing different players' pants while I was the bat boy. But man, what a great education. I mean, I would run around in the outfield during batting practice and catch fly balls. I'd play catch with players before the game started.

And then, when the game started, it was up to me to run out there to home plate, in the middle of 45, 50,000 people, grab the bat. I'd have to bring new baseballs to the umpire when there were enough foul balls and the umpire needed a new supply of baseballs.

And I'd be around the - not just the sights and sounds, but the conversations that were going on in the dugout. And watching these guys react to success and failure, it really, you know, became part of my DNA without me even knowing it.

DAVIES: And were you invisible to the players, or did you have a relationship with them?

BUCK: No, I was definitely not invisible. No fat batboy is invisible.

DAVIES: (Laughter).

BUCK: Let me let you in on that secret. When you're a fat batboy in the '70s, you are ripe for the picking for - from different players. So you kind of became one of the guys. I mean, I wasn't - I'm not insane. I didn't think because I was there from time to time or, you know, in certain years, night after night that I was part of the group. But I was at least on the inside enough to have guys feel comfortable to, you know, say some snide comment or grab me in the dugout and start pounding on me or whatever it might be. So I at least kind of felt like I was part of the group and I wasn't an outsider. That was pretty cool.

DAVIES: You write in the book that once a month, your dad would drive over to a house - he would bring you with him, drive over to a house and deliver a check to another family. Explain what was going on here.

BUCK: Well, he was divorced. I didn't know it at the time. I didn't understand all that. You know, it's why my book is titled what it is, which is probably not politically correct or maybe...

DAVIES: Well, we can say the name here. It's "Lucky Bastard," right?

BUCK: Yeah. I mean, it's because I guess in a way I - that's exactly what I am. First of all, I'm the luckiest guy in the world to be my parents' son and to be Jack Buck's son but Carol Buck's son, as well. And then I came onto the earth as a result of my dad meeting my mom while my dad was married with six kids. And he and my mom ended up getting married a month before I was born. So he had this other family.

And when I was old enough to move around - 5, 6, 7, 8 years old, there were times where I would go with him to deliver a check to this woman and this house filled with six other kids. I knew I wasn't wanted there. And as time went on, I knew that I represented something really painful in their lives by being, I guess, the direct result of why their dad left their mom. And so, you know, as I write in the book, to this day, I'm not sure why I went on those trips over to his other house, so to speak...

DAVIES: Why he brought you, you mean, yeah.

BUCK: Yeah, I don't know why he brought me. Maybe because he knew it wouldn't get out of hand or real nasty if the kid was there because it was tense. And I think without knowing it, I was learning a lot about relationships and about heartbreak and about, you know, in this case, kids who were looking up to a man who, I guess in a very simple sense, let them down.

DAVIES: You tell a story in the book of going to a swimming party at your half siblings' house. Do you want to share a bit of that with us?

BUCK: Well, I went there. And I kind of was cut loose in that house a little bit. But it - I really - I didn't feel comfortable. But I remember my half-brother Danny grabbing me and saying, hey, let's go out and jump in the pool. OK. Well, first of all, as I said already, I was this little chubbster (ph) kid. And I wasn't all that fired up about taking my shirt off in front of the other kids - or anybody, for that matter. I was probably, I don't know, 8, somewhere in there, at that age. And he put me on his shoulders and he said, here, we'll dive in. Well, he put me on his shoulders. He must've been herculean to get me up there. And he dives in, and I just smack against the top of the water in the swimming pool. And, I mean, it hurt. And I fought every urge to cry because something told me that that wasn't the place to do it or I was going to get no sympathy. That was kind of the intent. So I didn't.

And I remember going inside afterward. And my dad's ex-wife was cooking hot dogs. And she said, do you want a hot dog? And I said, yeah. And she said, well, what do you like on it? And I said, I like everything but mustard. And I got a hot dog that had mustard on it. And I joked in the book, at the end of one chapter, I ate every bite of that hot dog. Just like I didn't cry when I got smacked into the water in the pool, I just said, all right, I'm going to eat the hot dog. And, you know, ironically enough, I love mustard now. I can't get enough. So I'd like to thank her for that.

DAVIES: You know, with the benefit of time, looking back on it, do you think that any chance you were reading some of their resentment into this, that maybe they'd - maybe she just forgot and gave you mustard?

BUCK: Yeah, I don't think it's a fair story. It happened. And let me tell you, as we sit here today, the book's been out for, you know, a month and a half, couple months. My half brothers and half sisters are not happy and specifically about that story. And I understand why. Now, it did happen. And I can remember it clear as day, like it was yesterday. I don't know that that represents, you know, the overall feelings.

I mean, I don't - I think while there was resentment for me specifically because I'm an easy target in that situation, common sense tells you it's not my fault. But my relationship with them, my sister's relationship with them is not such that we've ever really hashed all this stuff out. So now it comes out in a book. And it's a small part of the book. But I can tell you that if that were said about my mom, I'd be upset because you don't see the other side of the story. So I get their resentment toward me sharing this. There was tension there. And I represented something that was not good for them.

DAVIES: Joe Buck is a play-by-play announcer for Fox Sports. After a break, he'll tell us what can go wrong in a hair plug transplant - his own. And I'll ask him why some fans seem to love to hate him. I'm Dave Davies. And this is FRESH AIR.

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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. We're speaking with Fox Sports play-by-play broadcaster Joe Buck, who does World Series and Super Bowls and has won seven Emmy Awards. He grew up learning baseball and broadcasting from his dad, Hall of Fame sportscaster Joe Buck. He has a new memoir called "Lucky Bastard."

You got into broadcasting at a high level, at an early age. You did St. Louis Cardinals broadcasts with your dad for - what? - part of 11 seasons, right?

BUCK: Yeah.

DAVIES: Yeah.

BUCK: It's hard to even remember that and - on one hand. And then on the other, I look back on that as the, in some ways, highlight of my career because my dad, who literally was kind of my buddy more than my father and really my best friend, more than the guy who would come home having to discipline us or the 9 to 5 guy. He was gone for different stretches of time and was on a road trip with the Cardinals. And then when that would bleed into football, he was into that. And then he was doing a radio show in St. Louis.

There was a lot of time that I gave up with my dad. So consequently, when he and I were together, I didn't want to waste that time with him having to discipline me. And so I acted the right way as a little kid. And we had the best possible, I think, father-son relationship that we could have.

And then when we were paired together and I was on all those buses and I was on all those road trips with him and I was getting on the team charter and I was, you know, riding home from the airport at 2 o'clock in the morning after a road trip to Houston, I got a lot of that time back. And so whether it's my half brothers and sisters or my full sister Julie, I saw him in a different way.

DAVIES: You did a lot of baseball, including some minor league broadcasts in Louisville. Did you ever - were you ever in a situation where you used sound effects to recreate the crack of the bat...

BUCK: (Laughter).

DAVIES: ...Or anything like that?

BUCK: No, no, I was not doing, like, the Ronald Reagan, you know, crack of the bat in the background or recreating or any of that. It probably would have enhanced the broadcast because you're doing games at times for, let's say, intimate gatherings at the old ballpark. And there's not a whole lot of natural sound.

I saw my dad recreate games during the baseball strike in the early '80s. And it was fascinating because they were taking old games - they knew the box score and they were just making up the play-by-play. And he gave me the two bats. And he would kind of point to me like, here's a two-two pitch. And he'd point to me, and I'd hit these two bats together and be like (imitating crack)...

DAVIES: (Laughter).

BUCK: ...And then, he would go on and, you know, there's a ground ball to short. And Groat picks it up and throws over to first. He got him, two away. And...

DAVIES: So this was in a strike in the '80s? They would - just so that baseball players wouldn't go into withdrawal - baseball fans wouldn't go into withdrawal...

BUCK: Yes.

DAVIES: They would recreate an old game?

BUCK: Is that crazy?

DAVIES: Wow.

BUCK: They went back - yeah, it's kind of genius. The local station in St. Louis went back and they said, how great would it be to hear Jack Buck and Mike Shannon recreate old World Series games from the '60s? And so they did that. And they had the box score. They went off that. They knew what happened each inning. They were making up the pitch-by-pitch. But they sat in a studio like I'm sitting in now. And I sat in the corner. And he'd point to me, and I'd make the bat crack. So I guess I've had some at-bats in the big leagues that...

DAVIES: (Laughter).

BUCK: ...That really don't go down in the record books.

DAVIES: A big change in your career came when the Fox television network went into sports. And a lot of people saw - thought, like, what? One of the interesting things you write about Fox is that they were trying new stuff, including sending you to cover a bass fishing tournament. Tell us about that.

BUCK: Yeah, I think I've repressed it somewhere in my memory. It was a live bass fishing tournament. And the head of Fox Sports, David Hill - who eventually went on to run the network as well for a while, just kind of a trusted lieutenant for Rupert Murdoch - called me and said, how would you like to - he's Australian. I won't bother you with the accent.

DAVIES: Oh, go ahead.

BUCK: How would you like to do bass fishing? And I'm like, what? Bass fish - I don't fish. I'm not an outdoorsman. I'd rather go see a movie. I don't want to hunt anything. But you're going to broadcast bass fishing. It's going to be the next NASCAR.

DAVIES: (Laughter).

BUCK: Well, it wasn't the next NASCAR. And it was a live bass fishing show on TV. Those are words that should never be in the same sentence...

DAVIES: (Laughter).

BUCK: ...Because somebody forgot to tell the bass between 4:30 and 6:00 on that particular night to bite because we were going on all these different boats and talking to these different anglers, fishermen, and none of them are catching anything. And the big payoff at the end of this event is a weigh-in with the fish. And we messed that all up. It was just a nightmare.

DAVIES: As you had this growing TV career, you had a friend and mentor at the network, a guy named Steve Horn, who pulled you aside and gave you a couple of pieces of advice. What were they?

BUCK: One, he said - well, he started it with you may want to punch me in the face after I tell you what I'm going to tell you. He took me to lunch, which is ironic considering what he was about to tell me. He said one, you need to lose 25 pounds. I was - as I've told you, I was a fat kid. I became a fat adult. And I - you know, I have a big head anyway. And I looked like my head weighed about 84 pounds...

DAVIES: (Laughter).

BUCK: ...When I showed up on your television. And he said, you need to lose 25 pounds. I said, all right, yeah. You're not the first person to tell me that. I've certainly thought about it many times, like, every morning. But thanks for the advice. And he said two, you need to think about getting hair plugs. You need to think about hair transplant surgeries. And I said, well, funny you should say that. I've had two.

DAVIES: It's interesting. I don't think I quite knew what a hair plug was until I read your book. This is actually - you pull hair out of the back part of your head and transplant...

BUCK: Well, you cut. Let's call it what it is. They cut a tract of hair. When a man - really anybody, but I know a man - whatever it is about the male genome, but the bishop's crown is usually healthy hair for the rest of your life. You may lose everything on top, but you're going to have the Gavin MacLeod, Merrill Stubing hair around your ears and around the back of your head. So they take a tract of hair out of the back. They cut it out.

And then a nurse goes over or an assistant goes over and starts cutting out actual living bulbs of hair. And they then put slits in the top of your head, crafted by a genius plastic surgeon, to make a realistic hairline. And that hair just goes from growing in the back of your head to actively growing in the front of your head. And that gives you growing hair for the rest of your life. And instead of it, you know, being back there, it's up front.

DAVIES: And it's not the most pleasant thing to undertake, is it?

BUCK: It is literal torture. There is nothing - I've done eight of them. And I'm sure we'll get to what the eighth presented me with. But the first six I did under local anesthetic, which when people say, well, they're going to give you anesthesia - well, how do they give you anaesthesia? Through a syringe.

And what noise a syringe makes when it goes into your scalp, on the inside of your head, is otherworldly. And then they give you enough shots to numb that area up in the back of your head that they dig that tract of hair out. And then they start on the front of your head - the top your head. And you're feeling all these needle pricks going in, and it's - I mean, it's enough to make you cry.

DAVIES: OK. And...

BUCK: Hopefully nobody's eating while they're listening to this.

DAVIES: You confessed to this as an addiction to hair plugs, but the fact is you want to look your best for television. One of these - the last of these hair plug transplant operations lead to a real problem for you. Tell us about that.

BUCK: Well, yeah. It went from let's do it under local anesthetic to - I mean, the surgeon knew how much I hated this. And whatever addiction there was, it's painful. It's awful. It would be - you'd be a masochist. It was like once you start - that's kind of the big trick of the thing. Once you start, you have to kind of keep going and keep up with the natural hair loss to try and stay ahead of the curve. So there's the addiction.

You know, we've all seen people that you know have had transplant surgeries where they're like, I'm done. That was awful. I'm going to do one. And then they've got one little tuft of hair coming out of nowhere. And that's a telltale sign. So the doctor said, you should do it under general anaesthetic. I was, like, wow. I didn't even know I could do that. And the last one I did, I went under and I came out and I was unable to talk. I sounded like this. And unless I was doing "Godfather V," it was really not beneficial for my career.

I thought I was done. And what happened was when they put me under - they put a tube, a breathing tube, down your throat for any procedure. I didn't have to fess up that that's what this was. But I figured if I'm going to write a book, I'm going to write a book. I'm going to bare it all.

But for any surgery, they put a tube down your throat so you breathe while you're under. And then the cuff that they put in to hold that tube in place got overinflated and it sat on the nerve - the laryngeal nerve, which fires my left vocal cord - and it bruised it or damaged it or insulted it, whatever you want to say. And the nerve went dead. And my vocal cord went dead.

So I came out of that with one-half of a normal voice. Where the vocal cords normally meet in the middle to make your sound, one was going to the middle and the other was laying on the side. And I thought I was finished.

DAVIES: And this lasted months, right? And you managed to work through it?

BUCK: It lasted - yeah, I would say it happened in March. And I never missed a game. I sounded terrible. I did the Jimmy Fallon show, tried to sing on that, just messing around. And I came out of there thinking, oh, it sounded OK. But this situation with my voice and that laying-there vocal cord lasted until the end of October, early November.

And I went to the best vocal restoration surgeon in the world. He's a genius. His name's Steve Zeitels in Boston. And when I first saw him, he said, how long has it been since you've been able to talk normally? And at that point it was, I don't know, a month. And he said, well, let me just tell you, my experience is that if you don't have your voice back in three months, you're not going to get it back.

And that started a time clock in my head. And I went past three months - four months, five months, six months - and eventually it came back. But he - I would - he would go in and he would shoot restylane into my laying-there vocal chord, my dead vocal chord. And it would puff it up enough to where the vocal chords would meet just enough to where I could make a little bit better sound.

DAVIES: Joe Buck is a play-by-play broadcaster for Fox Sports, and he has a new memoir. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, we're speaking with Fox sportscaster Joe Buck about his life and career. He has a new memoir.

Last summer, I played golf - I know you like to play golf - and I got teamed up with a father and son. And the son, who was in his 20s, works at Fox Sports. And we were having a beverage afterward and I mentioned that I might be talking to you about the book. And he said, yeah, a lot of people can't stand Joe Buck. And I said, well, why? Is he a jerk? And he said, no, no. He's a good guy. But just a lot of people don't like him.

And when I looked at the internet, I discovered there is this bunch of people that don't like you. There's an I Hate Joe Buck fan club on Facebook. One guy writes, I wonder how many times Joe Buck looks at himself in the mirror and winks. Somebody says, an arrogant ass who thinks he's a celebrity, always rooting for San Francisco in the World Series. What's this about?

BUCK: That particular one is unbelievable. If you go - you should walk the streets with me in San Francisco and see the looks I get. And this answers the question. If it wasn't me doing what I do and it was somebody else, the same thing would be said.

And I say that because - OK, take the he thinks he's a celebrity or he's arrogant out of it. I don't think I'm a celebrity. I certainly don't believe that I'm arrogant. My wife thought the same thing until she met me. She saw me on a National Car Rental commercial and thought, oh, he looks like an arrogant ass. And then, I don't know, within months I was married to her. So I converted her. I can convert you.

But when you do the World Series, and you show up at the most important time of the year, and you've got baseball fans on either side who have listened to their announcers all season long who do the game from their perspective, who have the same rooting interest as the fans they talk to - and now when it matters most here comes the national guy who doesn't represent them, he doesn't represent the other side. And so consequently, each side thinks I'm for the other because they don't hear games done that way all year.

Oh sure, they'll hear somebody scream and yell for a Pablo Sandoval homerun for the San Francisco Giants back in the day. And they're used to that, but they're not used to then me turning around and yelling and screaming for a homerun by Miguel Cabrera. So it sounds - hits their ear funny. That's not what they hear all year long. They want to hear their guys do their games.

And I represent somebody who has a rooting interest for neither side. And it's kind of like being trapped in the middle there. And so that's where that comes from. I don't take it personally. And I know that whenever I'm finished, whoever steps into that seat - it may not happen right away, but after a while people are going to go, well, this guy sucks, too. Where's that other guy?

DAVIES: (Laughter).

BUCK: He doesn't like my team either. What's going on? It's just that the fans care so much that if you're not in their camp you're, in their mind, against them. And it's a tough way to be if you let that stuff bother you.

DAVIES: I think it bears mentioning here that we live in an age when everybody has access to Twitter and there are a million blogs. And if you have 10 million people listening to you and 1 percent don't like you, that's 100,000 people. And some of them will make some noise. It's partly a function of the media age we live in.

BUCK: And my dad got it. You know, my dad got it. Vin Scully used to laugh about it. Vin Scully was the voice of the Dodgers. And he' doing the World Series between the Dodgers and the A's and he called the Kirk Gibson homerun for, in essence, his team on national TV. And then he talked to my dad when my dad did it for two years. You know, that didn't go well for my dad for two years. And he made a comment one time about Bobby Vinton, who was singing the national anthem in Pittsburgh. And he was trying to be cute about Bobby Vinton messing up the "Star-Spangled Banner." And when he got back to his hotel room, he and my mom walked in and there was a footprint in the middle of his pillow on his bed.

And so that stuff has always existed. But he - you know, his complaint box were actual handwritten letters. Mine is in 140 characters or less. And so if I want to go to Twitter and absolutely end my career by realizing how many people are on there knocking me around for the size of my head, or he's growing a beard, or he's arrogant, or he hates my team, you know, then bring a snorkel. And good luck because you're never going to get out of there alive.

DAVIES: I can't let you get out of here without noting that there are three or four NPR jokes in the first 20 pages of your book. I think you refer to...

BUCK: Right, sorry.

DAVIES: ...An NPR host who's on Ambien. You don't listen to public radio? It doesn't appeal to you?

BUCK: Well, ironically enough, I started my career in essence when I was in high school doing my internship at the NPR station in St. Louis. So NPR is actually - now that I've grown to be a man, it's fantastic radio. But I made the joke in my book because that's what the surgeon was listening to when he would do the procedures on my head. So I was awake. I have somebody jabbing needles in my head, somebody cutting a tract of hair out of the back of my head. And I'm listening to, like, the most calm voice on the radio talking about disarming a nuclear weapon. And I'm thinking, my god, I'm going through the most pain a human being can tolerate without passing out, and I have this very soothing voice going on behind me. And as he's listening to this while he's carving up my head - it was just a bad association.

DAVIES: Well, Joe Buck, it's been fun. Thanks so much for spending some time with us.

BUCK: Oh man, what a joy. Thanks for having me on.

DAVIES: Joe Buck is a play-by-play announcer for Fox Sports. He'll be doing the Packers-Cowboy game this Sunday and the Super Bowl on February 5. His new memoir is called "Lucky Bastard."

Coming up, Ken Tucker reviews the debut country album from Natalie Hemby. This is FRESH AIR.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Hall-Of-Fame Sportscaster Joe Buck Admits To Being A 'Lucky Bastard'." Fresh Air, 11 Jan. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA477935822&it=r&asid=22b549152819f00c86393417fc484c2d. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A477935822

Facing the Truth Is the First Step. Now Set Your Locks Free
Richard Sandomir
(Oct. 7, 2016): Sports: pB10(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
The Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck lost his voice five years ago and blamed it on a virus that had attacked a nerve in his left vocal cord. He told this story to me and others. It was quite believable. But it was a lie. He didn't really have a virus.

He got hair plugs. Let me explain.

In his coming autobiography, ''Lucky Bastard,'' and in an interview posted on Sports Illustrated's website, Buck admitted that, since he was 24, his fear of losing his hair led him to undergo a series of hair transplants. ''I was worried that if I lost my hair, I would lose my job,'' he wrote. So Buck found time between some football and baseball seasons to get hair plugs.

Some people vacation. Others get their hair harvested.

In all, he said, he has had eight transplants. He told almost nobody about this obsession. Actors who get cosmetic surgery rarely confess, either. So, he never said, ''Welcome to Game 1 of the World Series. He's Tim McCarver. And I'm Joe Buck, and I'm doing everything possible not to lose my hair.'' He just moved along, trying to preserve his head of hair. But when he awakened from anesthesia after his eighth surgery, he was without the voice that calls M.L.B. and N.F.L. games.

How did he travel the considerable intellectual distance from adding hair to losing his voice? The best answer he has received is that a cuff used to protect him during the procedure shifted and pressed on his laryngeal nerve.

When I researched my own bald odyssey for a memoir, ''Bald Like Me,'' I sat in on the latest of many hair-plug surgeries of a man named Barry. He had had a major transplant that had given him a head full of curls. But he regularly returned for plugs to insert into any tiny new vacancies on his scalp. ''He has a head full of hair,'' his surgeon said. ''But still he complains.''

Robert Bernstein, a hair-transplant surgeon in Manhattan, said Thursday that he does not give in to addicts' cravings for more plugs.

''We see a lot of them, but we shouldn't be responding to them,'' he said. ''You want to treat them with medication but do surgery in broad brush strokes.'' He said that men should not have more than three procedures over a long period of time.

A friend who had plugs decades ago said, ''I didn't feel a thing, and as they promised, within two weeks, new hair was coming in.''

I suppose that whatever Buck does with his follicles is his business. It's his hair, whether it's removed from the back of his head or inserted into the front. At least it is natural. No weaves or toupees; just a little bloody.

Still, as a pro-baldist, I am dismayed at almost any tale of ego-driven hair replacement. Early baldness made me angry. But my book, maturity and my wife eventually helped me accept the state of my hair. And in 2003, I shaved what little remained of my side hairs (which were fine -- like Larry Fine's) after Charles Barkley told me, ''What you've got ain't working for you.''

If only Buck had spoken to Barkley or the many other bald men in sports before getting hooked on plugs.

He could have turned to Michael Jordan, the shaved-headed trailblazer. Several of Buck's colleagues at Fox, including Terry Bradshaw and Jay Glazer, are successful without hairlines. But Buck's account made it sound like he wanted to age like the overhaired Jimmy Johnson and Howie Long.

TNT's program ''Inside the NBA'' features an all-bald trio of analysts: Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O'Neal. The smooth-headed Dan Shulman is ESPN's No. 1 baseball voice. He succeeded one of the great baldies, Jon Miller. And at ''Monday Night Football,'' ESPN did not seem to mind letting the play-by-play job go this season from one bald dude, Mike Tirico, to another, Sean McDonough.

I called the very bald Dick Vitale on Thursday. In 2008, with his voice diminished to nearly a whisper, the ESPN college basketball analyst had surgery to remove lesions from his vocal cords. ''No hair transplants here!'' he said cheerfully from Florida. ''I still have my chrome dome. I love waking up every morning and not having to make sure every strand is in place.''

If Buck is finished with transplants, we might see him lose some of what is left on his head in the coming years.

Let it go, Joe. Fox won't fire you. It has, after all, kept Homer Simpson employed since 1989.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Sandomir, Richard. "Facing the Truth Is the First Step. Now Set Your Locks Free." New York Times, 7 Oct. 2016, p. B10(L). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465775634&it=r&asid=445d29eced1458cb84ebf80c6de70e13. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A465775634

Buck will steer clear of gimmicks on show
Michael Hiestand
(June 15, 2009): Sports: p07C.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Byline: Michael Hiestand

Joe Buck says his wife, Ann, is his biggest fan. And her advice, he says, "is the thing that will pop into my mind when I walk out there" to make his comedic TV debut tonight.

"She said, 'Don't try to be too funny.' "

Now there's a vote of confidence for a top-tier sportscaster gamely ready to try to earn the right to wear sunglasses at night.

"That was hard to swallow," Buck says. "But it's a point well-taken. The worst thing you can do is to be too sweaty, spinning plates, lighting your toes on fire."

Actually, the toe part doesn't sound that bad. Or he could at least try firing up his scheduled guests, which include Brett Favre, Michael Irvin and Chad Ochocinco. He'll also have a taped appearance by New York Met David Wright as well as a comedic roundtable -- the show also has two comedy writers -- that will include Artie Lange and Jason Sudeikis.

But with tonight's debut of four-times-a-year HBO's Joe Buck Live, the lead NFL and MLB Fox broadcaster isn't planning to have a show without an opening monologue or cue cards. He won't have "fake headlines of the day or, 'Can you believe this happened in France yesterday?' It will be more like a conversation."

Which sounds like the show -- Costas Now -- that Buck's show is replacing after Bob Costas moved to the MLB Network. Says Buck, 40: "It's not going to be that much different, structurally, from Bob's show. It's that Bob and I are different guys."

Both are among the few well-known sports figures -- think Magic Johnson, Craig Kilborn, Robin Roberts and Bryant Gumbel -- who have tried to cross over to news, entertainment or at least infotainment, with mixed results.

Not that Buck is quitting his day job. And Fox, understandably, didn't hesitate to give permission to let its lead game-caller raise his profile. Says Fox Sports Chairman David Hill about the show: "It's terrific. Joe is such a warm, lovable character."

Or at least someone who has already worked plenty of live TV. And in doing so, he didn't always stick to the sports-speak script. Buck has injected one-liners into game commentary. Like when he was talking with Fox MLB on-air partner Tim McCarver about a debate over whether players should be able to wear jewelry during games. Buck's sensible take: "Nothing looks better with a Mets uniform than a diamond choker."

His candor sometimes can be striking. Said Buck, commenting on Fox having influence on World Series games having late start times: "It's Fox. It's Fox's fault. We are actually responsible for Iran's nuclear program." (Iran's government has had no comment.)

Buck sees crossover potential from his sportscasting. "The biggest criticism of me is that I try to be funny on sports events. Maybe I'll just start injecting play-by-play into this talk show."

Buck briefly guest-hosted CBS' Late, Late Show after Kilborn left in 2004.

Two years ago, he pitched a sitcom pilot to Fox and other outlets -- "It was a little different and not what a broadcast network was looking for" -- and had offered up plenty of podium one-liners lines to the industry crowd that attends the annual Sports Emmy Awards.

As a presenter for an award going to Fox NASCAR analysts Darrell Waltrip and Jeff Hammond, Buck was concise: "Welcome to Hee Haw."

After pitching his pilot to HBO, Buck says, HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg said he enjoyed it and Buck would be the first person he'd call if anything opened up at HBO.

Buck thought he'd just gotten a brushoff -- but he got a call.

Buck's family is loaded with broadcasters, including his mother, Carole, several siblings and one of broadcasting's most famed voices -- his late father, Jack Buck.

Jack are Joe are the only father and son to have called Super Bowls.

Joe wasn't completely inexperienced when he first called NFL games for Fox in 1994 at age 25 and called his first World Series at 27. He had, after all, called minor league baseball, bass fishing on Fox and horse jumping on ESPN.

So, understandably, he faced skepticism about why he deserved a supersonic shot to the big time of TV sports -- and whether he could handle it.

"I don't think anybody knows if they're really ready for something like that until they actually do it," says Buck, recalling his World Series debut in 1996. "With me, that probably continues until this day. Now, I'm back in the mode where I have to prove I can handle it."

He just needs to try to remember that lighting his toes on fire would be too funny.

TEXT OF BIO BOX BEGINS HERE

The Buck file

*Endorsements: Buck's commercials include high-profile pitches for National rental cars and Holiday Inn. But does he really use those companies? "Absolutely. Even when I don't need to, I still do it once per month." Buck, on anything he'd particularly like to hype: "I'll pretty much take whatever I can get."

*Historical tie-in: Buck was audible in one of the 1997 recordings Linda Tripp made of a conversation she had with Monica Lewinsky about Lewinsky's affair with then-President Bill Clinton. But don't get too excited. Buck, along with Tim McCarver and Bob Brenly, were heard in the background calling a baseball playoff game on Fox.

*Movie tie-in: Joe Buck (played by Jon Voight) was the main character -- a would-be male prostitute -- in Midnight Cowboy, which got the Best Picture Academy Award in 1969, the year Buck the announcer was born.

*On naming his HBO show: One might assume Joe Buck Live would be self-explanatory. Not necessarily, says Buck: "Even when I talk to friends of mine, they'll ask, 'When do you tape it?' "

*On whether he'll exploit the permissiveness of pay cable: "I have to build on reputation I've tried to make for myself. To be dirty for dirty's sake does nothing but hurt me."

*Education: Majored in English at Indiana University.

*Resides: In St. Louis, where he called Cardinals games until last season.

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO, B/W, File photo by Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY

Michael Hiestand

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hiestand, Michael. "Buck will steer clear of gimmicks on show." USA Today, 15 June 2009, p. 07C. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA201821666&it=r&asid=e75c256dc9f497552d660ef732a5a1e4. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A201821666

ALL IS GOOD FOR BUCK
Tom Jones
(Sept. 16, 2012): Sports: p2C.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Times Publishing Company
http://www.tampabay.com/
Byline: TOM JONES

Fox broadcaster Joe Buck is having a Tampa Bay-New York weekend. The network's lead baseball announcer called Saturday's Rays-Yankees game at Yankee Stadium with Tim McCarver. Today, Buck, 43, switches to his gig as the network's lead football announcer to call the Bucs-Giants game at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey with Troy Aikman. - Buck, the son of legendary broadcaster Jack Buck, talked with the Tampa Bay Times' Tom Jones about being born in St. Petersburg, baseball in Tampa Bay, why he likes Bucs coach Greg Schiano and the vocal chord virus that threatened his career a year ago.

How's your health these days?

All good. I have a clean bill of health, knock on wood. But it was a heck of a year, and I'm better because of it.

You were unable to elevate your voice for some time. You would go hoarse. How scary was it to go through something like that?

Very scary. I didn't know if (my voice) would ever come back to normal. Doctors can tell you that it should, but it's not always easy to believe when you're the one going through it. "Should'' doesn't always compute. "Should'' sometimes becomes "won't.'' That's kind of what I was dealing with. Yeah, very scary.

You said that you're better because of it. How so?

Now that I'm back and healthy, it's something I don't worry about anymore, and I really appreciate how lucky I am to be doing what I'm doing. Not that I didn't before. It's just that it was a challenge, and I wouldn't want to go through it again. But you know, everyone in life goes through stuff. This was mine, and I'm fortunate and appreciative for everything I have now.

You have baseball and football games with teams from the same two markets this weekend. Does that happen very often for you?

I don't know that it has ever happened before. If it has, I can't recall it.

Take me through the preparation for doing a baseball game one day and a football game the next. I imagine the football takes more prep work.

It does. I try to split my time each day working on both. It's not like I work on baseball on Monday and then football on Tuesday and so forth. I try to put in a couple of hours on baseball and then move on to football. That way I can keep track each day and not fall behind on either.

For baseball, would you pay more attention to, say, the Rays series last week against the Orioles than normal?

Absolutely. If this was June, I don't know that I could tell you who the winning and losing pitchers were or who had the big hit as much I could now. So I'm paying attention to the teams a lot closer.

Do you talk a lot with Tim McCarver and Troy Aikman during the week?

Well, Troy and I will text each other lot. I can't text with Tim. Tim doesn't text. I'm better off sending smoke signals and sending up a pterodactyl. But we've been doing games together for 17 years now, so we fall right back into it even if we haven't seen each other or talked in a few weeks. The chemistry is great with both. For example, I'll throw out a reference like Foo Fighters. Tim has no idea who the Foo Fighters are. Neither does Troy, probably. I need to say Kenny Chesney to get his attention. But both are such pros and we're so comfortable around one another that we are able to work together well.

How similar are Tim and Troy to work with?

Extremely similar. Their work ethic is amazing, and it's what made them great players in their sports. I can tell you that I know now why Troy won three Super Bowls, and it's not just because of his accuracy and arm strength. I see what he does to prepare for a game and you know why he's a success. And Tim is at a point that he could just walk in a minute before the broadcast and wing it, but he doesn't do it that way. He continues to work hard. He still loves the game.

Your dad was a great baseball announcer, but maybe people don't realize how much football he called. You call both. Do you have a preference?

My dad did call a lot of football, and in my opinion, he was the best football announcer on radio ever. The sports are just so different, but I love doing both. I have two daughters, and it's like asking me which one I love more. You can't choose. The NFL is such a big spotlight. Saturday afternoon baseball game of the week is such a slower pace but enjoyable, too.

Is there anything better than postseason baseball?

To me, no, there is nothing like that.

Your dad called St. Louis Cardinals games, and the Cardinals used to have spring training in St. Petersburg, so you spent a lot of time here as a kid, didn't you?

I did. I was actually born in St. Pete, at St. Anthony's (Hospital).

So you know the area and baseball. Are you surprised baseball has struggled in terms of attendance?

Well, I think it's the venue that's the problem. It was originally built to attract a team like the White Sox. I remember driving to Al Lang Stadium with my dad when I was younger and seeing (Tropicana Field) going up and wondering about the location and venue. The funny thing is, I've done postseason games there, and it's a great place for us to call a game. Being one who is paid to be there, I am not one to tell others they should pay or not pay to go to games there. ... But I do think the venue is the big reason why baseball has struggled there.

What are your thoughts on the Rays and what they've accomplished over the past few years?

What they've done with their payroll is unmatched in major-league baseball. I read an article where (White Sox owner) Jerry Reinsdorf said something like, "You have to spend money to be successful in baseball except in Tampa, because those guys must be geniuses.''

Finally, you're doing the Bucs-Giants game. What do you think of new coach Greg Schiano and the Bucs?

What a great start last week. Changing the culture is hard to do. I know in St. Louis, Jeff Fisher is trying to do the same thing with the Rams, and I know the Rams loved Schiano when they talked to him. It seems like a good fit (for Schiano) in Tampa Bay. I like that he makes guys accountable. You better have the right priorities there or you'll be gone, as we've already seen. You get older guys like Ronde Barber to buy in and you have a heck of a draft and it's onward and upward, for sure.

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO - Fox Sports: Fox play-by-play announcer Joe Buck has recovered from a vocal chord virus that threatened his career.

PHOTO - Associated Press (2001): Joe Buck believes his dad, late Hall of Fame broadcaster Jack Buck, left, was the "best football announcer on radio ever."

TOM JONES

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Jones, Tom. "ALL IS GOOD FOR BUCK." Tampa Bay Times [St. Petersburg, FL], 16 Sept. 2012, p. 2C. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA302589427&it=r&asid=aa7ed14d4616fd8da1202144d5ffa4e6. Accessed 11 June 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A302589427

Beauregard, Sue-Ellen. "Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV." Booklist, 15 Feb. 2017, p. 95. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA485442625&asid=2d11e04778688d9626ab732032732ab9. Accessed 11 June 2017. "Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say On TV." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 113. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA466166632&asid=4b27893ad51541d83286b681e16e4a8e. Accessed 11 June 2017. Lukowsky, Wes. "Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 39. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA463755064&asid=e522fffb8a17d340f466c8e6009b9f6d. Accessed 11 June 2017. Gough, Paul J. "Play-by-player Buck joins Fox's NFL bookend shows: will continue announcing games." Hollywood Reporter, 15 Aug. 2006, p. 6+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA151057309&asid=230ff79d8be59e31a6060420fafadb62. Accessed 11 June 2017. "Q & A: Joe Buck: Top Utility Player for Fox Sports; Emmy-Winning Broadcaster in Sweet Spot as He Takes On NFL Football Anchor Duties." TelevisionWeek, 25 Sept. 2006, p. 58. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA152084907&asid=442ad17e79957b9800166b83980fe3d4. Accessed 11 June 2017. "Two cents." Broadcasting & Cable, 7 Feb. 2005, p. 36. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA128603215&asid=8e992d89784c8b79b507dcc32a5f6c37. Accessed 11 June 2017. "Not passing on Buck." Hollywood Reporter, 6 Feb. 2009, p. 2. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA194332586&asid=bf0af5a23cfa2152b2d0ba96c385c326. Accessed 11 June 2017. Malone, Mike. "Talkin' Baseball -- and Football, Too." Broadcasting & Cable, 16 Oct. 2006, p. 29. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA152860627&asid=76961372c5d06f23bdc1f24531fb0582. Accessed 11 June 2017. Staff. "The Buck Starts Here." Golf Digest, June 2015, p. 126. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA420833404&asid=2222dbd6c86559472d4d40ebff08d577. Accessed 11 June 2017. "The Press Club of Metropolitan St. Louis." St. Louis Journalism Review, vol. 37, no. 299, 2007, p. 27. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA168872251&asid=9eacfdf11e4f8e98aa79578fa539a09b. Accessed 11 June 2017. "Hall-Of-Fame Sportscaster Joe Buck Admits To Being A 'Lucky Bastard'." Fresh Air, 11 Jan. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA477935822&asid=22b549152819f00c86393417fc484c2d. Accessed 11 June 2017. Sandomir, Richard. "Facing the Truth Is the First Step. Now Set Your Locks Free." New York Times, 7 Oct. 2016, p. B10(L). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA465775634&asid=445d29eced1458cb84ebf80c6de70e13. Accessed 11 June 2017. Hiestand, Michael. "Buck will steer clear of gimmicks on show." USA Today, 15 June 2009, p. 07C. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA201821666&asid=e75c256dc9f497552d660ef732a5a1e4. Accessed 11 June 2017. Jones, Tom. "ALL IS GOOD FOR BUCK." Tampa Bay Times [St. Petersburg, FL], 16 Sept. 2012, p. 2C. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA302589427&asid=aa7ed14d4616fd8da1202144d5ffa4e6. Accessed 11 June 2017.

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