We all know that Joe Buck hates your team.
Actually, we know that’s bunk and Buck has gone to great lengths to let everyone know that was never the case. So much so that he now looks back on one World Series game-winning call with some regret, as it ended up muting the excitement of the moment for St. Louis Cardinals fans.
While Buck went on to become the Voice of the World Series for Fox and is now ESPN’s announcer for Monday Night Football, he remains synonymous with the Cardinals. Not only was his father, Jack Buck, the Voice of the Cardinals for over 40 years, but he eventually took over that job, calling St. Louis games between 1991 and 2007. He’s done plenty of other things as well but the presumption that Buck is always rooting for the Cardinals (and rooting against your team) followed him for much of his career.
Proud to do this podcast with my first FOX broadcast partner Tim Green and his son Troy. Tim is so strong. He’s been featured on 60 Minutes for his fight with ALS. He’s a NY Times best seller, lawyer, former first round NFL pick. We auditioned together in ‘94 and did games for…
— Joe Buck (@Buck) March 27, 2024
Buck was a guest on Tim Green’s Nothing Left Unsaid podcast this week. It was a chance for him to catch up with his former Fox broadcasting partner, who is now battling ALS. Tim and son Troy peppered Buck with questions about his broadcasting career, including whether or not he had any particularly cringe-worthy calls he could remember.
“In 2006, the Cardinals beat the Detroit Tigers in the World Series,” said Buck. “You’re always in baseball, when you do the national game, you’re always accused of rooting against both teams. Because baseball fans hear the home announcer doing the TV game all year long. And then you show up, and you’re doing the World Series when they care the most, and now the other team hits a home run and you’ve got to scream and yell and get excited while they’re throwing stuff at the TV. During the course of the season, when the other team hits a home run, their announcers, they’re paid to make everybody excited about the team, they’re sad. They don’t want to see or call the home run that just put their team down in the game.
“In 2006, I took the bait. I had a friend who played on the PGA Tour who I talked to, and I won’t name the announcer, but it was a broadcaster who was a a Tigers fan. He said, ‘You know, it’s just a shame they let a St. Louis guy call the Cardinals and Tigers in the World Series because he’s obviously rooting for St. Louis.’ I was like, ‘Okay, you know I’m not. That’s ridiculous.’ But it’s my team that I grew up watching. My dad’s face is on the outfield wall as one of the people that’s been retired, in essence, by the organization. I’m trying to be as impartial as I can. I heard that criticism from somebody in the business that was a Tigers fan and I thought, man, if that guy doesn’t get it, and he thinks I’m rooting for the Cardinals, then I really got to go the other way.
“I hear them win the 2006 World Series, and my voice is so flat and so monotone and so not excited because I’m trying to prove to everybody in Detroit, and this person in particular, I’m not rooting for the Cardinals. Look, here’s the most boring call ever to end a World Series. It was a good learning moment for me because I heard it back. I was like, ‘Man, that’s just not fair. That’s not fair to fans in St. Louis.’
“It’s not about me. If people want to give me trouble or they want to say, ‘You’re rooting for the other side,’ I never am. But they hear with their own ears, and they hear what they want to hear. It was a life lesson. It was a broadcasting lesson for me, and I feel like I never took that bait again where it affected how I actually called the game.
“It was kinda Twitter before Twitter. I don’t think Twitter was around in 2006, but it got in my head. I’m sad that it did because it was the Cardinal’s first World Series in over two decades and the guy calling it on TV who grew up rooting for the Cardinals went so far the other way that’s it just not a good call.”
You can listen to Buck’s full appearance on Nothing Left Unsaid here or watch below:
