For decades, sports fanbases outside St. Louis have complained that iconic broadcaster Joe Buck hates their team.
As far as Major League Baseball goes, Buck doesn’t have to answer to those fans anymore. He can show up to a game decked out in Cardinals gear without having to apologize. Buck is a lifelong Cardinals fan, and he reaffirmed that Wednesday night when he attended a game at Busch Stadium with his family. The Cardinals showed that off, showing a video of Buck’s famed call of David Freese’s extra-innings game-winning homer from Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, and then showing Freese and Buck in the crowd:
It's been 11 years, but @DavidFreese and @Buck are still giving us chills! pic.twitter.com/WxpGwSVVFT
— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) August 18, 2022
Buck was in attendance to cheer on the Cardinals not much more than 24 hours after he admitted not calling a World Series game this season for the first time since 1995 is going to be strange.
“After 24 of them it is a part of me. I still dream that I’m doing baseball if that counts,” Buck tweeted.
For sure. Gonna be weird. After 24 of them it is a part of me. I still dream that I’m doing baseball if that counts. But I feel great about the https://t.co/G3CjJciuxh was time. I was only going to do it one more year https://t.co/PJFzctl7Oa I got a head start to the next chapter https://t.co/ccaB40Jbj3
— Joe Buck (@Buck) August 16, 2022
Earlier this year, Buck left Fox to join his NFL broadcast partner Troy Aikman in the ESPN Monday Night Football booth. The lucrative move to ESPN meant Buck would no longer be a two-sport announcer, giving up his role as MLB’s premier voice.
Throughout his Fox tenure, hating on Buck became like the “cool” thing to do online, with ‘he hates my team’ being the easiest false narrative for fans to lean into. A couple of years ago, Buck offered a theory on why so many fanbases assume he hates their favorite team.
“Not only am I attached to this angst and at times failure (of the losing team), but I’m also screaming for the team that just won it,” he said on his podcast Daddy Issues with Joe Buck and Oliver Hudson.
Imagine the outcry of Buck showing up to a baseball game in Cardinals gear and then jumping on Fox to call a national MLB game a few days later? Everyone knows the St. Louis pedigree he has, with his father Jack Buck serving as the voice of the Cardinals for nearly half of a century. But broadcasting any love for the Cardinals would only increase the angst that other fanbases have when Joe Buck is behind the mic. Now that he’s relinquished his role with MLB, that’s no longer a concern for Buck.
NFL fanbases, however, will continue to share their delusion that Buck has it out for their team. Mark it down, on September 26, social media will be filled with Dallas Cowboys fans complaining Buck wants to see the New York Giants win, and Giants fans will be whining that he’s rooting for Dallas.
[St. Louis Cardinals on Twitter]
