Ever since Babe Ruth was waddling around the bases, there have been grim predictions about baseball’s future: Time has passed on the national pastime, too leisurely, too bucolic. Last year’s World Series TV ratings, and this season’s batting averages, both hit 50-year lows. Baseball, they say, is dying.

But never mind the current World Series between two of the game’s stalwarts, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Want to feel better about baseball’s health? Just go to a Milwaukee Brewers game.

There, in Major League Baseball’s smallest market, cheese curds sweat under floodlights, frozen custard unspools into batting helmets, hometown Miller flows liberally, and on the stadium’s second level is the most authentic Milwaukee touch of all: the broadcaster they call “Mr. Baseball.”

In six undistinguished seasons as a catcher in the majors, Bob Uecker never played an inning for the Brewers. But during half a century as the team’s play-by-play announcer, he’s become equal parts mayor and mascot in the city of his birth, all the while declining offers from bigger markets – laying off pitches, as it were.

In the 1980s Yankees owner George Steinbrenner tried to recruit Uecker. “Steinbrenner sent a couple of people out to talk to me about joining the Yankees,” he said, “but I loved Milwaukee. Born and raised here!”

Uecker began his major league career in 1962 with the Milwaukee Braves before the franchise moved to Atlanta. “I was the first player from Milwaukee to ever be signed by the Braves,” he said. “I was also the first Milwaukee native to be sent to the minor leagues by the Braves!”

If Uecker’s on-field inadequacies hampered his playing career, they’ve provided some of his best material in a lengthy and lucrative second career as an actor and comedian. Employing a bone-dry wit, he made more than 40 appearances on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”

He said, “I did ‘Tonight Shows,’ you know, whenever they wanted. I would leave here on a Sunday afternoon, fly to L.A., do the Monday night show, take a red-eye back here, and be here for Tuesday’s game.”

Johnny Carson: “Give me, fast as you can, all the teams you’ve ever played with.”
Uecker: “Braves, Cardinals, Phillies, and the Braves again. Then, in June, I was with …”

The Carson guest spots led to a series of notable TV commercials, as well as a starring sitcom role, and perhaps most memorably as Harry Doyle, the perpetually blitzed announcer in the “Major League” movies. This past summer, at Milwaukee’s American Family Field, “Harry Doyle Bobblehead Night” brought the Uecker faithful out in force.

Asked his favorite “Bob Uecker line,” he replied, “‘Juuuuust a bit outside.’ That’s where my wife put me a lotta times!”

Before serving 16 years as baseball’s commissioner, Bud Selig owned the Brewers, and, in 1971, hired Uecker, misguidedly, as a scout. Selig said it is “legitimately true” that Uecker wasn’t cut out to be a scout. “There were mashed potatoes on the damned scouting report. I couldn’t read it. He couldn’t read it,” he said. 

So, Selig moved Uecker to the Brewers’ broadcast booth later that year.

Today there’s even a statue honoring Uecker, where else? In the very last row of the upper deck, behind a pole.

But for all the stardom, all the gigs and gags, the late-night-laughs at his own expense, Uecker still fancies himself a player, says Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff: “He lets us know about his catching days. He’s one of us. He’s part of the team. And I think that’s why we embrace him so much, is that he’s on this ride with us. And that’s what makes it cool.”

According to Uecker, he has a bond with the players on the field: “I played the game. So, I know how hard it is. I know how tough it is to play this game. The game celebrations, when we win, that’s a big part of it, man, to be able to walk into that clubhouse and be with ’em.”

But baseball is cruel, and in Milwaukee, celebrations are short-lived. Earlier this month, with the Brewers just two outs from winning the National League Wild Card Series, the New York Mets came from behind on a dramatic home run.

On the radio, Uecker didn’t hide the hurt: “I’m tellin’ ya, that one … had some sting on it.”

The Brewers’ first World Series title will have to wait.

There’s speculation that the heartbreaking loss may have marked Uecker’s last game as an announcer. But as his 91st birthday nears, the man they call “Mr. Baseball” told us he doesn’t want to imagine his life without it.

“I don’t know what I would do, you know, with no more. If I think of no more baseball for me, I don’t know what that would be like, you know?” Uecker said. “I got out of high school and I joined the Army. And I signed a baseball contact. That’s been it, really!”

       
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Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Lauren Barnello. 

With a fastball clocked at 95 mph, Quincy Bright was on a track for the major leagues. He was just 13 when he was recruited by Mississippi State University. But at 17, the Connecticut high school star pitcher learned he had a torn ligament in his elbow. “I broke down in tears; I cried like a baby,” he said. “I love the game so much, so me not being able to play, it just really hurt me. I just felt like I was letting people down.”

Including his family, who had nurtured his talent. “He always rotated very quick,” said Omari Bright, “so every time he threw a ball, I was worried. So, I’d always try to limit what he was doing.”

Why did he think the injury occurred? “I think it happened when I was throwing too hard,” Quincy replied, “especially at a young age, and my body not being able to handle it.”

Like thousands of other athletes, Bright was thrown a lifeline called “Tommy John surgery.”

In 1974, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Tommy John was having a dream season, until he tore his ulnar collateral ligament, or UCL, the ligament that supports a pitcher’s arm while throwing. At the time it was a career-ending injury, that is until Frank Jobe, the Dodgers’ team physician, invented a procedure to fix John’s arm, changing baseball forever.

“I just said, ‘You do what you have to do to get me back playing baseball again,'” John recalled.

And how does it feel to have a surgery named after him? “Well, it’s better to have an orthopedic surgery than a proctological surgery!” John quipped.

Quincy Bright’s surgeon, Dr. Chris Ahmad, chief of sports medicine at New York Presbyterian/Columbia, is also head team physician for the New York Yankees. “What Tommy John surgery involves is taking tissue from your forearm, a tendon, and replacing a ligament in your elbow, tighten it up, secure it, and that recreates a brand-new ligament that replaces the injured ligament,” he said.

“Baseball is America’s pastime, and throwing hard is part of this pastime. And therefore, Tommy John surgery is now part of America’s pastime,” Ahmad said.

Among active MLB pitchers, an astonishing 35% have had the surgery, up from 27% in 2016.

Asked why these injuries keep occurring, Ahmad replied, “The harder you throw, the higher your velocity, the more force on your ligament. And every year fastball velocity increases.”

Today, the average major league fastball is 93.8 mph – a full 2 mph faster than it was 15 years ago. “And when that’s happening at the major league level, it’s also happening at the amateur level,” said Ahmad. “In addition, the volume of throwing’s going way up, meaning it used to be that you would play baseball during baseball season. Now you play year-round. It’s a time bomb and an explosion about to happen in the elbow.”

Those explosions keep Ahmad in scrubs. He said that 20 years ago he performed the procedure about 10 times a year. “This first half of the year, I’ve done 150 Tommy John surgeries,” he said, most of them on athletes under the age of 18. 

Today, about 60% of Tommy John surgery recipients are under 19. 

Baseball Hall of Famer, MLB commentator, and Tommy John surgery recipient John Smoltz is an advocate for a cultural shift. He calls the rise in pitcher injuries an “epidemic.”

“Don’t buy into thinking that this is normal for your 12-year-old, yet alone a 25-year-old,” Smoltz said. “We just act like, ‘No big deal, have a Tommy John.'”

But he does understand the pressure young athletes are under: “I also don’t blame them for chasing their reward system, because that’s how they’re getting paid. At some point, this industry will have to self-correct. And the way it self-corrects is by rule changes and philosophical changes.”

Smoltz thinks change could begin with Little Leagues discouraging uncontrolled pitching velocity, and encouraging kids to take seasonal breaks from baseball. Smoltz said, “When I see a young man just throwing everything he has at 13, he’s not giving himself the best chance to pitch in high school.”

Or, for that matter, the major leagues.

For better or worse, the legacy of 50 years of Tommy John surgeries means players like Quincy Bright have a chance of strong-arming themselves toward major league dreams.

Asked what would happened if he did not play in the majors, Bright laughed: “That’s not gonna happen! I will be in the major leagues.”

      
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Story produced by Amol Mhatre. Editor: Emanuele Secci.