Player from Port knew Uecker was made for TV

DeMerit was teammate of announcer who died last week, remembers him as a ‘good jokester’
By 
MITCH MAERSCH
Ozaukee Press staff

Most every Milwaukee Brewers fan will remember Bob Uecker as the sound of summer, weaving decades of diamond anecdotes with sly and dry wit during 54 years of broadcasting games for his hometown team.

Uecker may have died at 90 last Thursday, but he will never be that part of his iconic home run call, “outta here, gone,” for generations of fans.

One Port Washington resident knew Uecker from the profession that didn’t make him famous, at least not at first.

John DeMerit played with Uecker as a Milwaukee Brave and for the organization’s minor league team in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

“I got to know him pretty good,” DeMerit said. “He was a good jokester. Something smart was going to come out of his mouth — you knew that was going to happen.”

DeMerit described Uecker as “pretty wild and crazy” but “not that bad.”

He quickly ascertained that the career .200 hitter’s future would be in entertainment.

“After a while you talk with him — this guy’s going to be somewhere in television,” DeMerit said. “He was honing his craft.”

The pair were teammates on the Braves’ minor league squad in Louisville in 1960 and won the “Little World Series” over Toronto.

Uecker backed up catcher Stan Lopata, DeMerit said, and had a special talent.

“He was great in the bullpen setting off fireworks for home runs,” he said.

In the broadcast booth, Uecker reminded DeMerit of longtime Chicago White Sox announcer Bob Elson.

“He had the same inflections and mannerisms and terms. Bob (Uecker) perfected that to a tee in later years,” DeMerit said.

The last time the two saw each other was in 2007 at the 50th reunion of the Milwaukee Braves World Series-winning team. Uecker remembered his former teammate, “and I remembered him quite well,” DeMerit said with a laugh.

He enjoyed watching Uecker perfect his humor on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson.

“He had Carson rolling in the aisle before they went on the air,” DeMerit said.

When it came to announcing baseball, DeMerit called Uecker “one of the best, maybe the best.”

Former athletic director of Grafton and Cedar Grove-Belgium high schools Scott Parsons, who was the Brewers’ ticket operations manager from 1995 to 2003, said Uecker was exactly how he appeared.

“I remember on game days we’d go up to the dining room and he was there all the time. He always said hi to everyone as they came in and was as funny as you’d think he’d be,” Parsons said.

“You knew he didn’t know the ins and outs of what all of us did, but he appreciated it just the same as running a successful baseball organization is so much more than the on-the-field stuff that everyone saw.”

He said Uecker had a special tradition at the end of each season.

“He’d go out of his way to recognize all of us in the front office, which I always thought was pretty amazing. If you didn’t know his stature and fame, you’d never figure it out when you met or talked to him,” Parsons said.

Fredonia native Owen Miller, who played for the Brewers in 2023 and 2024 before being traded to the Colorado Rockies, said he was grateful to talk to Uecker in the clubhouse.

“I told him how my grandma was smiling up in heaven when I first met him. She always had 620 AM playing on her radio, listening to the Brewers,” he said.

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Wisconsin’s largest paid circulation community weekly newspaper. Serving Port Washington, Saukville, Grafton, Fredonia, Belgium, as well as Ozaukee County government. Locally owned and printed in Port Washington, Wisconsin.

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