Bud Selig remembers a mashed potato-stained scouting report forcing Bob Uecker into the radio booth

If Bob Uecker were a better scout and cleaner with his mashed potatoes and gravy, he might never have made it to the broadcast booth.

Bud Selig joined The Rich Eisen Show this week to discuss the new Just a Bit Outside: the Story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers documentary on Netflix. And during the segment, Selig told Eisen the story of how the late Bob Uecker became a broadcaster for the Brewers. Shortly after purchasing the Seattle Pilots and moving them to Milwaukee, Selig and Uecker attended the New York Baseball Writers dinner together.

“In January of 1971, he and I went out together after the dinner, and we were talking, and it was very simple. I said, ‘Bob, you ought to come work for the Brewers, I’ll find something for you to do.’ And he said, ‘I’m in.’ That was it.”

With their broadcast team already set, Selig decided to make Uecker a scout. Shortly after, longtime baseball executive Frank Lane walked into Selig’s office and asked, “What do you want me to do with your guy Uecker?” And just as Selig began citing his background as a former Major League Baseball catcher, Lane interrupted and threw Uecker’s first report on his desk.

“There was a bunch of mashed potatoes and gravy all over the thing,” Selig said. “So I later ask him, ‘Bob, what the hell are you doing?’ …Every player that he scouted, he rated as a prospect. He hedged his bet.”

Desperate to get Uecker off the scout trail and into the broadcast booth, Selig went to radio sponsor Schlitz Brewery the next year and offered to pay for half of Uecker’s salary.

“He was making 12 grand, so I paid six and they paid six,” Selig recalled. “They began a broadcast; Merle Harmon was with him and Tom Collins. And they walked out on him the first game at Yankee Stadium, they let him do it, and he was so nervous.”

Uecker had previously told the story of Harmon and Collins walking out on him, saying they left him to handle the play-by-play during the fifth inning of his first broadcast. “I took over the broadcast as the lead guy, and I’m still here,” Uecker said in 2024.

“He’s known for so many things,” Selig told Eisen. “But he made himself into a great announcer.”

Luckily, Uecker didn’t make himself into a great scout. Because the sports world was much better off getting to hear Uecker spend more than a half-century calling baseball games than they would have been if he was scouting them.