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Articles from the past week

Thursday:

  • JV Legion baseball vs. Woodford County

Wednesday:

  • Lincoln JV Legion baseball vs. Clinton

Tuesday:

  • Pony baseball recap

Monday:

  • Mayfield’s Mutterings...:  My Buck tribute

  • Lincoln Gator Swim Club results vs. Mason City

  • JV Legion baseball in local tourney

Saturday:

  • Dodgers defeated Bloomington Braves

Friday:

  • No new headlines

My Buck tribute

By Jeff Mayfield

[JUNE 24, 2002]  I remember hearing Jack Buck’s voice for the first time during the season of 1970. I had probably heard it before, but I have vivid memories of hearing it then. For some crazy reason, the previous winter my father got the great idea that our family should move out of the utopia of California and go east to the Midwest.

A few months later, on a lazy spring night with the baseball season just under way, my dad called me into his room. He got out a cribbage board and began to teach me one of the best under-appreciated card games that exists. I really enjoyed learning the game, but more than that, I just enjoyed spending time with him. In some ways I think it mostly just gave him something to do while listening to the Cardinal broadcasts.

 

My dad was a child of the radio generation. He had been born in Hutchinson, Kan. (a town I have never visited) and grew up in Denver, Colo. He shared with me several times how St. Louis was not just a team for the local markets, but that the Cardinals were the home team of the entire Midwest. I didn’t fully realize the scope of his words until years later when I became a rabid Redbird rooter.

At any rate, night after night we would play cribbage and listen to the Cardinals. Many conversations were hatched, lots of laughter was in evidence (mostly at one of Mike Shannon’s interesting explanations), but the one real constant was Jack Buck. My dad really liked Jack Buck.

I found that odd. My dad was pretty hard to please when it came to radio and TV broadcasters. He felt that most of them were too full of themselves. He felt that they had become personalities instead of informed communicators. He despised it when commentators tried to tell you what you just saw. He never wanted their analysis. He often felt that that was what was wrong with America — that nobody was thinking for themselves.

He felt that Jack Buck respected his audience and knew that Cardinal fans are widely regarded as the most knowledgeable fans in all of baseball. As Walter Brennen used to say, "No brag — just fact!" He would point out to me how Buck would paint the picture for the fan but leave enough to the imagination to give you the full experience — almost like actually being at the game. My boy, he would say, many people can broadcast a ballgame; Buck was one of the few that could do it right.

 

[to top of second column in this article]

In those days it was very difficult to be a Cards fan. The ’70s were not very kind to the Cardinal nation. They tried some veterans. They tried some young players. They tried mixing ’em together. Nothing seemed to work. But you wouldn’t have known it if you were listening to Buck. He made every game in every season seem like we were on the brink of the playoffs.

I recently heard that behind the scenes he was as disgruntled as all of us fans were and that he seriously considered retiring before Whitey Herzog descended on the scene.

I remember that summer (or one not too long after it) that we took a family trip to St. Louis. For us kids that was Nirvana. It meant going out to eat, staying in a hotel with a pool and going to a ballgame. If life ever gets any better than it was at that precise moment, I will immediately run a news bulletin here at the LDN! But I don’t think that that is going to happen.

Anyway, we went to watch the Cardinals play the Reds, and it was an epic battle, with Cincy taking a 2-1 lead into the late innings. Somehow, almost magically, the Cardinals tied it 2-2 before the game advanced into the bottom half of the ninth inning. One of my personal two or three all-time favorite Cardinals stepped up to the plate in the person of Ted Simmons. With an 0-2 count (and by the way, baseball history will record that Simmons was one of the best 0-2 hitters in the history of the game) Teddy launched one into the bleachers in right field. My dad stood very dignified as he applauded. My mom, who never knew much about sports, much less baseball, said that her little Ted hit her a home run. But my brother and sister and I were just jumping up and down going crazy… and so was Jack Buck.

 

That was to be my first of many trips to Busch Stadium over the next 32 years. But that was only the beginning…

[Jeff Mayfield]

["Greatest Cardinal of them all"’ has fallen"]

[June 13 Mutterings]


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