The soul of the game

 The news reports all say Bob Uecker was 90 years old when he passed yesterday, but that only paints the outside corner of the truth. He might have been 90 as the chronology flies, but we all know he was really 90 going on 12.

No one loved a thing that didn't love him back the way Bob Uecker loved baseball, a child's game for which Ueck never lost the joy of a child. If his playing career was notable only for its lack of notability, everything that came after was peanuts and Cracker Jacks  and everything else wonderful about our most American of pastimes.

If the game had a soul, Ueck was it. That's all the eulogy the man needs, really.

Making fun of his undistinguished playing career was his main schtick, but playing baseball for laughs was only a side hustle. If his devotion to the game went no deeper than that, he'd never have spent more than half a century calling Milwaukee Brewers games, almost until the day he died. He'd never have become known as "Mr. Baseball" for doing that, nor been inducted into the Hall of Fame as a broadcaster.

His service to baseball, in other words, went far beyond Miller Lite commercials and cracking up Johnny Carson with funny stories on the "Tonight" show. That served the game, too, of course, simply by making us see it through the wondering eyes of that aforementioned 12-year-old.

For the former, he will forever be venerated. For the latter, he will forever be cherished as the grown man who took us all back to the days when baseball was a cracked bat held together with nails, and Billy's jacket and Jerry's sweatshirt were the bases, and we were all Ernie Banks or Al Kaline or Roberto Clemente or Willie Mays.

There was magic in that, somehow. And Bob Uecker, bless his inner child, brought it home to us.

Which means Ueck's most iconic Miller Lite bit, and his iconic line in it, had it wrong all along, you see.

Turns out he was always in the front row.