MILWAUKEE -- Autumn took hold in the Midwest while the Brewers were out in Los Angeles winning the pennant. But the sun was shining bright in Milwaukee the past few days, so Jeff Levering needs only a Brewers hoodie and blue jeans as he walks through the grass at the Wood National Cemetery, where the signature roof of American Family Field hovers just over the treeline.
Levering, 43, is the utility man for the Brewers broadcast team, moving between television and radio for the past six of his 12 seasons with the ballclub. Since national outlets have exclusive television rights during the postseason, he was on radio the night he made the call every announcer dreams of, when Milwaukee left fielder Jackson Chourio ran down Enrique Hernández’s deep fly ball at the warning track to end Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, giving the Brewers a series sweep and a ticket to the World Series for the first time in 44 years.
You’ve surely heard the call.
“The Brewers win the pennant! OH MY GOD, the Brewers win the pennant!” Levering said on the statewide Brewers Radio Network, the second utterance coming from somewhere deep within him. “The World Series will go through Wisconsin!”
It was perfect. At the same time thousands of longtime Brewers fans were struggling to put words to what they were feeling, Levering said it all in a couple of short sentences.
Bob Uecker would have loved it.
That’s who we are visiting on this fine fall morning.
***
ROBERT G UECKER
SP3
US ARMY
JAN 26 1934
JAN 16 2025
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Ain’t that the truth? Who could ever forget Bob Uecker? The letters under his name on the white marble headstone stand for Specialist Third Class, because before Uecker played Major League Baseball for his hometown Milwaukee Braves, before he starred in commercials and television and movies, before he delighted fans for 54 seasons as the radio voice of the Brewers, he served in the Army after enlisting in 1954.
During orientation at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, a lieutenant called for anyone who had played professional or college baseball. Uecker raised his hand.
Never mind that it wasn’t true.
“We’re already going to basic training anyway. What else can they do?” Uecker said years later. “When I get up on stage to talk to this lieutenant, he asks me where I played. The only thing I could think of was Marquette University. They didn’t even have a team, but what does he know about Marquette? I’ll take a chance. He says, ‘What do you do?’ and I told him I’m a catcher.
“So I’m two weeks into basic training, and I’m out in the woods killing spiders or something, and I get a call to get in a truck and go back into camp. They put me in special services. I joined the team, and I played baseball all over the country.”
There was so much talent on those army teams that Major League organizations sent scouts, one of whom noticed Uecker’s strong arm. He signed with the Braves ahead of the 1956 season.
And the rest is history.
***
The modest headstone matches the thousands of others in this quiet place. But there are signs that Uecker has had visitors. There are flowers in Brewers blue and yellow. A baseball balloon. A well-worn Brewers cap that looks like it has been to many a ballgame. And a lone lucky penny perched on top.
Levering last visited on Opening Day with his broadcast partners, Lane Grindle and Josh Maurer, engineer Kent Sommerfeld and longtime Brewers equipment manager Tony Migliaccio. Now that he’s back to talk about his call of that final out, the tears come fast and hard.
“I think a lot of it was just being in the moment, right?” Levering said. “It’s 0-2 and you’re thinking about what you’re going to do, but whatever happens, you have to get the call right. If you don’t do that, then the whole thing is shot. And then you just feel it.
“The most important thing I wanted to convey was that the World Series was going through Wisconsin. That was the main part of it. That’s what I was thinking about. I was thinking about the fans. There’s a huge responsibility on that. I just didn’t want to mess it up.”
He knows what that kind of call means to baseball fans. In Levering’s office at home hangs a photograph of the "Shot Heard 'Round the World,” Bobby Thomson’s walk-off home run for the New York Giants off the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ralph Branca to win the 1951 NL pennant. It’s signed by both Thomson and Branca. That moment was immortalized by Giants announcer Russ Hodges, whose delirious, “The Giants win the pennant!” is regarded as one of the best radio calls ever.
Levering has been overwhelmed by the reaction to his call from fans and friends, including Uecker’s son, Bob Jr. He’s received messages via text or social media from not just throughout Wisconsin, but Canada, South America and Europe.
On social media, fans heard Levering’s call as an homage to Uecker’s portrayal of Cleveland broadcaster Harry Doyle in the 1989 film "Major League." When the underdog [then] Indians beat the Yankees for a playoff spot, Uecker jumps out of his seat and yells, “The Indians win it! Oh my God, the Indians win it!”
That’s exactly what Grindle, sitting in the seat next to Levering, thought.
“There’s a mystery to, ‘What’s he going to say?’” said Grindle, who joined the broadcast team in 2016. “Because it’s not something we’re going to sit down and talk about beforehand. You want it to be authentic, you want it to be natural.”
Of course, Grindle has workshopped what he might have said. He had to be prepared, since it could have been his call had the game gone into extra innings. Typically, when it’s Levering and Grindle in the booth, Levering takes play-by-play for innings 1-2, 5-6 and 8-9, and Grindle takes 3-4 and 7. During this year’s postseason, Levering decided to give the fifth inning to the third member of their team, Maurer, who otherwise would have been limited to postgame duties.
It has worked out beautifully, because the fifth innings have been some of the Brewers’ best in the NLDS and NLCS, while Grindle’s innings have included both of Jake Bauers’ epic, double-digit-pitch plate appearances.
But Levering has the ninth. So Grindle’s primary objective at the final out of NLCS Game 4 was to stay out of the way.
“When he first said, ‘Oh my God,’ it almost startled me,” Grindle said. “And then I thought, ‘Oh, it’s Harry Doyle!’ I was just, like, ‘Wow.’”
Levering, though, didn’t plan to do that.
“I never said to myself, ‘I’m going to say what Bob said in Major League,'” Levering said. “It’s just that I had seen it so many times, I think. When I went, ‘Oh my God!’ that was authentic. And I’ve heard the Russ Hodges call so many times and have that moment autographed in my office, and it was against the Dodgers, I kind of mixed the two of them without even trying to mix the two of them. I just wanted to feel in the moment.”
It reminded him of the best advice he ever got about broadcasting: “Make sure you’re yourself. Don’t be anybody else.”
Uecker’s the one who told him that.
It’s the only advice he ever gave.
“I’m very aware of the fans that want to hear Bob’s voice on the clincher and wish they would have heard his voice,” Levering said. “I wish he was there to do it, too. I think about what his conversations would be like with The Miz. How would they bond? ‘Pokémon? What’s that?’ But he’s with us. He’s always with us.
“So, everybody’s talking about how that call was a huge tribute to Bob. And maybe it was, in my own way. But he always wanted me to be myself.”
When his phone started buzzing after the final out, Levering turned it over on the desk next to him so he could focus on the field. He and Grindle stayed on the air throughout the on-field presentation of the Warren C. Giles Trophy for the NL champions, and for Bauers receiving NLCS MVP honors, before turning it over to Maurer for the postgame show.
While they were hustling down to the clubhouse to join the celebration, Grindle nudged his broadcast partner.
“More than anything, you’re happy for your friend because he got it right and he could let his shoulders down and breathe,” Grindle said. “I just gave him an ‘Atta boy.’ I think I said, ‘I’m just so glad we get to do this together.’”
It’s something they’ll share with each other -- and Brewers fans everywhere -- forever.
“I did the very best I could,” Levering said, “and now if everybody’s good, bad or indifferent, they’re stuck with it.”
That’s exactly what Ueck would have said.