News of Tim McCarver dying at the age of 81 last week understandably hit the baseball world hard. As a two-time All-Star, a two-time World Series champion with the St. Louis Cardinals, and a legendary broadcaster for decades, he made an impact on many people.
One of the biggest might have been on his former FOX broadcasting partner Joe Buck. The pair worked together from 1996 to 2013 before McCarver retired from national MLB announcing after the 2013 World Series. Naturally, given the time Buck spent with McCarver in the booth — with the now ESPN Monday Night Football play-by-play somewhat maturing into his job as a commentator alongside McCarver — he had touching words to honor his late friend.
I cannot begin to explain the profound impact this man had on my life and career. He gave me instant credibility at 27 while calling my first World Series and beyond.He was a fierce teammate and confidant.We had a blast together for 18 years and 16 World Series.Thank you partner! https://t.co/1D5PJH50NZ
How beautiful. In honoring a legend and staple of baseball for years, Buck absolutely nailed it. McCarver meant a lot to Buck, and these moving words clearly come from a close friend.
Joe Buck had some fun with a fan while getting coffee Sunday morning in St. Louis.
Joe Buck, as most of us are well aware of by now, no longer works for Fox Sports and is not calling any more NFL playoff games this year after working last week’s Cowboys-Bucs game for ESPN, .
I say most of us because one fan in St. Louis was apparently not aware that Buck just wrapped up his first year calling Monday Night Football games for ESPN. This fella ran into Buck at a Starbucks in St. Louis on Sunday morning and asked Buck if he would be calling the Cowboys-49ers game tonight in San Francisco.
Buck shared the great story on Twitter, saying he had some fun with the fan:
A guy in line at Starbucks this am (in Stl) asked me if I was doing the Cowboys game today in SF. Obviously I said “yes, oh sh!!!”, and ran to my car. Won’t he be surprised?!!
It does stink that Buck isn’t calling these games because he’s the GOAT and is missed during these huge NFL weekends.
He will thankfully be calling some big NFL games in the future:
We miss this weekend for sure. Next year we will have a divisional playoff game going forward and a Super Bowl in four years. So we got that going for us. Which is nice. Can’t wait!! https://t.co/ovOYSxOF2j
And he had a nice message for one fan who used to say mean things about him:
Hahahahaha. This is awesome. Ok. Back to the game. I’m not a “two screen guy”. I’m a normal 53 year old with four year old twins. https://t.co/EEe1eUOCM1
Often times, the internet isn’t great at picking up on a joke. But even Joe Buck had reason to be surprised that the irony was lost amongst some viewers who thought he actually had a beef with his new ESPN colleague Scott Van Pelt.
Buck and Troy Aikman joined ESPN this season to add much-needed credibility to the Monday Night Football booth. After the conclusion of each MNF game, Buck and Aikman would do a live interview with Van Pelt for the late edition of SportsCenter. While the live hit with SVP is almost always lighthearted, some fans evidently thought Buck was upset following the Week 16 Chargers-Colts broadcast.
— sports announcers with no context (@nocontxtanncr) December 27, 2022
Buck jokingly took issue with Van Pelt only having one question for him. It was all clearly in jest, but it was enough to have Buck address the exchange following Monday’s Cowboys-Bucs NFC Wild Card matchup.
Scott Van Pelt and Joe Buck couldn't say goodbye without addressing rumors of their feud pic.twitter.com/hjzSVVN64B
“First of all, a couple weeks ago, you and I had a thing. We’re always playing around, you were the only guy I knew at ESPN before I came there, so let’s just put that to bed. And secondly, it’s been a great first year at ESPN.”
Aikman even kept the joke going by saying he was glad that the two were talking again before offering his thoughts on the Cowboys win. Classic Troy — always playing peacekeeper.
Fans did enjoy that exchange — even if the first “feud” was obviously a joke.
Well isn’t that something. The Arizona Cardinals have not yet requested an interview with former New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton as they work through their list of candidates to replace Kliff Kingsbury, but the Saints are expecting to hear from them soon — and Payton has a surprising connection to the Cardinals.
Payton spoke about his “summer job” as a ball boy for the Cardinals during way back when they were still based out of St. Louis, with their summer training camp held at Eastern Illinois in the 1980’s. Payton was a student there at the time, and he looks back on that time fondly.
“I was a ball boy for this team,” Payton said unprompted, during an interview with Colin Cowherd back in November, after the Cardinals lost to the Broncos in Week 12 and fell to 4-8 on the season. He continued, “And so the early years there in ’83, ’84 and ’85, it was (head coach Jim) Hanifan and then it became Gene Stallings. You know, we’d clean the rooms, bring towels to the rooms, we had a summer job. Neil Lomax had just taken over for Jim Hart (at quarterback). Mr. Bidwill Sr. was the owner at the time, and I think I know that family well enough.”
Payton added that then-high school student Joe Buck was also around at the time, and he helped show the future broadcaster some of the ropes: “And finally my junior or senior year, I handed out rosters, and got to hang out and eat with the team, work for the team.”
Now that’s fascinating. Payton won’t be taking the Cardinals job out of any sense of sentimentalism or gratitude for a part-time gig he had 37 years ago, but it’s interesting to see that connection is there. That familiarity with the Bidwill family and the organization has to matter to some extent.
And Cardinals ownership can’t quite keep from smiling when the topic of Payton has been brought up. Michael Bidwill inherited the team from his father Bill Bidwill, and he would have been a young peer of Payton’s when the future NFL head coach was carrying towels and handing out rosters at Eastern Illinois back in the day. When asked about his interest in Payton and whether there had been any dialogue with the Saints, Bidwill grinned and declined to get into details about the candidates he was pursuing for the job:
Arizona owns the third overall pick in April’s draft, but it’s unlikely they’ll make that available in any trade talks with New Orleans. They also selections early in rounds two and three (and they’re expecting to receive a compensatory third rounder), which they could package with their 2024 first round pick in a deal. But things only progress to that phase if they actually reach out and ask for an interview with Payton. We’ll see whether anything develops here.
The Tennessee Titans tried their best to recreate a Music City Miracle in Jacksonville against the Jaguars, but it just wasn’t going to happen.
On 3rd-and-15, a Joshua Dobbs pass to rookie receiver Treylon Burks looked to come up well short of the first down. However, Burks decided to keep a really weird trick play going instead of just take the tackle.
He bizarrely lateraled the ball to Titans running back Jonathan Ward, who caught it but still fell short of converting for the first. Of course, Burks’ pass got penalized because you can’t make a play like that.
The play confounded ESPN play-by-play announcer Joe Buck. It also drew some quick comparisons to that now-infamous Patriots debacle that handed the Raiders the most ludicrous victory of the 2022-23 season.
While the Titans were in a win-or-go-home battle for the AFC South, offensive coordinator Todd Downing tried a little too hard on this play to make the improbable happen with a really bad call.
Monday night’s game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals was postponed in the first quarter when safety Damar Hamlin collapsed and went into cardiac arrest after a tackle. It was a terrifying scene and a clear life-or-death emergency that nobody in the stadium could have anticipated.
For ESPN’s Monday Night Football announcer Joe Buck, he was tasked with calling the immensely difficult scene to a national audience. And by all accounts, Buck, Troy Aikman and ESPN covered the entire situation with care and respect as medical personnel treated Hamlin on the field.
As Hamlin remains in critical condition at UC Medical Center in Cincinnati, Buck spoke with the New York Post about his role in communicating an unprecedented on-field emergency to a primetime audience.
“My natural instinct at that moment is not to talk. That’s the last thing I want to do is to put my words to this serious situation. It’s very counterintuitive as the football play-by-play guy about somebody having CPR administered to him in the center of a stadium with 65,000 people in it and a national television audience. It’s just a weird place to be.
“I think being quiet is OK. Having it being reverent and quiet is OK because the stadium was stone cold quiet and the players were in utter shock.”
Obviously, ESPN never could have predicted something like that happening when it brought Buck and Aikman to lead its Monday Night Football booth. But Buck’s approach on Monday night showed why ESPN was right to hire the veteran announcer.
He handled the situation about as well as you could have hoped for from a broadcaster.
We miss these guys being a huge part of our NFL Sundays.
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Our NFL Sundays used to be a lot cooler, didn’t they?
We’d get Joe Buck (who I think is the GOAT) and Troy Aikman, two of the best in the business, calling the biggest afternoon game each week, where just the sound of their voices let us know that what we were watching was a very important matchup and one worth watching until the end.
Then after a short break we’d get Al Michaels on NBC and we knew for the last three hours of NFL action we’d be hearing an announcing legend taking us home to end another long day of watching football from the couch while absolutely pounding carbs and trying not to think about Monday.
Now all three of those guys have new jobs and I don’t mean any disrespect to their Sunday replacements, because those guys are good, too, but things just aren’t the same and it’s a shame Michaels, Buck and Aikman now far too often call some of the worst games of the week.
Tonight, Michaels will be back on Amazon calling the Raiders-Rams game with Kirk Herbstreit. The Thursday night games are routinely bad matchups and this one is no different, with both teams under .500 and mostly out of the playoff picture. Plus, Michaels and Herbstreit haven’t had the best chemistry this year, which has made some of these games even more hard to watch.
Buck and Aikman now call Monday Night Football on ESPN and while some of those matchups have been pretty good, a bunch of them – like most of last week’s Saints-Bucs game until Tom Brady did the impossible again – have been pretty ugh. I’m looking at you, Steelers-Colts in Week 13.
Also, this week Buck and Aikman have Patriots-Cardinals, which isn’t the best, and then Rams-Packers in Week 15, which is very bad, and Chargers-Colts in Week 16, which is far from great. They do close the season with Bills-Bengals, though, which could have huge AFC playoff implications so my fingers are crossed for that one.
These three announcers used to get arguably the two biggest games each week. And if SNF didn’t have the best game late in the season the NFL would flex in the bigger game in and Michaels would be there to call it. Now he’s spending this season in random spots like a rainy Falcons-Panthers game in Charlotte last month.
Mike Tirico has done a good job as Michaels’ replacement on SNF and continues to be in the group of best announcers that we have in all of sports.
Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen have become a very good listen as the No. 1 team on Fox.
It’s just been rough to hear Michaels, Buck, and Aikman calling a bunch of games that really don’t matter, especially as the season heads down the homestretch.
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“AHHHH, let’s just … I can’t say one of those words.”
Look, it’s the end of Week 13 in the 2022 NFL season. While there’s still a lot to sort through in the coming weeks when it comes to seeding and playoff spots, we’ve definitely started to hit the doldrums portion of the regular season. But don’t ask Joe Buck if he’s bored. The man might be having the time of his life as he starts to wrap up his first season calling Monday Night Football.
Before the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New Orleans squared off on Monday night, ESPN’s play-by-play commentator seemed a lot more excited about the festivities than usual. Buck showed it during pre-game set-up, most notably while Tom Brady got set through his usual warm-up routine:
In Tom Brady’s two-plus decades as an NFL quarterback, I can’t say I’ve ever heard an announcer try to narrate his usual “let’s [expletive] go” deal before he plays a game. It’s just … not a fourth wall you expect anyone to break, to be honest.
But Buck surprised me, in a good way, while he ran through Brady’s process and various other notable players in this game. A joyful Buck as we hit the end of the season is a welcome closer to 2022.
If you’re here, it probably means you’re wondering why you aren’t hearing the voice of Joe Buck on FOX calling a 2022 World Series game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros.
It’s Joe Davis on the mic for the play-by-play, for the record. But if you’re asking? We have an answer.
Buck left FOX for ESPN, where he’s calling Monday Night Football. That means he’s no longer calling baseball for ESPN or, of course, FOX.
Buck did say back in May that it’s the first time since he was 18 years old that he won’t be calling a baseball. Via Awful Announcing:
“This is the first time since I was 18-years-old, and I’m 53, that I’m not doing a baseball game. And that’s really weird to me, but I walk away really proud of what I and we did. It’s time for somebody else, it’s time for somebody else to put their voice to it, and I’m glad to get out of the way for Joe and watch him do it because he’ll be great.”
Cannot wait to watch @Joe_Davis and the @MLBONFOX crew tonight with Game One of the World Series. Feels like a classic is coming between these two powerhouses. Go get em and have some FUN!!!
