‘Ueck’ is a rollicking tribute to the late Bob Uecker

Ueck, as you could probably tell from the title, is a documentary about the late Bob Uecker. And if you paid any attention in the last 50 or so years to baseball, television, commercials, talk shows, pro wrestling, the sitcom Mr. Belvedere, or the movie Major League, I probably don’t have to tell you who Uecker was.

Uecker, who died in early 2025 at the age of 90, was one of the greatest-ever characters of baseball, and of America.

He was a baseball player and occasional actor, and a mainstay of professional wrestling, beer commercials, and late-night talk shows. Uecker is the only man in both the Baseball and WWE Halls of Fame, and will remain so for as long as Pete Rose stays out of Cooperstown.

But for the last half-century of his life, from 1971 to a few months before his death, Uecker’s primary vocation was as the radio voice of his hometown team, the Milwaukee Brewers.

Directed by Steve Farr and Michael T. Vollmann, Ueck is a fairly conventional documentary about Uecker’s life and career, featuring talking heads like Bob Costas and various Brewers legends, plus a lot of stories and clips that you’ve probably seen many times before, although I can’t imagine you’ll mind seeing them again.

But the other major narrative thrust is Uecker’s final season in the booth, in 2024, when the Brewers made a playoff run. Mr. Baseball was battling advanced lung cancer at the time, and while he wasn’t public about that fact, he had taken some health leaves, and the people around him seemed aware that they probably wouldn’t be hearing Bob in the booth again after that year.

Sure, it would have made a better doc if the Brewers had made a run all the way to the World Series and won it for Uecker, but alas they did not. And again, just everyone watching the film is going to know both that the Brew Crew didn’t win it all that year, and that Uecker passed on a few months later.

And the reason most people will know that is that Ueck has a unique release strategy: According to its website, the documentary was released in theaters in July, with more to be added in August- but every one of those theaters is in the state of Wisconsin.

Another film about the Milwaukee Brewers, Just a Bit Outside, which was named for one of Uecker’s catchphrases and told the story of the Brewers’ 1982 World Series team, had a similar release pattern a couple of years ago, getting a theatrical release throughout the Badger State before landing on VOD.

But you don’t have to be from Wisconsin or a Brewers fan to love Bob Uecker, and once the film expands beyond the Wisconsin border, it’s likely to appeal to Uecker fans far and wide.