'Major League' Night honors Bob Uecker, immortalizes Harry Doyle with talking bobblehead
It's a special theme night that's juuust a bit outside the usual promotional ideas of professional sports teams, but it's one that's plenty appropriate, long overdue and awfully fun.
The Milwaukee Brewers' interleague game against the Cleveland Indians on Tuesday at Miller Park is "Major League" Night. The team will honor Bob Uecker, its Hall of Fame announcer, who portrayed wisecracking broadcaster Harry Doyle in the 1989 comedy that was based on the Indians but filmed at the since-demolished Milwaukee County Stadium.
The Brewers' latest tribute to Uecker celebrates his 60 years in pro baseball with a limited-edition talking bobblehead of Doyle, which will be given to the first 4,000 fans that purchased the special-event ticket package. The bobbleheads come loaded with some of Doyle's famous quotes from the movie, including, "Personally, I think we got hosed on that call" and "This guy threw at his own kid in a father-son game."
The "Major League" theme night was announced by the Brewers on Feb. 17 as part of a series of promotional nights including Country Night, "Star Wars" Night and Zubazpalooza. According to the team, the 4,000 ticket packages that included the bobbleheads sold out, but tickets for the game are still available.
Uecker will throw out the ceremonial first pitch -- which he's sure to lampoon later on the air, as the light-hitting former catcher whose undistinguished playing career ended in 1967 is fond of self-deprecation -- and the Brewers will make a $10,000 donation to the Make-a-Wish Foundation in his name.
This isn't the first time the Brewers have honored Uecker, who's been calling Milwaukee's play-by-play on the radio since 1971. Last year, the team unveiled a seated statue of the white-haired broadcaster behind the last row of section 422 in the stadium's upper deck, in the area already affectionately known as the "Uecker Seats." In 2012, the Brewers put up a Uecker sculpture outside Miller Park, alongside statues of Hank Aaron, Robin Yount and Bud Selig.
No doubt Uecker, known for his sense of humor, would say that while grand, bronze monuments are very nice, they hardly compare to the eminence of being immortalized as a Doyle doll.
Perhaps the Brewers, who for a while this season had baseball's worst record, could emulate the Indians of the film, which ended with the team implausibly making the playoffs.
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