(670 The Score) Joe Buck often notes that he grew up in the baseball broadcast booth, from spending so much time as a child with his late Hall of Fame father Jack Buck calling Cardinals games in St. Louis to becoming a rising broadcaster himself.
That has changed now. In March, Buck left his job as the lead broadcaster for Fox Sports and the voice of MLB’s biggest games to be the play-by-play announcer for Monday Night Football on ESPN. He accepted the lucrative new deal knowing that it would mean leaving the game of baseball behind.
While the 53-year-old Buck explained that he won't miss the busy travel schedule, he also admitted that he'll dearly miss calling playoff baseball and the World Series.
“The Cubs winning the World Series was one of the most thrilling moments of my life,” Buck said on the Parkins & Spiegel Show on Wednesday. “Not my broadcasting life, of my life. I mean, my dad would’ve freaked out. And everybody in St. Louis is like, ‘You’re not your dad’s son. How could you say that?’ And that’s because they think with their hearts, and they’re Cardinals fans and it’s the Cubs. That was the highlight of my broadcasting career, is watching the Cubs for the first time in over 100 years winning the World Series and being the one saying it.
“That was a huge thrill. Same with the Red Sox and winning for the first time in 86 years or the White Sox winning for the first time in a long time in 2005. Yeah, those moments are special. And I don’t think they come in football like that. I really don’t. When you watch an entire season, an entire month of October and then all these playoff series and then seven games within a World Series, it gets down to one moment. I mean, that’s the stuff where you just hold your breath and hang on for dear life when you’re broadcasting it. There’s just no feeling like it. Not a Super Bowl, not anything.”
Buck will join longtime broadcast partner Troy Aikman at ESPN in calling Monday Night Football. Buck made his debut with the network in May for an alternate viewing broadcast of the PGA Championship.
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