“Nobody’s tuning in – let’s check the TV Guide listings and see what game Joe Buck is calling. Nobody cares... They don’t care who’s calling the game.”
—Joe Buck
Joe Buck is one of the nation’s most prominent sports broadcasters of all time. A listing of his great career and amazing accomplishments would not be complete without also including the part his father played in his legacy. Jack Buck was known as the Voice of the St. Louis Cardinals for decades. As is often the case with successful children of successful parents, Joe picked up where his father left off and took the family name to even greater heights.
Joseph Francis Buck was born on April 25, 1969, in St. Petersburg, Florida, but was raised in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue. His childhood was not what most people would consider normal. He traveled with his father around the country broadcasting games for Major League Baseball and the National Football League. Jack was the broadcaster, but was often a bigger star than many of the players.
That early exposure to broadcasting had an impact on the rest of Joe’s life. He graduated from the prestigious Country Day High School in St. Louis, and then headed off to college at sports-crazed Indiana University.
Joe Buck got into broadcasting almost as quickly as he entered college. In 1989, he took up the job of play-by-play announcer for the Louisville Redbirds, who just happened to be the minor league affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals.
He also worked as a reporter for ESPN’s coverage of the minor league All-Star Game. When he graduated from college, it was time to head to the big leagues. He followed in his father’s footsteps, broadcasting games for the St. Louis Cardinals on KMOX radio and KPLR-TV.
At the age of 25, Joe was calling games that the best broadcasters in the industry only dreamt of. He made a name for himself after he accepted a job with Fox Sports, which was in the early stages of acquiring sports broadcasting rights across the country.
At Fox Sports, he announced NFL games, which broadcast his voice into the homes of millions of people every Sunday afternoon. Joe built on his success throughout his late twenties and early thirties, becoming the lead announcer for the NFL on Fox shortly after joining the network. A few years later, he put another line on his resume when he did play-by-play for a Super Bowl game in 2004.
Baseball was his first love and the continuing connection to his father’s legacy. He took over the duties as primary announcer for Fox’s Major League Baseball rotation in 1996. This made him one of the highest paid and most recognizable sports announcers in the country. At the age of thirty, he had the honor of doing play-by-play for the World Series, which made him the youngest person ever to call a World Series game on television. Perhaps one of the highlights of his young career was in 2006 when he as able to say, “St. Louis has a World Series winner,” after the Cardinals won the series against the Detroit Tigers.
Outside of his broadcasting career, Joe Buck has also made cameo appearances in several television shows and movies, often playing himself. Additionally, he has written a memoir titled “Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I’m Not Allowed to Say on TV,” which was released in 2016.
Over the years, Joe has proven himself to be one of the most successful broadcasters in American history and is still going strong. His father may have opened doors for him, but Joe continues to prove that his success is due to his own merits.
*Buck is only the third announcer to handle a television network’s lead MLB and NFL coverage in the same year.
*He has won numerous sports Emmy Awards for Outstanding Sports Personality for play-by-play.
*Buck has two brothers and five sisters, some of whom are also in the broadcasting industry.
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