Twenty years later, Buck’s calls as the play-by-play voice of Fox’s broadcast of the American League Championship Series return against the Yankees and the Cardinals’ World Series sweep remain the perfect narrative of the plot Red Sox fans have waited generations for. expertise.
Buck calls last. This is the call, all together. Chances are that at least two will come to mind – at a minimum – without prompting.
Let’s start with the final, most important call of his — the final game of the World Series, of course, when Cardinals outfielder Edgar Renteria hit a bunt single to Sox closer Keith Faulk.
“Back to Volk. Red Sox fans have longed to hear that. The Boston Red Sox are world champions.”
Red Sox fans have longed to hear that. It was the perfect sentiment in the moment of catharsis, and it remains perfect two decades later.
So how did Buck know what to say?
“I’ve been thinking about this, and I don’t actually know where this came from,” he said with a laugh during a recent conversation. “But I can tell you I never thought about it before that moment.”
Buck explained that he learned a lesson during Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s pursuit of the single-season home run record in 1998 of not pigeonholing oneself into a particular phrase. Or, for that matter, a soliloquy about everything this epic moment means.
“If you go with something you thought about in the morning and not in real time, that could be a trap,” he said. “You can’t plan something that shouldn’t be planned, because it wouldn’t be right for the situation.
“So, when Faulk gets that one hopper from Renteria, I’m glad I was willing to trust myself to come up with something that makes sense in the moment. You can get pretty busy trying to sum up 86 years of frustration and sadness into a simple return to the mound.”
“I don’t want to act like I have all the answers, but what I’m trying to do is get the right words out, whatever they are, say what happened as quickly as I can, and then get out of the way and let our cameras and our director capture what’s happening on the pitch.
Twenty years ago, Fox’s baseball programs, under the direction of Bill Webb, focused on tight shots and emotion — focusing on Pedro Martinez’s intimidating stare, or focusing on a nervous fan who seemed to carry the weight of 86 years on his shoulders. (There were a lot of those).
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Knowing that the pictures didn’t need his words to help tell the story, Buck was silent for about 45 seconds after the final. He let the moment breathe.
“The cameras will get the natural reaction of these grown men acting like little boys, having just accomplished something that hasn’t been done in over eight decades,” Buck said. “What am I going to say that would be better than that?
“And now, I think everyone who does what I do lives in fear of dead air. Because there’s this little insecure voice in your head that says: ‘Viewers think you don’t know what to say here.’ But no one really thinks that way. Moreover, there is no more dead air anyway because the microphones are so good.
To some extent, Buck’s call to the final was also a tribute to objectivity, given his familial ties to the Cardinals organization. His father, Jack, was the beloved voice of the franchise for nearly 50 years, and Joe himself called Cardinals games from 1991-2007.
However, the final call may not have been the most memorable of the postseason, in part because of the subtle way he paid tribute to his father.
In Game 4 of the ALCS, when David Ortiz’s 12th-inning homer kept the Red Sox alive and ended a 5-hour, 2-minute game well past midnight, Buck said, “Ortiz in deep right field, back is Sheffield, we’ll see you later Tonight.”
The last five words were a reference to Jack Buck’s famous Kirby Puckett walk-off call in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series, which he punctuated with the phrase: “And we’ll see you tomorrow night!”
“I actually made a similar call in the 2002 World Series between the Angels and Giants, the year my father died,” Buck said. It was one of the patriotic calls for which he became famous. And then two years later, here you are in 2004, and it was just kind of playing on that because the game was [expletive] long.”
Buck has not called a national baseball game since joining ESPN, along with his longtime NFL broadcast partner Troy Aikman, as the network’s “Monday Night Football” team in March 2022.
“When people say, ‘Oh, do you miss baseball practice?’ “I miss the Yankees Red Sox, I’ll tell you that,” he said.
He then pointed to another call from that postseason that supports his explanation for how he handled those crucial late-game calls. When Ortiz won Game 5 with an RBI single in the 14th inning, Buck called it:
“Ortiz fights it, in the middle of the field. Damon runs to the plate, and he can continue to run for New York. Game six tomorrow night.”
“I think this proves once again that it couldn’t have been something I thought about that morning,” Buck said. [Johnny] Damon coming home is an example of what works for the situation and not what you might have dreamed of beforehand.
“In baseball, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You can’t plan for it. The Red Sox in October were proof of that time and time again.”
Chad Finn can be reached at chad.finn@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeChadFinn.
