50 Facts About Joe Buck

1.

Joseph Francis Buck was born on April 25,1969 and is an American sportscaster.

2.

The son of sportscaster Jack Joe Buck, he worked for Fox Sports from its 1994 inception through 2022, including roles as lead play-by-play announcer for the network's National Football League and Major League Baseball coverage.

3.

Joe Buck served as the play-by-play announcer for the World Series from 1996 to 2021, with the exceptions of 1997 and 1999, when Bob Costas called those particular World Series for NBC.

4.

In 2022, Joe Buck moved to ESPN, where he serves as the lead play-by-play announcer for Monday Night Football.

5.

Joe Buck was born in St Petersburg, Florida and raised in the St Louis area, where he attended St Louis Country Day School.

6.

Joe Buck began his broadcasting career in 1989 while he was an undergraduate at Indiana University Bloomington.

7.

Joe Buck called play-by-play for the then-Louisville Redbirds, a minor league affiliate of the Cardinals, and was a reporter for ESPN's coverage of the Triple-A All-Star Game in 1989.

8.

Also, in 1991 Joe Buck began broadcasting for the Cardinals on local television and KMOX Radio, filling in while his father was working on CBS telecasts.

9.

Joe Buck continued to call Cardinals games after being hired by Fox Sports, initially with his father on KMOX and later on FSN Midwest television.

10.

In 1994, Joe Buck was hired by Fox, and at the age of 25 became the youngest man ever to announce a regular slate of National Football League games on network television.

11.

On September 8,1998, Joe Buck called Mark McGwire's 62nd home run that broke Roger Maris' single-season record.

12.

Since then, Joe Buck has continued to use this phrase at appropriate times, including Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, in which the Boston Red Sox famously rallied off New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera in the 9th inning to avoid elimination.

13.

When David Ortiz's walk-off home run finally won it for the Red Sox in the 12th inning, Joe Buck uttered, "We'll see you later tonight," alluding to the fact that the game had extended into the early morning.

14.

Joe Buck used the phrase at the end of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series when the Cardinals' David Freese hit a walk-off home run in the 11th inning against the Rangers to send the series to a seventh game.

15.

Later in his time with Fox, Joe Buck called a limited selection of regular-season games each year, as well as the All-Star Game, one of the League Championship Series, and the World Series.

16.

From 1996 to 2021, Joe Buck called 23 World Series and 21 All-Star Games for Fox, the most of any play-by-play announcer on network television.

17.

Joe Buck became Fox's top play-by-play man in 2002, replacing Pat Summerall.

18.

In 2007, Joe Buck stepped down as host to focus on his play-by-play duties, and Fox NFL Sunday reverted back to primarily being broadcast from Fox Sports' studios in Los Angeles.

19.

However, Joe Buck chose to concentrate on baseball, citing traffic concerns in Los Angeles and already being busy calling the NFL and MLB simultaneously.

20.

In March 2010, Buck told a St Louis radio station that HBO might be planning to cancel Joe Buck Live, adding that he "won't really miss" the program and that it involved "a lot more effort and hassle than I ever expected".

21.

In May 2022, Joe Buck made his on-air debut at ESPN during the 2022 PGA Championship, hosting an alternate broadcast on ESPN2 and ESPN+ produced by Peyton and Eli Manning, featuring ESPN golf analyst Michael Collins and other celebrity guests.

22.

Joe Buck called horse racing and professional bass fishing events early in his Fox career, as well as the network's first Cotton Bowl Classic telecast in 1999.

23.

In 2007, Joe Buck filmed a pilot episode for a prospective late-night talk and comedy program with former Saturday Night Live writer and director Matt Piedmont.

24.

Piedmont and Joe Buck wrote and produced the pilot with Piedmont directing, filming in New York City and Los Angeles and featuring Molly Shannon, David Spade and Paul Rudd.

25.

Joe Buck co-hosted the program with Abebe Adusmussui, an actual New York City taxi driver.

26.

Joe Buck has appeared in various national television commercials for such clients as Holiday Inn and Budweiser beer.

27.

Joe Buck has done local commercials in the St Louis market for the Suntrup chain of automobile dealerships.

28.

On February 12,2013, Joe Buck made a guest appearance during Fox Sports Midwest's broadcast of a St Louis Blues hockey game.

29.

Alongside their current commentators Darren Pang and John Kelly, he discussed his father Jack Joe Buck having called Blues hockey along with Kelly's father Dan in the late 1960s.

30.

Joe Buck briefly took over play-by-play from Pang and Kelly, stepping aside when the Los Angeles Kings inevitably scored a power play goal on the Blues.

31.

In 2014, Joe Buck was named as the new host of NFL Films Presents, to coincide with the program's move from ESPN2 to Fox Sports 1.

32.

Joe Buck's voice is heard in recorded conversations between Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky calling Game 5 of the Yankees-Indians ALDS in 1997.

33.

In 2022, Joe Buck became the announcer on Fox's Domino Masters hosted by Eric Stonestreet.

34.

Joe Buck competed in season seven of The Masked Singer as "Ram" of Team Bad.

35.

Joe Buck was unmasked in the competition's second week at the time when Stonestreet was a guest panelist as he and Robin Thicke correctly guessed Buck during the final guesses.

36.

Joe Buck is generally regarded as "one of the most heavily criticized" announcers in sports, with various fans complaining that he is biased on his calls towards or against particular teams.

37.

In January 2005, Joe Buck drew fire for his on-air comments during an NFL playoff game between the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers.

38.

Joe Buck's comment indicated that he incorrectly believed that Moss had in fact mooned the fans.

39.

Joe Buck was much more restrained in his call of the New York Jets' Isaiah Crowell using the football to simulate cleaning himself after defecation during a 2018 Thursday Night Football contest against the Cleveland Browns.

40.

In 2007, Joe Buck was scheduled to call only eight regular-season MLB games out of a 26-game schedule for Fox.

41.

In 2008, Joe Buck drew criticism for comments he made during an appearance on ESPN Radio's The Herd with Colin Cowherd, in which he admitted to spending "barely any" time following sporting events he doesn't broadcast and facetiously claimed that he preferred watching The Bachelorette instead.

42.

In June 2015, Joe Buck announced he had quit his Twitter account.

43.

Joe Buck explained that he quit Twitter because he found himself engaging negative people and allowing criticism to affect how he was doing his job.

44.

Joe Buck said the comments were taken out of context and were sarcasm not meant for broadcast.

45.

On January 2,2023, Joe Buck served as the announcer for a Monday Night Football game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals in which Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered sudden cardiac arrest.

46.

Joe Buck claimed four times on the broadcast that despite the life-threatening injury, he had been told the league was adamant to resume play within minutes.

47.

In 2011, shortly after broadcasting Super Bowl XLV for Fox, Joe Buck claimed to have developed a virus on the nerves of his left vocal fold.

48.

In 2016, Joe Buck revealed that the problem was not due to a virus, but rather to vocal cord paralysis likely caused by anesthesia used during multiple hair transplantation procedures.

49.

From 1993 to 2011, Joe Buck was married to Ann Archambault, with whom he has two daughters.

50.

Joe Buck married NFL Network and now ESPN reporter and former Bronco cheerleader Michelle Beisner on April 12,2014.