Joe Buck

Buck (left) speaks with Pres. Obama at the 2009 All-Star game.

Joseph Francis Buck

• School Indiana University
• High School St. Louis Country Day School

• Born April 25, 1969 in St. Petersburg, FL USA

Biographical Information

The son of legendary broadcaster Jack Buck, Joe Buck followed his father into the broadcast booth. He grew up in St. Louis, MO and attended Indiana University before becoming a radio and television broadcaster first for the AAA Louisville Redbirds, and then for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1991. Since 1996, he has also worked as a play-by-play broadcaster for the FOX network, and for a number of years was teamed with former major leaguer Tim McCarver on the network's highest profile baseball telecasts. When he broadcast his first World Series in 1996, he was the youngest man to do so for a national broadcaster.

Buck attained a certain notoriety joining broadcasters like Bob Uecker in beer ads. Buck's ads with the fictional Leon a send-up of multi-sport star Deion Sanders. This led to the unfortunate product placement of Leon during Game 3 of the 2004 World Series in Busch Stadium.

Buck was affected by a nerve ailment in his vocal chords in 2011 that almost made him lose his voice. He made his return to the booth for the 2011 All-Star Game, partnering McCarver again.

He and McCarver worked their last World Series together in 2013, after which McCarver retired from national broadcasts. Harold Reynolds and Tom Verducci joined Buck to compose the network's primary baseball announcing team in 2014 and 2015, then in 2016 the network returned to a two-man crew with John Smoltz being Joe's sole partner in the booth.

In spite of his high-profile baseball assignment, Buck is probably even better known as a football announcer, being the lead play-by-play announcer for FOX's NFL broadcasts. When he worked his first NFL games for FOX in 1994, he was the youngest announcer to have worked an NFL game on national television. Many baseball fans consider that Buck is a better football than baseball announcer, as his style on baseball telecasts is detached and distant and shows little apparent passion for the game.