That's A Winner

A few years ago it became very fashionable in certain portions of my world for people to wear and stick on their car bumpers a variety of items bearing the logo "WWJD." Said items were to cause the bearer to spend time before any decision contemplating the question, "What Would Jesus Do?" The only problem with fashionable things is that followers of fads do not care about the original significance of the fashionable thing; they just care that they be seen wearing the fashionable thing, and thus, fitting in with The Crowd.
Irony: wanting to fit in with The Crowd, when it was The Crowd who called for Jesus' death.
All of that said, I am the proud owner of a handful of stickers that bear the letters, "WWJBD?" These stickers came from St. Louis. They pose the question, acronymically (HEY-a new word!), What Would Jack Buck Do?
If you don't know that Jack Buck was the Cardinals' play-by-play man on KMOX, you shouldn't be reading this little reflection on my hobby. If you do know, then you probably had the great joy of listening to the best broadcaster I have every known anything about. Jack Buck was gold. He was smart. He was funny. He had THAT voice. He knew the game, and loved it. Perhaps the only thing he loved more than baseball and broadcasting was people. Everyone I have ever met who met Jack Buck tells a wonderful story about a tremendous man. Joe Buck's current commercial, in response to a bartender's question about who Joe would have a beer with if he could choose anyone, tells his family's perspective on Mr. Buck.
Jack Buck raised millions of dollars for churches and charities, but was never pompous about his piety. He was frequently the most accomplished, smartest man in the room, but his New England roots and adopted Midwest manner kept him humble. Jack developed Parkinson's Disease late in his life. He didn't hide from the world. He put people at ease about his tremor by opening conversations with a self-deprecating line: "What's shaking, besides me?"
Jack Buck received the Ford Frick award in 1987, granting him admission into the National Baseball Hall of Fame (one of the eight Halls of Fame where Jack is counted a member). In his induction speech, he showed his feet were still firmly planted on the ground. He talked about his greatest joy at work being the ability to share baseball with "those who are exiled from the game." He mentioned people in the hospital, the elderly, those far away in the military services. He would never have called it by its name, but what he found most rewarding was ministry with those who needed him most.
He said one more thing in that speech. He told the gathered throngs and millions of others listening or reading the speeches later that as much as he appreciated the honor, he shouldn't have been there ahead of Harry Caray. Two summers later, Harry was inducted. By the late 1980's Harry Caray wasn't the announcer he had been in his prime in St. Louis. Harry was beloved in Chicago, but made fun of in many other parts of the country, sometimes cruelly so. Jack reminded baseball that Harry had been The Man in the broadcast booth for many years; baseball responded. You just had to pay attention when Jack Buck spoke.
I thought about Jack last night. As Adam Wainwright finished off the Padres for a trip to the Cardinals' third National League Championship Series in four years, I didn't have to listen very hard to hear a very familiar voice shouting again, "And that's a winner!" Because if it takes one to know one, Jack Buck knew winners.