There were more than just TV cameras rolling at American Family Field on Brewers Home Opening Day.
“I mean who wouldn’t want to make a documentary about Bob Uecker?”, says local filmmaker, Michael T. Vollman tells WTMJ’s Sandy Maxx during a recent visit to “What’s On Tap”.
Vollman and co-producer, Steve Farr, set up their cameras in the radio broadcast booth again on Brewers Home Opening Day to get more footage of Ueck behind the scenes for their upcoming documentary, simply titled “Ueck”.
They spent the 2023 baseball season filming Bob Uecker at ballparks and interviewing him at his home. The creative team have been reviewing hours of footage from Uecker’s own VHS cassette collection with some of those videocassettes handed over in brown paper grocery bags by his wife, Judy. These archives and interviews help tell the story of what a cultural phenomenon he has become over the decades.
Vollman describes Uecker’s pop culture impact beyond baseball by saying, “There’s the Hollywood Bob. There’s the ‘Major League’ Bob. And there’s ’The Tonight Show’ Bob. And the ’Mr. Belvedere’ Bob. And…if you talk to younger Bob fans, a lot of them, you know, they know him through professional wrestling more than they do for baseball.”
The baseball world is where Bob Uecker seems to connect most. While filming, Farr has observed that Uecker “has different handshakes with each ball player in the. In the clubhouse and kind of connects with them. He talks to the players moms…kind of builds a relationship with the families and things like that because he knows what it was like to be a ballplayer and the difficulties of it and the positive things of it.
The “Ueck” documentary is still in the filming and production stages with a release date to be determined.
Hear more about the making of the “Ueck” documentary and Bob Uecker’s special way of scoring baseball on the “What’s On Tap” podcast.
