In over three decades as a sports broadcaster, Joe Buck has become one of the most recognizable voices in American sports – taking plenty of flack from fans along the way.
With baseball’s offseason in full swing and fans focused in on hot stove rumors, it’s also the time of year for additions to the Baseball Hall of Fame, with the results of writers’ ballots to be released next month while Jeff Kent was elected to Cooperstown as part of the Eras Committee.
Beneath the addition of players is also the honoring of the sport’s broadcasters, with the Ford C. Frick Award standing as the most prestigious honor. The award is gifted to a broadcaster each year who is honored for their “major contributions to baseball,” with the honor awarded each year since 1978.
Beating out a handful of other deserving finalists for the 2026 honor was longtime broadcaster Joe Buck, who becomes the second-youngest recipient of the award ever at 56 years old, only older than Vin Scully was he won the award in 1982.
While the honor for Buck is focused on baseball, his voice has been the ubiquitious backdrop of many of the country’s most important sporting events over the past 30 years – and it’s come with plenty of undeserved vitriol from fans.
As a formerly aspiring play-by-play broadcaster-turned-writer, I spent much of my childhood and adolescence looking up to the voices I regarded to be the most exciting and fitting for the big moments across sports. In addition to the unique excitement that iconic announcers such as Mike ‘Doc’ Emrick and Mike Breen bring to the table, Buck always offered a stoic sense of stability, finding a voice later in his career to fit the big moments perfectly.
It isn’t lost out on me that play-by-play announcing is an exclusive and elite profession at its highest levels, one where nepotism will certainly do you plenty of favors. Joe Buck is of course the son of fellow Ford C. Frick Award recipient Jack Buck, and it’s far from the only father-son duo in play-by-play announcing.
Tune into the NBA on NBC and you’ll surely hear the voice of Noah Eagle, who is a few months my junior and has already compiled an impressive resume of broadcasting experience that includes a Super Bowl on Nickelodeon and an NFL postseason game – following in the footsteps of his father, iconic football and basketball voice Ian Eagle.
The same can be said for Kenny Albert, himself a recognizable voice with decades of experience calling all four major professional sports, continuing the media legacy of his father Marv, primarily known for his decades calling the NBA on both NBC and TNT.
Similar to Noah Eagle, the opportunities came fast and early for Buck. At just 25 years old, Buck became the youngest broadcaster to call a full slate of NFL games, joining the NFL on Fox team upon their initial contract with the league in 1994.
Just two years later, Buck became the youngest broadcaster to call a World Series, as he took over the lead role for MLB on Fox in 1996 and called his first Fall Classic that year. Outside of the 1997 and 1999 series’, which were broadcasted on NBC and called by Bob Costas, Buck broadcasted every World Series from 1996 to 2021, the latter year marking his departure from Fox Sports.
Over that 25-year timespan, Buck became the preeminent voice in the most popular American sports, holding the role as Fox’s lead broadcaster for both the NFL and MLB. As Buck’s prominence as a broadcaster grew, so did criticism from fans – who have thrown every insult in the book in Buck’s direction, though most of the complaints either revolve around a perception that Buck is boring or biased against your favorite team.
The latter complaint is one that’s levied in essentially any broadcaster’s direction when they heap praise on the opponent of a fan’s favorite team, but the former complaint honestly does have some legs to it – or it at least did.
I’m personally of the opinion that Buck truly found his voice as a big-event broadcaster in the early 2010’s, following a period where he was known for a rather subdued and monotone delivery in big moments.
Perhaps his most infamous call in this regard came during the 2002 NFC Championship Game, which included Buck saying “Mitchell” three times – the last name of Eagles returner Brian Mitchell – and nothing else during an electric 70-yard kickoff return to open the game.
This delivery and style seemed to be the norm for Buck throughout a good chunk of the 2000’s, a phenomenon that made much more sense when Buck admitted earlier this year that he tried to mimic the sound and style of the late Pat Summerall, a longtime NFL play-by-play announcer and former player who was known for his unflappable delivery that almost invoked the sound of Walter Kronkite in the broadcasting booth.
It’s not as if this simple style could be totally devoid of excitement – Buck showed as much later on in the decade in his baseball calls, finding a way to make plays sound significant without blowing out your eardrum.
Within a few years however, Buck clearly began to find his unique style that has helped maintain his status as a premier voice in American sports. The 2010’s featured many of Buck’s most recognizable calls on both the gridiron and the diamond, while making the criticisms thrown his direction feel more off-base.
Take it from the wild obstruction play that ended Game 3 of the 2013 World Series – a chaotic and confusing moment for fans, players and broadcasters alike. Neglecting the Summerall-esque style of the past, Buck shows both excitement and composure, remaining attentive enough to quickly explain what had transpired after the play was over.
As a fan, Buck’s broadcasting would never be more important to me than it was in 2016, when he was the primary voice for the NLCS and World Series as the Chicago Cubs embarked on their quest to end a 108-year championship drought.
Despite Buck’s pedigree as a St. Louis guy through and through who often drew the ire of Cubs fans, I can’t think of a single national broadcaster that could have done a better job than what Buck did during the 2016 postseason – making the biggest sports moments of my life truly feel as big and as exciting as they were.
In the three most important calls of that postseason – Miguel Montero’s go-ahead grand slam of Game 1 in the NLCS, the series-ending double play in Game 6 of the NLCS and the play that broke the curse in Game 7 of the World Series, Buck provided the perfect soundtrack for seismic moments.
There is no bigger moment a broadcaster could ever come across than what Buck was tasked with in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, with two historic droughts on the line. His call on the final play will forever be one of my favorites in all of sports – Buck’s risk in saying “The Cubs…” as soon as Bryant fielded the ball paid off tremendously, and I don’t think another television broadcaster could have made the moment feel as monumental as it truly was.
From that point on, Buck has never been shy to let out excitement when the moment calls for it, while still striking a delicate balance and never having his voice take over a broadcast in the way that a high-octane announcer such as Gus Johnson might.
Yet the call that Buck singles out as his greatest ever was one of unbelievable energy and excitement, with his call echoing what fans across the country were feeling – pure disbelief (The call can be found in the hyperlink above, since the NFL doesn’t allow video embedding).
In the years since, Buck has taken a bit of a step back as the major voice of the NFL and MLB. Upon Buck’s exit from Fox after 2021, him and longtime broadcast partner Troy Aikman moved over to ESPN/ABC, where they have called Monday Night Football since. Kevin Burkhardt has taken Buck’s place as Fox’s lead NFL voice, while Joe Davis holds the distinction for the station’s MLB coverage.
Buck has also taken a step away from baseball, calling just one MLB game since joining ESPN in 2022 – an Opening Day game between the Milwaukee Brewers and New York Yankees in 2025.
This more limited role Buck has taken on has allowed him to continue to build on his legacy as a big-moment announcer in football while acknowledging that his career is already decorated enough to hang up the mic for good if he ever wanted to.
Fans can claim that Buck is biased and that he doesn’t really care about sports – but those assertions are patently false to those who have intently listened to his broadcasts across the two leagues over the years. If Buck can have all the excitement in the world for the archrival Cubs winning it all and breaking the curse, it feels like some mental gymnastics on the part of fans to believe he has it out for their team.
There’s no question that some of the other Ford C. Frick Award nominees for this year were also very deserving of the honor, and I firmly believe that the likes of Brian Anderson, Gary Cohen and Duane Kuiper will be honored in Cooperstown sooner rather than later.
Yet Buck’s addition to the Baseball Hall of Fame is both deserving and necessary. It’s impossible to tell the story of this era of baseball without Buck’s voice, which will forever serve as a fitting soundtrack to baseball moments that will live forever in the minds of countless fans.
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