I grew up near Cincinnati. My baseball team was the Reds. But KMOX was such a strong signal out of St. Louis that I have been a Jack Buck fan my whole life. His passing is a sad day for anyone who loves baseball and appreciates the nuances a great announcer can lend to your enjoyment of a game on radio.

I often saw him graciously interacting with fans. He knew he was an ambassador of sorts for baseball.

The Cardinals were my second-favorite team, but as a young kid I certainly didn't tell anyone. You didn't talk about the Cardinals to Reds fans. But when I was going through the radio dials I often picked up a Cardinals game.

At night, they became my "other" team. If the Reds were on the West Coast or were losing and I didn't want to put myself through it, I'd listen to Jack Buck. He quickly became an option for me, an alternative to my own local allegiance.

His voice was so immediately memorable. So many times I listened to him call a game after bedtime. I knew I was in good hands with Jack Buck. His authoritative yet reassuring voice told me he was going to take me through this game and let me know what was going on with my "other" team. He even communicated comfort in a loss. It was OK. There'd be another game tomorrow.

The first time I met him I told him that it was weird hearing his voice without my head on a pillow. He laughed and said he wondered how great it was that he put so many people to sleep. "I don't know if that's a compliment," he said with a laugh. His self-deprecating humor was well-known. You just couldn't put him on a pedestal. He'd be the first guy to start chipping away at the base of it.

 

	Jack Buck reads a poem he wrote to honor Sept. 11 victims.

And he wasn't just personable to me, a colleague in the business. I often saw him graciously interacting with fans. He knew he was an ambassador of sorts for baseball. He knew that real baseball fans around the country knew of him. And he accepted that role with ease, in his job and in his life.

Today's broadcasters will never be on a local broadcast team for 47 years as Jack was with the Cardinals. They want to get to the network level if they can. But Jack broadcast the Cardinals from Stan Musial to Albert Pujols. Jack called his share of national games in the various Super Bowls and World Series that he worked. But he never lost his local roots. This is the end of an era in St. Louis, in more ways than one.

The ultimate goal of any radio announcer resides in what Jack Buck taught us all: He complemented what he saw. He gave you the facts and carefully drew the rest of the picture. He never got in the way. He connected the dots in a baseball game over the radio in an easy, listenable style.

His style, really, was to have no discernible or forced "style." He was just Jack Buck -- and he was the best.