Remembering the best Bob Uecker quotes from Major League and beyond

Baseball has seen plenty of colorful characters over the years, but it's never had anyone quite like legendary Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker, who passed away on Thursday at the age of 90.

“Bob was the genuine item: always the funniest person in any room he was in, and always an outstanding ambassador for our National Pastime," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. "We are grateful for this baseball life like no other, and we will never forget him."

A backup catcher and lifetime .200 hitter wouldn't be a natural choice to earn the nickname "Mr. Baseball". But Johnny Carson dubbed Uecker just that, and for good reason: The Milwaukee native embodied everything fans love about the sport, whether he was starring in Miller Lite commercials, pivoting to Hollywood in the "Major League" movies, authoring two books, hosting Wrestlemania or appearing in Sports Illustrated in a speedo.

Ueck did just about everything in a career that spanned decades and ended in the Baseball Hall of Fame. And while it's impossible to encapsulate his impact on not just baseball but all of American culture, we owe it to him to try — and really, Uecker loved nothing more than getting a good laugh.

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"Juuuuuuuust a bit outside"

Uecker was a ballplayer and then a broadcaster by trade, but he might be best remembered for his turn as Cleveland play-by-play voice Harry Doyle in both Major League and Major League 2. He was a natural on camera, and you could watch him fill the air in between some truly terrible baseball all day long.

The next time a pitcher misses just a bit outside, pour one out.

'The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up'

Before he became a star of stage and screen, he was a ballplayer — and by his own admission, not a very good one. Signed by the then-Milwaukee Braves, his hometown team, back in 1956, Uecker eventually made it all the way to the Majors six years later, spending parts of six seasons with Milwaukee, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Atlanta. And while making the Show is a remarkable accomplishment for just about anyone, Uecker never let it go to his head; you could fill a book with all the one-liners he came up with to put himself down: He once joked that he'd gotten death threats during his career — from his mother.

'I must be in the front row'

Uecker was a natural for show business, appearing on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show over 100 times. He also helmed an instantly iconic series of Miller Lite commercials; on paper, "I must be in the front row" is just a bit of ad copy, but in Uecker's hands it becomes a bit of delusional hilarity.

'Get up, get up, get outta here, gone'

Of course, no matter how famous he became and no matter what other projects he embarked on, Uecker always came back to the Brewers. He was Milwaukee's primary play-by-play voice for 54 years, calling the team's run to the 1982 World Series in addition to doing national duty for ABC and NBC. In true Harry Doyle fashion, he rode through a lot of bad baseball over that span, which is what made it so sweet that he finally got to see the team get back to the postseason after a 25-year drought in 2008. His home run catchphrase — 'get up, get up, get outta here, gone!' — never sounded better than it did when Ryan Braun's eighth-inning homer against the Chicago Cubs clinched the team a Wild Card spot.