Joe Buck set for ‘challenge’ in return to Cardinals booth

That was just part of the job for Buck when he was Fox Sports’ top play-by-play broadcaster for its Major League Baseball and National Football League coverage in his nearly 28-year stint with the network, juggling both sports in many grueling Octobers when he’d bounce from one to the other and city to city with few days off over a three-week stretch.

He’s still firmly planted in the national spotlight as he’s headed toward his third season as the voice of ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” telecasts, one of the most iconic series in sports broadcasting history.

So with a resume like that, stepping into a local baseball broadcast booth for a cameo appearance would be like sipping a glass of fine wine — an easy, enjoyable and relaxing experience, right?

Buck is a bit apprehensive as he prepares to return to his roots, joining Bally Sports Midwest lead Cardinals broadcaster Chip Caray on Friday for the call of the Cards’ game at home against the Chicago Cubs, which begins at 7:15 p.m. That follows a pregame show that starts at 6:30 and is set to be heavily oriented toward the family ties aspect. (Outside the BSM coverage area, MLB Network shows the Bally production starting at 7 p.m.).

Buck broadcast his hometown Cardinals on radio and TV at the beginning of his career but gradually deceased his number of those appearances before pulling out altogether following the 2007 season.

Although he called numerous Cards games for Fox over the years, including four World Series appearances, it will be fun for him to return to as a local announcer as memories will be rekindled of his father Jack Buck’s legendary partnership with Chip’s grandpa Harry Caray calling the Cards more than half a century ago.

“I don’t think there ever was a better booth than that,” baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Costas said Thursday on MLB Network.

Calling local baseball will be a bit of an adjustment for a Joe Buck, a guy who hasn’t done it for more than a decade and a half and who rightfully takes a “don’t care who wins” approach on national telecasts. But for one night, he can pull for the Cards on the air, just like he roots for the Blues when he’s in the stands at Enterprise Center. But it might not be easy at first.

“To get back into that mode after so much time will be a challenge,” he said, comparing it to stepping into the fantasy play-by-play booth the Cardinals have had for fans to get a sample of broadcasting a contest.

After broadcasting about 3,400 baseball games including ones in the minors, Buck hasn’t done so since announcing the final contest of the 2021 World Series. He was planning to return to Fox the following season for the final year of his contract, but the “Monday Night Football” opportunity unexpectedly arose. After his longtime NFL partner Troy Aikman made the move from Fox for the 2022 season, that network was gracious enough to let Buck leave a year early in order to keep his longtime on-air partnership rolling.

“I had no idea that would be my last call for Fox or the last World Series I’d do. It came to an abrupt end,” Buck said. “So the best way to scratch the itch is with the Cardinals, where I started.”

Buck has been well aware for years that some Cardinals fans consider him a traitor because when doing a national telecast he doesn’t call it from a St. Louis slant, he talks about both teams and raises his voice accordingly when the Cards’ opponent does something exciting. As all network broadcasters do.

He’s heard the “your dad is rolling over in his grave” line that some Cards fans sling when saying he has disrespected his father’s long association with the team. But the truth is that his dad, who died in 2002, was proud of Joe’s ascent at the national level and would have been ecstatic about how that career has reached the highest level in the ensuing decades.

A few months after Jack died, Joe replaced Pat Summerall as Fox’s lead NFL announcer, alongside Aikman, and they have gone on to smash the record for longevity as a network’s top announcer team for the league — this will be their 23rd year together, two more than Summerall and John Madden rang up.

Those tossing around such “dad would be disgusted” claims probably forget (or simply don’t know) that Jack Buck did a lot of national broadcasting, too, and took a down-the-middle approach on those — and also faced backlash when he did two World Series on national TV from the teams’ fan bases because he wasn’t slanting his commentary their way. Legendary Dodgers announcer Vin Scully got it, too, when he had network assignments. And that was before the arrival of social media, which can turn a campfire into an inferno of negativity.

So Joe knows his mere presence Friday will rile some viewers.

“Oh my God, they’ll say, ‘The Cardinals hater is coming to the Cardinals booth!’” he said. “But they are completely different jobs, doing national games and local ones. A lot of ways, local ones are more fun to do. … (Network broadcasts) are a completely different mindset.”

Buck said those who think he has been anti-Cards “couldn’t be further from the truth. I was pro-Fox, pro-career. … You have a job to do.”

His job will be different from the Fox approach on Friday, and it is not lost on him that he’ll working in a stadium that still honors his father.

“Dad’s face is painted on the (outfield) wall — that’s pretty cool,” he said, adding that those who watch likely will notice a difference from his national work.

“I’m not going to be over-the-top Cardinals, but the subtle tone in my voice will (let people) know who I represent,” he said.

Caray normally does play-by-play for entire games, with either Brad Thompson or Jim Edmonds providing commentary. But because Buck also is a play-by-play guy, the plan for Friday calls for him to call four innings (the third, fourth, fifth and seventh) and Caray to do the rest. So each thus will serve in the unfamiliar role as an analyst for the portion of the game they’re not on the lead microphone.

Someone more familiar with the commentator’s role, former Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright, is serving as an analyst on some Fox regional baseball telecasts this season and has his first Cards assignment on Saturday. That’s for the second game of their series against the Cubs (6:15 p.m. on KTVI, Channel 2 locally), and the contest goes to 23% of the nation with the rest getting the Dodgers-Reds matchup.

That comes a day after there will be an additional adjustment for Buck, who said he is not overpreparing for the game because he wants it to come naturally, although he was doing some homework on the Cubs on Thursday and has watched many Cardinals games this year.

“I have not called a game in the pitch-clock era,” he said. “So we’ll see how that goes.”

Caray expects his partner for the night to have a smooth transition and expects to have a fun broadcast. In fact, he’s already ribbing Buck about his absence from the baseball broadcast booth.

“I’ll remind him that there still are three outs in an inning, that four balls is a walk,” Caray quipped.

Buck has a lot of free time on his hands with his ESPN deal, which reportedly avenges about $15 million annually over five years. He hasn’t had a broadcasting assignment since calling an NFL playoff game in January, although he has made occasional guest appearance on some shows and done public speaking.

So it should be fun for Buck to step back into a booth, in a relaxed atmosphere, as he and Caray revive the family relationship from an iconic Cardinals radio-broadcast partnership that spanned 15 seasons over 16 years that ended in 1969 and included three World Series years.

Buck is looking at Friday’s festivities as most likely a one-time appearance.

“I can’t imagine this leads into anything more,” he said but did not rule out a another appearance at some point. “We’ll see how this goes and what the response is. I’m just Chip’s plus-one for the night.”

Bally Sports general manger Jack Donovan also hedged a bit.

“At this moment in time, there are no plans” for a return engagement, he said.

Buck, 55, is a relatively young man in sportscasting terms and has three NFL seasons to run on his ESPN contact. He hopes to have another five years after that, which would take him to 63. Could a return to baseball, the family business, be possible then?

“We’ll see,” he said. “It takes two sides for that to happen. I’m not expecting the doors to fling open.”

But the doors to the Bally booth will swing open Friday for Buck.

“I can’t wait,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to this.”

As they say in the broadcast business, “Media Views” is going “on assignment” — meaning “off” — next week and returns June 7.