New Documentary ‘Ueck’ Will Be Shown at Milwaukee Film Festival

Bob Uecker. Photo by Steve Paluch (Own work) (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

His career included major league catching, standup comedy, acting in the ABC sitcom “Mr. Belvedere” and 54 years as a Milwaukee Brewers radio broadcaster. He was used to people wanting to hear what he had to say.

So when filmmakers Steve Farr and Michael Vollmann approached him about making a documentary about his life, getting him to agree to have cameras follow him around was the easy part. The challenge was capturing Uecker in his natural form.

“One thing I think was difficult was to get Bob to not perform a little bit when we filmed, because we’d say, ‘No, we’re just filming. Just go about your day. Do what you’d be doing,’” Farr told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “Early on, he would turn it into a bit of a routine, which was fine, but it took him a little while to get used to us being around.”

After years of shooting and months of editing, the documentary “Ueck” is set to premiere Thursday at the Milwaukee Film Festival, with plans for a wider theatrical release this summer.

Brewers fans got a sneak peak of the film at the team’s Opening Day on March 26, when the team aired a 20-minute portion of the 90-minute film for fans in attendance at American Family Field.

It brought the project full-circle for Farr and Vollmann, both Milwaukee residents who grew up rooting for the Brew Crew.

“You really want to do his story justice,” Vollmann said. “There’s so many facets to it, so many different layers to his lifetime and career. We want to definitely honor him, and we want the family to be proud of the film as well.”

The filmmakers interviewed a number of prominent baseball figures including Bud Selig and Joe Torre, along with Brewers manager Pat Murphy and players like Christian Yelich and Brandon Woodruff. They also pulled in archival footage spanning from Uecker’s playing days to his regular appearances on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.”

Farr and Vollmann had already started shooting the movie when Uecker was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2023.

It didn’t change the scope of the project much, but the co-directors said it did cut down on how much access they got to “Mr. Baseball” outside of the ballpark.

“There’s a dramatic arc in the film that deals with his diagnosis, but this isn’t a film about that,” Farr said. “The Brewers have played some great baseball over the last few years, and so that became a little bigger part of the story than I think we thought it was going to be.”

He said the 2024 season is the backbone of the film, which they keep coming back to as they tell the story of Uecker’s life. It was his final season announcing games for the team before his death in January of 2025.

It was clear to Vollmann and Farr that even after his five decades of broadcasting, all Ueck wanted to do was be around baseball.

“That’s one of the things that drew us to the story: Why does he keep doing this at age 90, when most people would have been retired for 15-20 years?” Farr said. “He would say, ‘I don’t know what else I’d do.’ We realized that wasn’t just a glib answer. It was really the truth. What else would he do? He was at home when he was at the ballpark.”

Listen to the WPR report

New documentary ‘Ueck’ found Bob Uecker most at home at the ballpark was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.