Next month, Joe Buck will be calling both Thursday Night Football games and MLB postseason games for FOX. October has to be a crazy month for Buck because he is constantly traveling to call some of the most-watched events on the sports calendar.
On the latest episode of the Just Getting Started with Rich Eisen podcast, Buck got into his broadcasting journey that started about the same time Eisen started his career in Northern California. Buck mentioned that his relationships with both John Smoltz and Troy Aikman are never more important than they are in October.
“I know that if I’ve been gone from Troy and I walk in and I do a Thursday game and I’ve been doing Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday baseball, he’s ready to go and he knows I’m ready to go. I can lean on him a little bit that week. Then, I come back to baseball, and either I’m tired leading into the game. If I’m trying to scramble and get ready, I can lean on John on the baseball side. That personal relationship that I have with both guys is what makes that month not only work, but fun.”
Joe Buck got to call his first World Series for FOX at 27-years-old. While he was extatic to be in New York and Atlanta for that World Series, that was never his goal.
“I wanted to be my dad and to me in my mind, being my dad meant being the Cardinals announcer. Anything beyond that was stuff I never even thought of.”
Buck began calling football games for FOX in 1994. He told Eisen he had never called football before. Fortunately, there was his dad…and this time, his mom too.
“I had done MLB at that point for 4 years, I did minor league baseball for 2 years prior to that, I had done some other things, but I’d never done football. When FOX got the rights, they sent a call out to agents, to people to have their clients audition. I went out there for an audition based on my mom giving my soon-to-be boss, Ed Goren’s wife, Patty, my baseball tape…That got me in the door for the audition and then I worked on calling football with my dad in his living room at spring training 1994.”
“I flew to LA and I went into the studio and Bob Stenner is talking to me in my headset and I’m sitting next to Tim Green and we call a game off a television monitor. I knew it was going well, but I walked out of the audition and George Krieger, who was one of the bosses at the time at FOX, said you better get an agent because we are going to hire you…It was kind of crazy.”