Joe Buck was answering requests from celebrities even before Jason Benetti began to accept word challenges during live broadcasts.
The Detroit Tigers said earlier this week that, at the players’ request, play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti included a few absurd phrases in a recent broadcast. Some ideas that sprang to me were perpendicular, yellowtail, pineapples, Fortnite, funkytown, and yellowtail. Incredibly, Benetti pulled it all off, solidifying his reputation as one of sports journalism’s top play-by-play commentators.
After reading this, Jerry Reinsdorf might conclude that an announcer isn’t truly excellent if they can incorporate “Funkytown” into a game, but Joe Buck would argue otherwise.
When Buck appeared on ESPN Radio Thursday afternoon with Chris Carlin and Joe Fortenbaugh, he was questioned concerning Benetti’s accomplishment. Carlin enquired as to whether Buck still takes similar on-air challenges, given that he has previously acknowledged to doing so. Buck is the voice of ESPN’s Monday Night Football.
“Every now and then,” Buck said. “That relies on the nature of the friend. If the friend is a well-known individual, such as Vedder, who once shared a term with me that Springsteen had given him, I turned it into a game.
Eddie Vedder and Bruce Springsteen can pull it off, but Buck seems to have outgrown the common people. But now it will always be ingrained in my memory, the image of Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder laughing while watching Monday Night Football and texting Joe Buck something along the lines of, “Say rooty tooty fresh and fruity!”
Buck conceded, “It’s easier to do it on a local broadcast.” Therefore, when one of my buddies would mention a word like ‘Octopus,’ and I was stuck on how to incorporate it, I would just swallow my pride and say, ‘After four, the Cardinals lead the Pirates 4-2, octopus,’ at the end of the inning. It entered in that way. It didn’t make logic, and I had trouble incorporating it.
When Conan O’Brien promised to pay $1,000 to the charity of his choice if Buck could work “jub-jub” into a World Series broadcast, Buck did so during a national broadcast in 2007. And Buck muttered “jub-jub” in the third inning of Game 1.
In 2017, Buck admitted to Graham Bensinger that he had blocked word suggestions from viewers after receiving feedback from other broadcast staff members that it didn’t look good. Horrible. However, Buck continues to appear open to making an exemption for Eddie Vedder and Bruce Springsteen.
