Have you ever turned on a St. Louis Cardinals game, heard Joe Buck’s voice calling plays, and thought, “Well, isn’t he a lucky bastard?”
Turns out, Buck agrees with you.
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See also: Being Buck: Joe Buck Discusses Life Beyond the Broadcast Booth
Buck, son of legendary St. Louis broadcaster Jack Buck, says he can’t shake the feeling he’s stuck following in his father’s footsteps, despite building his own broadcasting career that includes calling the biggest games of the year, the World Series and the Super Bowl.
“When I do the Super Bowl, I still feel like the same 21-year-old who is broadcasting baseball because my dad is Jack Buck, and while that used to hurt to hear, it’s reality,” Buck recently told Ladue News. “You don’t ever outgrow that unless you become an egomaniac and a jerk.”
Buck explores this idea further in his upcoming memoir Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I’m Not Allowed to Say on TV, coming out in November.
Buck first announced the book in May, but this week Left Bank Books announced a special event to celebrate its release: an evening of conversation between Buck and fellow St. Louis native Jon Hamm, the Emmy-winning star of AMC’s Mad Men.
See also: At Home With Joe Buck and Michelle Beisner-Buck
Hamm will talk to Buck about his debut memoir and his life on November 21, just a few days after Buck’s book is released, at the Skip Viragh Center for the Arts at Chaminade College Preparatory School. Tickets for the event, which are available now, are $31 for one person, which includes one copy of the book, or $36 for two people, which includes one book and a $5 rebate towards a second book.
Of course, Hamm, who graduated high school from John Burroughs School, is a huge fan of sports, especially the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Blues. He even offered to take the blame for the Cardinals’ front office worker convicted of hacking into the Houston Astros database out of devotion for the team.
See also: Jon Hamm Says He’ll Take the Fall for Cardinals Hacking, Is a St. Louis Hero
Here’s a preview of Buck’s book, from Penguin Random House:
Sports fans see Joe Buck everywhere: broadcasting one of the biggest games in the NFL every week, doing the World Series every year, announcing the Super Bowl every three years. They know his father, Jack Buck, is a broadcasting legend and that he was beloved in his adopted hometown of Saint Louis.
Yet they have no idea who Joe really is. Or how he got here. They don’t know how he almost blew his career. They haven’t read his funniest and most embarrassing stories or heard about his interactions with the biggest sports stars of this era.
They don’t know how hard he can laugh at himself—or that he thinks some of his critics have a point. And they don’t know what it was really like to grow up in his father’s shadow. Joe and Jack were best friends but it wasn’t that simple. Jack gave Joe his broadcasting start but it wasn’t that easy. And Joe’s childhood as the son of a famous broadcaster was not as idyllic as it seemed.
In Lucky Bastard, Joe takes the reader into the broadcast booth and into his childhood home. Hilarious and occasionally heartbreaking, this is a book that any sports fan will love.
Contact Lindsay Toler by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
