(WLUK) — If you didn’t know his face, you knew his voice.

For generations, Wisconsinites have turned on the radio to hear Bob Uecker. But now, Milwaukee Brewers baseball games just won’t be the same.

90-year-old Uecker died on Thursday morning.

“I put my Brewers flag at half mast,” says self-proclaimed die-hard Brewers fan Rick Wolf.

“I was shocked, I saw it come across my phone this morning. He was a great guy, a jokester for the Brewers, he was entertaining listening to him on the radio,” says local fan Larry Ratajczak.

For almost as long as the Milwaukee Brewers have been the Milwaukee Brewers, amid changing players, coaches, logos, team owners, and stadiums, there has been one constant.

“Mr. Baseball,” says Chris Mehring, who has been the radio broadcaster for the Brewers’ Minor League Affiliate, the Timber Rattlers in Appleton, for more than two decades.”I can always take myself back to Easter Sunday 1987 listening to the Brewers’ comeback against the Rangers with him on the radio.”

Mehring is just one of the countless people who would recognize Bob Uecker’s voice anywhere.

“Just hearing him all my life calling Brewers games,” he says.

Uecker’s mediocre MLB career, which started in his hometown of Milwaukee, lasted just six years before he made the switch to the broadcast booth. Uecker quickly became a treasured Wisconsinite and gained national fame for his dozens of Johnny Carson appearances and for his role in the 1989 hit Major League.

The news of Uecker’s passing Thursday stirred emotions and memories in all baseball lovers.

“It’s kind of like, I’m originally from Chicago, but Harry Caray with the Cubs, you hear voices and how they announce themselves, it makes it all very interesting. How they do the play by plays and if you’re not at the game you can at least understand what he was saying, you know, we’re all getting older and it’s sad to see people go on,” says local Brewers fan Judy Ratajczak.

“Whew, it’s like taking a baseball bat to the forehead,” Mehring says. “Tough way to start the day.”

Mehring says Uecker played a role in his own career.

“To be honest, listening to Bob Uecker on the radio growing up is definitely what got me into — an interest in becoming a broadcaster for baseball.”

In 2022, Mehring hit a milestone. He hadn’t missed a Timber Rattlers game – home or away – in 20 years. Even Ueck was impressed, mentioning it during a Brewers game broadcast.

The two broadcasters had crossed paths a handful of times. Mehring says the Ueck you heard on the radio or saw on TV, that’s really who he was.

“He’s real. I mean, you know, that he lives with every pitch that he called with the Brewers game and you know sometimes they weren’t playing well and you could tell that in his voice, but you could always feel when a brewer hit a game-winning home run and he would say get up, get outta here, gone. You can’t fake that, and I think people feel that.

“I’m very extremely saddened, I know he had a great life, he is going to be missed beyond belief. It hurts, it does,” Wolf adds.