Before Fox Buck called play-by-play for the then -
Louisville Redbirds, a
minor league affiliate of the Cardinals, and was a reporter for
ESPN's coverage of the
Triple-A All-Star Game in 1989. In 1991, he did reporting for St Louis' CBS affiliate
KMOV. Also, in
1991 Buck began broadcasting for the Cardinals on local television and
KMOX Radio, filling in while his father was working on
CBS telecasts. In the 1992–93 season, he was the play-by-play voice for
University of Missouri basketball broadcasts. Buck continued to call Cardinals games after being hired by Fox Sports, initially with his father on KMOX and later on
FSN Midwest television. As his network duties increased, however, his local workload shrank, and before the
2008 season, it was announced that he would no longer be calling Cardinals telecasts for FSN Midwest. This marked the first time since
1960 that a member of the Buck family was not part of the team's broadcasting crew.
Fox Sports (1994–2021) Hiring at Fox In
1994, Buck was hired by
Fox, and at the age of 25 became the youngest man ever to announce a regular slate of
National Football League (NFL) games on network television.
Major League Baseball on Fox and
Tim McCarver (
left) during the
2009 MLB All-Star Game in St. Louis In 1996, he was named Fox's lead play-by-play voice for
Major League Baseball, teaming with
Tim McCarver, who had previously worked with his father on CBS. That year, he became the youngest man to do a national broadcast (for all nine innings and games, as a network employee as opposed to simply being a representative of one of the participating teams) for a
World Series, surpassing
Sean McDonough, who called the
1992 World Series for
CBS at the age of 30. McDonough had replaced Jack Buck as CBS's lead baseball play-by-play man after he was fired in late 1991. On September 8, 1998, Buck called
Mark McGwire's 62nd
home run that broke
Roger Maris' single-season record. The game was nationally televised live in prime time on Fox. It was a rarity for a nationally televised regular season game not to be aired on
cable since the end of the
Monday/
Thursday Night Baseball era on
ABC in 1989. During Fox's broadcast of the
2002 World Series, Buck paid implicit tribute to his father, who had died a few months earlier (he had read the eulogy at his father's funeral) by calling the final out of Game 6 (which tied the series at 3–3, and thus ensured there would be a Game 7 broadcast the next night) with the phrase, "We'll see you tomorrow night." This was the same phrase with which Jack Buck had famously called
Kirby Puckett's home run off
Braves pitcher Charlie Leibrandt, which ended Game 6 of the
1991 World Series. Since then, Joe has continued to use this phrase at appropriate times, including Game 4 of the
2004 ALCS, in which the
Boston Red Sox famously rallied off
New York Yankees closer
Mariano Rivera in the 9th inning to avoid elimination. When
David Ortiz's walk-off home run finally won it for the Red Sox in the 12th inning, Buck uttered, "We'll see you later tonight," alluding to the fact that the game had extended into the early morning. Most famously however, he also used the phrase at the end of Game 6 of the
2011 World Series when the
Cardinals'
David Freese hit a walk-off home run in the 11th inning against the
Rangers to send the series to a seventh game (it was 20 years and a day since Kirby Puckett's home run). The similarity of both the call and the game situation resulted in mentions on national news broadcasts. Buck also paid tribute to his late father during the
2006 World Series by calling the final out of Game 5 with the phrase "St. Louis has a World Series winner", which echoed his father's line "And that's a winner, that's a winner, a World Series winner for the Cardinals!" at the end of the
1982 World Series. Another notable
Red Sox game in the ALCS was in , Game 2 against the
Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park. The Red Sox were trailing 5–1 in the bottom of the eighth inning, with the bases loaded with David Ortiz at-bat. Ortiz hit a game-tying
grand slam off Tigers' closer
Joaquín Benoit. His call: "Hard hit into right, back at the wall," and then he calls, "TIE GAME!" as the ball flies over
Torii Hunter, who flipped over the outfield wall. Buck also called the final out of three World Series in which the Red Sox,
White Sox, and
Cubs ended the longest championship droughts in 2004, 2005, and 2016, respectively. His calls were: • "Back to Foulke. Red Sox fans have longed to hear it. The Boston Red Sox are world champions." • "Tying run at second, two out, Palmeiro, over the head of Jenks, Uribe charges, throws, OUT! And the White Sox have won the World Series! Juan Uribe with a play, charging it, throwing it, and the White Sox celebrate, their first title in eighty-eight years!” • "Here's the 0-1. This is gonna be a tough play, Bryant, the Cubs...WIN THE WORLD SERIES! Bryant makes the play! It's over, and the Cubs have finally won it all! 8-7 in 10!" Later with Fox, Buck called a limited selection of regular-season games each year (typically featuring big-market teams such as the
Yankees,
Red Sox,
Dodgers,
Cardinals in which he called games for, and/or Cubs), as well as the
All-Star Game, one of the
League Championship Series, and the
World Series. From 2016 to 2021, he was paired with color analyst
John Smoltz and field reporter
Ken Rosenthal. Besides working with
Tim McCarver for 18 seasons (1996–2013), Buck also worked with former MLB player and current MLB Network/Fox Sports analyst
Harold Reynolds and baseball insider
Tom Verducci for 2 seasons (2014–2015). About a month or two after the
2015 World Series, Reynolds and Verducci were demoted to the #2 team and John Smoltz moved up from the #2 team (with
Matt Vasgersian) to take Reynolds and Verducci's places. Between 1996 and 2021, Buck called 24
World Series and 22
All-Star Games for Fox, the most of any play-by-play announcer on network television. As the lead play-by-play announcer for MLB on Fox, Buck called games between the
New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox that were broadcast on Fox and FS1. He called many notable moments in the rivalry, including
Aaron Boone's walk off home run in Game 7 of the
2003 ALCS, saying "The Boston Red Sox...were five outs away in the eighth inning, leading by three, as Boone hits it to deep left. That might send the Yankees to the World Series. Boone the hero of Game 7!" and the Red Sox historic comeback
the following year, calling "This would be the fifth pennant for the Red Sox...since that 1918 season, here it is, ground ball to second, Reese, the Boston Red Sox...have won the pennant."
NFL on Fox in 2018 Soon after arriving at Fox, Buck became the play-by-play man on Fox's #4
NFL broadcast team, with
Tim Green as his color commentator. After four years, he stopped doing NFL games to concentrate on his baseball duties full-time. During the 2001 season, Buck occasionally filled in for
Curt Menefee as Fox's number-six play-by-play man. Buck became Fox's top play-by-play man in
2002, replacing
Pat Summerall. For many seasons, he was teamed with
Troy Aikman as
color commentator and
Erin Andrews as the
sideline reporter. (Buck also worked with
Cris Collinsworth from 2002 to 2004, before the latter's move to
Showtime,
NFL Network, and
NBC.) Buck is only the third announcer to handle a television network's lead MLB and NFL coverage in the same year (following
NBC's
Curt Gowdy and
ABC's
Al Michaels). By 2002, his Fox duties forced him to cut his local
Cardinals schedule to 25 games. (Eventually, Buck left the Cardinals altogether to join Fox Sports "full-time" in 2008.) Notable games he called included
Super Bowl XLII,
Miracle at the New Meadowlands,
Super Bowl LI, the
Minneapolis Miracle, and the
final Green Bay Packers home game in Milwaukee at
County Stadium. During the
2006 season, Buck briefly hosted Fox's pre-game show
Fox NFL Sunday, with him and
Curt Menefee jointly replacing
James Brown. To accommodate his involvement, the show began to broadcast on-site from the location of Fox's top game of the week. In 2007, Buck stepped down as host to focus on his play-by-play duties, and
Fox NFL Sunday reverted to primarily being broadcast from Fox Sports' studios in Los Angeles.
Two-sport, same-day doubleheader On October 14, 2012, Buck called a doubleheader, first with the
New York Giants-
San Francisco 49ers game at
Candlestick Park at 1:25 p.m. PDT, then traveled via
trolley for the seven-mile journey up the west shore of the
San Francisco Bay to call Game 1 of the
NLCS between the
St. Louis Cardinals and the
San Francisco Giants at
AT&T Park at 5:15 p.m. PDT. The opportunity presented itself again on October 28, 2018, when Fox would carry the
Green Bay Packers and
Los Angeles Rams from the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as its featured NFL game before Game 5 of the
2018 World Series between the
Boston Red Sox and the
Los Angeles Dodgers, to be played five miles away at
Dodger Stadium. However, Buck chose to concentrate on baseball, citing
traffic concerns in Los Angeles and already being busy calling the NFL and MLB simultaneously.
Thom Brennaman, who had served as Buck's fill-in during the MLB postseason in the past, handled the Packers-Rams game.
USGA tournaments In April 2014, it was announced that Buck would team with
Greg Norman to anchor Fox's
new package of
United States Golf Association telecasts, most prominently the
U.S. Open tournament. The pair made their broadcast debut at the
Franklin Templeton Shootout (an event also hosted by Norman) on December 12–14, 2014. Norman was fired by Fox and replaced with
Paul Azinger in 2016.
HBO Sports (2009–2010) On February 5, 2009, Buck signed with
HBO to host a sports-based talk show for the network called
Joe Buck Live, with a format similar to that of
Costas Now, the monthly HBO program previously hosted by
Bob Costas. The show's debut on June 15, 2009, made national headlines due to the tension-filled banter between Buck and guest
Artie Lange, a comedian from
The Howard Stern Show, who made several jokes at Buck's expense. Two more episodes aired in 2009. In March 2010, Buck told a St. Louis radio station that HBO might be planning to cancel
Joe Buck Live, adding that he "won't miss" the program and that it involved "a lot more effort and hassle than I ever expected". HBO subsequently confirmed the show's cancellation to
Broadcasting & Cable.
ESPN/ABC (2022–present) On March 16, 2022,
ESPN announced that it had signed Buck and Aikman to a multi-year deal with ESPN, which saw them become the new lead broadcast team of
Monday Night Football beginning in the
2022 NFL season, and also work on projects for
ESPN+. The move ended their 20-season tenure as Fox's lead NFL broadcast team. As compensation for Buck leaving Fox Sports with one year left on his contract, ESPN sublicensed one of its
Big Ten college football games for the
2022 season to Fox. In May 2022, Buck made his on-air debut at ESPN during the
2022 PGA Championship, hosting an
alternate broadcast on
ESPN2 and ESPN+ produced by
Peyton and
Eli Manning, featuring ESPN golf analyst Michael Collins and other celebrity guests. In 2022, Buck was offered to fill in for an ESPN-broadcast MLB game as well, but declined, telling a
Sports Illustrated podcast that he was no longer interested in calling baseball, since "I feel like I've done all I could do there. If someday I wanna go back and call a few games—maybe. But I don't have that itch." In 2025, ESPN announced that Buck would call an MLB
Opening Day game that season featuring the
Milwaukee Brewers and
New York Yankees with
Joe Girardi and
Bill Schroeder.
Other notable appearances In the late 1990s, Buck hosted a weekly sports news show, ''Goin' Deep'', for
Fox Sports Net cable. He also called
horse racing and professional
bass fishing events early in his Fox career, as well as the network's first
Cotton Bowl Classic telecast in
1999. Since 2001, Buck has hosted the "Joe Buck Classic", a celebrity pro-am
golf tournament that is played each May to raise money for
St. Louis Children's Hospital. In 2007, Buck filmed a pilot episode for a prospective late-night talk and comedy program with former
Saturday Night Live writer and director
Matt Piedmont. Piedmont and Buck wrote and produced the pilot with Piedmont directing, filming in New York City and Los Angeles, and featuring
Molly Shannon,
David Spade, and
Paul Rudd. Buck co-hosted the program with Abebe Adusmussui, an actual New York City taxi driver. The pilot was not picked up as a series, however. Buck has also appeared in various national television
commercials for such clients as
Holiday Inn and
Budweiser beer. One of the more memorable spots for the latter had Buck goaded into using the
catchphrase, "Slamma-lamma-ding-dong!" A 2008 commercial for
National Car Rental had him using the catchphrase, "Now that's a good call". Buck has also done local commercials in the St. Louis market for the Suntrup chain of automobile dealerships. He also contributes occasional opinion pieces to
The Sporting News, and is a key contributor on
KSLG/Team 1380 on the
ITD Morning After program in St. Louis. In the week before calling
Super Bowl XLVIII, Buck starred in a Web video for
Funny or Die in which he tries to report on the game from New York City but continues to get interrupted by locals who dislike him. On February 12, 2013, Buck made a guest appearance during Fox Sports Midwest's broadcast of a
St. Louis Blues hockey game. Alongside their current commentators
Darren Pang and
John Kelly, he discussed his father Jack Buck having
called Blues hockey along with Kelly's father
Dan in the late 1960s. Buck briefly took over play-by-play from Pang and Kelly, stepping aside when the
Los Angeles Kings inevitably scored a power-play goal on the Blues (joking in response that "I clearly bring no mojo to the party"). In 2014, Buck was named as the new host of
NFL Films Presents, to coincide with the program's move from
ESPN2 to
Fox Sports 1. From 2015 to 2018, Buck hosted
Undeniable with Joe Buck, a sports interview series on
Audience Network. Buck published an autobiography,
Lucky Bastard, in 2016. He has appeared in several television programs as himself, including
Pitch,
American Dad!,
Family Guy,
Conan,
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and
Brockmire; the film
Fever Pitch (also starring
Jimmy Fallon); and in the "Carpet Brothers" sketch on
Funny or Die Presents as The Legit Don Stritt. Buck's voice is also heard in recorded conversations between
Linda Tripp and
Monica Lewinsky calling Game 5 of the Yankees-Indians ALDS in 1997. The tapes were released at the height of the
scandal involving Lewinsky and President Bill Clinton.
Andrew Marchand of the
New York Post reported on April 17, 2021, that Buck would serve as a guest host on
Jeopardy! as the game show continued to search for a replacement after the death of longtime host
Alex Trebek.
Sony Pictures Television confirmed four days later that Buck's stint would air from August 9 to 13. On April 21, 2026, Buck was announced to host
ESPN Jeopardy!, a sports-themed spinoff of the game show. In 2021, Buck and his family appeared on ABC's
Celebrity Family Feud, competing against the family of actor
Oliver Hudson. In 2022, Buck became the announcer on Fox's
Domino Masters hosted by
Eric Stonestreet. Buck also competed in
season seven of
The Masked Singer as "Ram" of Team Bad. He was unmasked in the competition's second week at the time when Stonestreet was a guest panelist as he and
Robin Thicke correctly guessed Buck during the final guesses. On May 24, 2024, Buck was scheduled to call a Cardinals-
Cubs baseball game on
Bally Sports Midwest alongside his close friend
Chip Caray. It would have marked the first time Buck had called a baseball game since the
2021 World Series. However, the game was rained out. He returned to the booth and called a Cardinals-Rangers game with
Chip Caray on July 29, 2024. ==Awards and honors==