Joe Buck is St. Louis Cardinals royalty. Though he’d readily admit that Major League Baseball — with the advent of the pitch clock — has moved on without him, the game will always hold a special place in his heart. Buck may have stepped away from national broadcasts after leaving Fox for ESPN, but there’s a nostalgic pull when it comes to calling local games for the franchise he once voiced.
Even though Buck appeared to wrap up his MLB announcing career in late August, the Cardinals keep the door slightly ajar. He returned to an MLB booth last season for the first time since 2021 to call a Cardinals game with Chip Caray, marking the first time in 55 years that a Buck and Caray shared a booth since Joe’s father, Jack, and Chip’s grandfather, Harry, were longtime broadcast partners. For those hoping Buck’s brief MLB return might lead to a full-fledged comeback, it seems unlikely. Still, the Cardinals would welcome it.
“I always tell Joe the door’s open if you want to come back down to reality and back to your roots — you can always do a game,” Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III shared on the Questions for Cancer Research podcast. “In fact, last year he did a game with Chip Caray… creating probably the greatest play-by-play tandem of all time. That was a very nostalgic game. The first one that they were going to do got rained out… The remake game was a success, and Joe said, ‘Jeez, this game’s moving faster with the pitch clock; I don’t have enough time to talk.’”
Even if Buck’s days in the booth at Busch Stadium are behind him, and the game is now much faster, the Cardinals know he’ll eternally be part of their story. That door may remain open, but whether he chooses to walk through it or not, his connection to St. Louis and the game he loves will never truly close.
