One of baseball’s most iconic voices is returning to the diamond — at least for one game.
Longtime play-by-play announcer Joe Buck will work alongside Cardinals broadcaster Chip Caray for St. Louis’ May 24 game against the Cubs on Bally Sports Midwest, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The telecast will serve as a sort of tribute to Jack Buck — Joe’s father — and Harry Caray – Chip’s grandfather, who worked together in the Cardinals’ booth for 14 years from 1954-68.
It will be Buck’s first baseball broadcast since the 2021 World Series.
Buck spent 26 years as Fox’s top baseball play-by-play announcer, calling 24 World Series, including 22 straight from 2000-21 for the network.
The broadcasting legend left Fox for ESPN in 2022, signing a five-year contract with the network to call “Monday Night Football” games, taking him away from the sport he had spent his entire professional career chronicling.
In November 2022, shortly after the first World Series without him on the call in more than two decades, Buck told Sports Illustrated that he was ready for a new challenge.
“I’m ready to move on from that part of my life,” Buck said then. “I’ve done baseball broadcasting since I was 19, professionally. 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. I love the sport. I love watching it. I’m so glad I did it. I’m proud of how and what I did, but I don’t have that desire at the moment to just keep doing the same thing over and over and over.”
But Buck left the door open for a potential return to his first sports broadcasting love.
“If the Cardinals need me or want me to come down and do a game someday with Chip Caray to have Buck and Caray together again, maybe I would do that just for fun,” Buck said in the interview.