Is another Buck-Caray partnership in the cards?

This story was excerpted from John Denton’s Cardinals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Throughout his illustrious career, Joe Buck was a broadcaster for his hometown Cardinals and worked alongside his legendary Hall of Fame father, Jack Buck, for 16 years. He’s been on the call for 24 World Series and seven Super Bowls while becoming the youngest national television play-by-play announcer in MLB and NFL history and earning eight Emmy Awards.

However, there’s one broadcasting gig -- one that makes the 54-year-old Buck smile just thinking about all the fun and frivolity that would ensue -- that he hopes will come to fruition someday soon.

If the situation was ever right, Buck would love to sit in a booth with Bally Sports Midwest announcer and Cardinals voice Chip Caray to yuck it up for a few innings during a baseball telecast. The opportunity would be fitting, Buck feels, because it was Jack Buck and Chip’s grandfather, Harry Caray, who formed a dynamic duo as broadcasters for the radio giant KMOX from 1954-69. Ultimately, both would earn the Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame -- Jack in '87 and Harry in '89.

Just outside the door of the Busch Stadium booth, where Chip now broadcasts Cardinals games nightly, hangs a picture of Jack Buck and Harry Caray sharing a laugh -- as they did for so many years behind microphones while calling Cards games. What if Chip Caray and Joe Buck brought the whole thing full circle and worked a Cardinals game together as their Hall of Fame predecessors did decades earlier?

“It’d be so much fun, but I think the other thing I've always been aware of is that it's somebody else's job, and just showing up is not always a great move,” said Joe Buck following a recent event at Busch Stadium. “Like, if Chip was into it, then that would be one thing. But I'm not the guy that's like, ‘Hey, everybody move over because I'm coming in!’ It would have to be the right night and the right reason, but he and I would have a great time doing it.”

Speaking from the Cardinals Cruise, where he was roughing it along with a dozen former players and approximately 200 Cards fans, Caray fully endorsed the idea of potentially working with Buck. Both grew up in St. Louis, albeit at different times, and have kept a friendship through the years. When Caray was named the Cardinals' lead play-by-play voice last winter, Buck was one of the first to call and congratulate him.

“I think we’d have a blast. We could easily crack three guys in a booth, goof around for a game and have a lot of fun,” Caray said. “Joe’s a guy who should be in the Hall of Fame, and it’s stupid that he’s not in. But he’s going to get there. His pedigree and legacy with the Cardinals preceded mine, and he’s a great broadcaster. He knows the Cardinals inside and out and he still loves baseball.

“It’d be a blast to see what the son and the grandson would have in store with what Harry and Jack got going back in the 1950s.”

A native of Ladue, a suburb in St. Louis, Buck still lives in the shadow of Busch Stadium and follows baseball closely even though he’s been out of the sport since 2022, when he left FOX Sports to become the play-by-play voice of Monday Night Football on ESPN. Buck enjoyed a lifetime of memories in baseball, dating back to some 50 years ago, when he first started hanging out in Cardinals clubhouses, shagging fly balls in batting practice and sitting in TV and radio booths while travelling to games with Jack Buck, the voice of the Cardinals for nearly five decades.

After progressing to the point where he worked alongside his famous father and Mike Shannon for 16 years, Buck went national.

It’s only natural to wonder if Joe -- who was a finalist for the 2024 Ford C. Frick Award -- misses calling baseball games.

“I mean, I watch [baseball] religiously,” he said. “I don't miss doing it as much as I thought I would because I feel like I've put my body of work together and I'm proud of it. But yeah, when you see a Game 7 in the playoffs and the first pitch flies through the air, it's like, ‘Argh, I wish I was doing that!’ But it takes a lot of work just to get a Game 7, so I'm happy being here in my home in St. Louis watching it instead of doing it.”