Catching up with Wisconsin baseball legend Tony Kubek

Wisconsin has produced more than 250 professional athletes who have become Major League Baseball players.

WPR recently received a WHYsconsin question from an audience member about one of those players. They asked: “Can you give an update on Wisconsin native and former New York Yankees shortstop and NBC baseball announcer Tony Kubek?”

Kubek is perhaps the most successful state player who is in the National Baseball Hall of Fame for broadcasting and not named Bob Uecker — the beloved longtime Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster.

As his former team, the New York Yankees, is facing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2024 World Series, we caught up with Kubek. He just turned 89. While his career as a ballplayer and a broadcaster was based on the east coast, Wisconsin has always been his home. The state has managed to play an important role in his career.

“I’m retired. (I) spent most of my work life working out of New York City playing with the Yankees and then with NBC-TV doing the ‘Game of the Week,’” he said. “(I) always came back to Wisconsin.”

Milwaukee roots

Kubek was born and raised in South Milwaukee. His mom, Janina, was a Polish immigrant. His dad, Tony Sr., was a laborer who played for industrial teams in Milwaukee.

“My dad only went to fifth grade; my mother went through eighth grade. My dad went to night school, became a foreman in a factory and he played ball. He got an extra $30 or $40 a week in his salary for playing baseball,” Kubek said. “He was an outfielder. He was kind of a south side hero.”

Tony Sr. also played professionally in the 1930s for the original Milwaukee Brewers, a minor league team that played at Borchert Field. Kubek’s mom learned English by reading about his father’s baseball exploits in the local papers.

Tony Kubek Jr. said during World War II, industrial baseball leagues were an important part of Milwaukee’s landscape and he was fortunate to be developing his skills at the time.

“A lot of the big corporations had baseball teams, and it was a good caliber,” Kubek said. “I used to be the batboy, and I’d work out with those guys. (I) never played in a game with them because I was too young, but I hit a lot of balls to some of those guys that were in the military.”

Kubek said informal games used to spring up all over the city in the 1940s and early 50s.

“The south side of Milwaukee and the north side, too, were just loaded with playgrounds, loaded with baseball fields. We made our first field down a hill in a railroad yard,” he said. “We had rocks for bases. We had no back-up screen. If we hit a foul ball and it went straight back, it ended up in the Kinnickinnic River and we had to get down there fast to salvage the baseball that was floating down the creek.”

Kubek only played baseball in his freshman year at Bay View High School. It was not offered in his remaining high school years.

“I was a playground rat. We played a lot, as much as we could. I was in high school and played football, played basketball. (I) ran some track. I didn’t really need baseball at that time. We only had it that first year. I was involved in sports quite a bit, made a lot of friendships there,” he said.

Kubek credits his time in Major League Baseball to strong recreational leagues in the Milwaukee area: all those sandlot games and paying attention as the sport was being played by his father’s teams.

The New York Yankees

Kubek signed with the New York Yankees in Chicago in the early 1950s.

“We drove to Comiskey Park to work out. (We) went down into the clubhouse, sat on a chest and my dad signed the contract because I was only 17 years old and I wasn’t legal at that time. So, I got signed and sent out to the minor leagues in 1954,” said Kubek.

He played in the minor leagues for the Yankees for three seasons. He was Rookie of the Year in the American League in 1957.

“I wasn’t a power hitter, more line drive. Never hit .300, although I hit .297 my first year (the Rookie of the Year season of 1957). I was a good runner. I generally hit first or second. I didn’t strike out or walk a lot. Somebody once said, ‘He’s a thinking ballplayer,’” Kubek said.

Kubek’s nine-year career with the Yankees was interrupted by military service and injury.

He played against his hometown Milwaukee Braves in the World Series in 1957 and 1958. The Braves won in seven games in 1957 and the Yankees won in seven games in 1958. He hit the first two home runs ever hit in Milwaukee during a World Series during Game 3 of the 1957 games.

Kubek recounted the World Series home runs years later in a 1970 interview in Boston with Leo Cloutier.

“As far as personal thrills, my biggest was my first World Series in 1957, my rookie year, when we went back to my hometown of Milwaukee. The first game that my Dad had ever seen me play in the Major Leagues, I hit two home runs.”

Almost 70 years after playing in the first World Series in Milwaukee, Kubek looks back on it with a little more apprehension.

“It was nerve-racking in Milwaukee. Your first World Series and I hadn’t turned 21 yet and didn’t know where I was going to play,” said Kubek in 2024.

Kubek participated in 37 World Series games during his career, playing in six series in nine years, winning three titles. He played on teams featuring Yankee greats like Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Roger Maris.

Uecker, the self-deprecating back-up catcher, played with four teams including the Milwaukee Braves in the 1960s, winning just one World Series with St. Louis Cardinals in 1964 over Kubek’s Yankees, though neither played in the series.

Uecker is about a year and a half older than Kubek but played baseball in Milwaukee around the same time when they were growing up.

A broadcast legend

After he retired from professional baseball, Kubek moved into the world of television. He spent 24 years as an announcer with NBC Sports’ “Game of the Week.” He worked with people like Curt Gowdy, Joe Garagiola and Bob Costas.

One highlight of his career was broadcasting the last World Series in Milwaukee when the Brewers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982. 

Kubek was named to the National Baseball Hall of Fame for his broadcasting work in 2009. In addition to broadcasting Brewers games on the radio, Uecker also did television games for ABC and NBC and was elected to the Hall of Fame for his broadcasting work in 2003.

A home in Wisconsin

Despite baseball taking him all over the United States and Canada, Tony Kubek always returned to Wisconsin to live — first in Wausau, now in Appleton. He says Wisconsin has been a good place in retirement.

“I always seemed to have something to do,” said Kubek. “(I) coached high school basketball as an assistant at Fox Valley Lutheran High School. Did some work with the cheese company until I sold my interest, got my money back. (I) didn’t make any money, but it was fun to learn a little bit about the dairy business. Played a lot of handball, when I could, at the Y.”

He says Wisconsinites are what make it great.

“People are friendly,” said Kubek. “My neighborhood was mostly Polish when I grew up. Later on, when my mother lived there, there was a real cultural mix there. Right here in Appleton, we’ve been involved with some things with the Hmong population and with Latinos. They are so intent on making a good living for their family and their friends.”

Kubek published his first book of historical fiction called “and The Game played on: zeitgeist fomented by xenophobia” in the summer of 2024.