Joe Buck, the national play-by-play voice for FOX baseball and football, tends to get a bad wrap wherever he goes. I’m sure I have thought at one time or another Buck has something against the city of Philadelphia but I like to think I have grown out of that a sI have grown to respect Buck, and most other national play-by-play voices on various sports networks. Buck may be polarizing to some, especially around Philadelphia, and it turns out Phillies fans played a role in sort of turning Buck off of Twitter.
On a podcast last week with Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated, Buck discussed his thoughts and experiences with Twitter. As any national sports figure on Twitter can probably confirm, Twitter opens one up to plenty of anonymous criticism from people with keyboard muscles. Buck was certainly no exception. Buck recalled the moment he decided he had enough of Twitter and removed it from his phone, and it happened to be when he was calling a Phillies-Red Sox game.
“If you want harsh comments, do a Boston-Philly game and have your Twitter feed open,” Buck said to Deitsch on the SI Media Podcast. “I started reading the comments and I started finding myself almost reacting to it and curtailing what I was saying and as I was going through the game I was like ‘What am I doing? This is a dead end and just moronic’… I was like I’m just going to take this off my phone and it’s going to eliminate a lot of the headache.”
So Buck removed Twitter from his phone right in the broadcast booth and has stepped away from Twitter, for the most part. Of course, Philadelphia and Boston may have been the last straw for Buck, but he tried to explain he understands where fans are coming from, and he also said it happens everywhere.
“When you’ve done enough games as I’ve done and been lucky enough to do it, trust me… and you’ve done Phillies in the World Series both winning and losing, and when they’re losing everything you say sounds like it’s a complete slam on the city of Philadelphia and Ben Franklin himself…”
Buck continued his thought by saying he has had similar experiences with other fanbases, using San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals as examples. Giants fans have accused Buck of being a Cardinals homer, while Cardinals fans have gone so far to suggest his father is rolling over in his grave with the way Joe talks about the team. Buck can’t seem to win in any city he is covering a game, but it’s not just Philadelphia.
“You just realize you can’t win that game,” Buck said. “I’ve done it long enough to know I’ve probably pissed a lot of people off over the course of the years just by being honest or giving an honest opinion and they just don’t want to hear it.”
Buck has not tweeted since January 2014.
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