Raise Your Cup: Uecker Mural Complete

The Bob Uecker mural in Downtown Milwaukee is now complete.

The massive image of the local legend measures in at 80 feet by 100 feet and can be found on the north side of the Wintrust Financial Center at 731 N. Jackson Street, facing Mason Street.

For those who may be coming out of a fifty-six-year coma, Uecker, known as Mr. Baseball, was born in Milwaukee, played for the Braves for a time, and spent over five decades as a broadcaster for the Brewers. He gained national fame through appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and in popular Miller Lite commercials, which led to film and television roles. He died last year shortly before his 91st birthday.

The mural, painted by artist Mauricio Ramirez, took about a month to complete. He’s the same painter who created the Giannis Antetokounmpo mural a few blocks away.

And now that the Uecker mural belongs to the ages, it seems like as good a time as any to bring up Drink Wisconsinbly’s ongoing effort to immortalize Chris Farley in a similar fashion somewhere in Wisconsin.

What our offshoot organization, Grassroots Effort to Build Some Sort of Farley Statue or Something, or GETBSSOCFSOS, lacks in a coherent acronym, it makes up for with heart. We’e going to make this happen, but we need help.

Madison? Marquette University? The side of the Plywood Palace? There’s gotta be a place for a mural, statue, or even a plaque to honor a Wisconsin comedy legend somewhere. Together, we can turn that blank wall space or empty plaza into a shrine.

But we’re reasonable. It can wait until after the official unveiling of the Uecker mural.

On that note, a ribbon-cutting is planned for later this month, but the date was not set by press time. There is a parking lot right there in front of it, so you’d think they’d have a tailgate party, this being Wisconsin and all, but no word on that either.