With no sports to call, it has come to this for Fox play-by-play announcer Joe Buck: he is accepting videos of people doing regular day things and calling the action. That includes a boy killing his first spider, a Southwest Airlines crew landing a plane, and a dad stuffing a Nerf basketball back into his young son’s face.
What else is a play-by-play man to do to keep sharp in the time of COVID-19, which has shut down professional sports as we know it? Buck, who is best known as Fox’s No. 1 voice for its MLB and NFL coverage, has been calling the U.S. Open and select other USGA national championships since 2015.
But not all of his submissions have come from average Joes. On Saturday, Buck posted on his social media accounts a video sent in from 2017 PGA Championship winner and current World No. 4 golfer Justin Thomas, who Buck refers to as “one of my favorite players and guys on the PGA Tour.”
Buck, who has been criticized in some circles for not being much of a “golf guy,” adds about Thomas, in the first of several self-deprecating moments to come, “Let’s be honest, he’s one of the few guys I know.”
In the video, which runs 84 seconds, Thomas is in front of a mirror, fixing his hair. Buck begins with the following disclaimer: that he suffers from male-pattern baldness before breaking into PBP: “He’s surveying the situation from the day before, the damage from the night’s sleep,” Buck begins. “He’s trying to put every follicle in its place.”
Probably the best moment is when Buck takes a shot at Thomas’ good pal, 2015 U.S. Open champ Jordan Spieth, whose hairline is suffering from its own rising tide, saying, “He’s doing the Jordan Spieth push down. I do the Jordan Spieth push down. It’s the only way to make your hair looker fuller and thicker.”
“There it is,” Buck says as Thomas finishes the job with a smile of satisfaction as if he just landed the dismount off the balance beam. “Justin Thomas, an American treasure. Good luck. You’re young, kid. Look into hair transplants; I did it. Not sure they worked.”
The video has over 100,000 and counting, and apparently, Thomas loved it, too. He tweeted: “You’re a legend Joe. And also so bored that you will commentate on my hairline issues. Well done, sir!”
You might also like this one, where former Ohio State Buckeye/Detroit Lions great Chris Spielman shows you how to strip a roll of toilet paper.
For a small charitable donation, you too could be Buck’s next “rep.”
