Bob Uecker’s Latest Malady Was A Venomous Spider Bite

Bob Uecker is 84 years old and still going strong, but the longtime Brewers broadcaster has had some health issues in recent years. His latest scare was when a venomous brown recluse spider bit him in October after last season. From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Tom Haudricourt:

“I had a pair of shorts on,” [Uecker] said. “I got bit by a spider but I didn’t know it. I didn’t feel it bite me. The next day, I had a red mark on my leg, and it kept getting bigger. I kept trying to take care of it by myself but it kept getting worse.”

On the fourth day, Uecker went to see his doctor for some regularly scheduled blood work and showed him the ugly, growing wound on his left leg, near the knee.

“He said, ‘You need to go to the hospital. That’s a brown recluse spider bite. That’s bad,’ ” recalled Uecker. “He knew right away.” The next thing he knew, Uecker was having surgery.

Uecker has recovered from the spider bite and will do about 100 Brewers games this season. The Journal-Sentinel listed some of the sportscaster’s other recent health issues:

An aortal aneurysm in his abdomen, in 1991

Pancreatic cancer, in 2009

A leaky heart valve, which was fixed during the 2010 season

A staph infection in the area of the fixed heart valve, after that surgery

And that doesn’t include that time in the 1980s when Andre the Giant nearly choked him to death!

[ Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]