Joe Buck's Addiction To Hair-Plug Treatments Almost Ended His Career

Well, there’s a headline I never really expected to write.

Sports Illustrated at sports broadcaster Joe Buck’s forthcoming memoir, which contains a genuinely strange admission from Buck. In the memoir, Buck reveals that not only is he a former “hair-plug addict”—he began regularly receiving treatments at age 24—but that one treatment in 2011 left him with a paralyzed vocal cord that robbed him of his voice and prevented him from doing his job effectively.

There’s more! Buck also admits that he lied to his bosses about the cause of his paralyzed vocal cord, telling them that it was the result of a virus. From SI:

“I was lying,” Buck said of the stories about his vocal chord issues. “I think people bend the truth all the time, unfortunately. It was really for self-preservation and ego for me. As I look back, I gave partial truths. Where I lied was when I said the reason why. People would ask, ‘Why is your vocal chord paralyzed?’ I said it was a virus. I didn’t say it was an elective procedure to add hair to the front of my head. It was embarrassing. There’s an embarrassing element to that. Any surgery done to improve one’s looks is not really something someone wants to talk about. So it’s very cathartic to get this out. There are a lot of people across the country, for as silly as this sounds, who obsess about hair loss. I would tell myself I needed to look younger, I needed to have thicker hair, I don’t want to look older than I am. The truth of it is that it was an ego thing, whether I was on TV or not.”

Buck suffered the paralyzed vocal cord just before the start of the 2011 baseball season, and had no idea when or if it was going to get better. He eventually received treatments that had him back to his old self by October of that year. Buck says he has not had a hair-plug treatment since 2011, but has not ruled out having another one. Please read more about this odd moment in sports history over at