Joe Buck Reveals the Meaning of His Biceps Tattoos
Joe Buck isn’t the most muscle-bound guy on the planet. You’re not likely to see the 51-year-old sports media icon walking around with his sleeves rolled up. Therefore, you probably won’t see those tattoos on his biceps. Buck doesn’t flaunt his ink like Mike Tyson, but those tattoos still have a special meaning.
Joe Buck has become a broadcasting legend
Joe Buck took after his father. Jack Buck was a broadcaster who wound up having a Hall-of-Fame career. Joe Buck has clearly followed suit. The younger Buck is now the lead NFL and MLB play-by-play announcer for Fox and has been with the network since 1994.
In his first year with Fox, Buck teamed with Tim Green and became the youngest (25) ever to call a full slate of NFL games. Buck is a seven-time Emmy Award winner, who began as Fox’s lead MLB analyst in 1996. He became the network’s lead NFL broadcaster in 2002.
Buck has called six Super Bowls and 23 World Series. He’s also called 25 MLB League Championship Series. He and his father are the only father and son to each call the Super Bowl on network television.
Despite Buck’s success, he still gets a lot of hate
There aren’t a whole lot of people more successful in their careers than Joe Buck. But no matter how successful you are, there’s always someone who won’t like you. In Joe Buck’s case, there are always people who don’t like what he has to say. Some say he’s smug. Others criticize everything he says. He’s learned to deal with criticism, especially on social media.
“Only one time have I had Twitter open when I was doing a game, and after that I took it off my phone,” Buck said, according to Esquire. “I said, “This is so counterproductive. I’m actually reacting to people reacting to what I’m saying, and it can’t work that way.”
Buck said he wants t be liked, but he’s not forcing anything. “The only guy I see on the air who legit doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him is (Charles) Barkley. But for the most part, everybody wants to be liked. At some point, you can’t be unrealistic about it. The only people I want to really like me are my family and the people who employ me.”
Buck explains the tattoos on his biceps
Maybe the criticism Joe Buck gets has a little something to do with the tattoos he has on his biceps. It might not be the full reason, but it may play a small role. In an interview with GQ in 2018, Buck explained the meaning of the tattoos he has on his biceps.
I have “Bastante” (on one), a Spanish word which means enough. There’s two different ways to look at the word enough: I can’t love my kids enough in a good sense, and stop worrying about what people think. That was my daily reminder. On the other biceps is “So what?” which was on a bracelet that my dad gave my mom, which is along the same lines: if the whole world’s coming down around you so what? What’s the worst that can happen? It’s going to be okay.
“I got it at a time when I had just gone through a divorce. I’d just had that vocal cord paralysis and I had just met (my now wife) Michelle (Beisner) —I knew from the minute I met her that I was going to go from a divorced man back into married man category because she was different. We had been talking about tattoos one night on the phone. She has them and I started thinking if I really believe what I am spitting out here with regard to ‘enough’ and ‘I don’t care what people think’ and ‘so what,’ then prove it.”
