Joe Buck is a nationally known baseball and football announcer for Fox Sports. He is also well known for being the son of legendary sports broadcaster Jack Buck. While he has been in the public eye for a long time, there is one aspect of his life he has kept hidden until recently. In his new memoir, Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad and The Things I’m Not Allowed to Say on TV, Buck reveals that he has been battling a hair plug addiction since the 1990s. According to Buck, “Broadcasting is a brutal, often unfair business, where looks are valued more than skill.” He lived with the constant worry that losing his hair would mean losing his job.
Back in 2001, he told viewers that a virus in his vocal cord was the reason he was having issues with his voice. However, Buck reveals in his new book that the problem was really an addiction to hair plugs. While he was growing up, one of his greatest fears in life was losing his hair. He had his first hair transplant in 1993 when he was 24-years-old. After the first transplant procedure, Buck became addicted to hair plugs.
His addiction was so great that he would fly back and forth to New York for further hair transplant procedures whenever he had a break in his broadcasting schedule. While he told himself that he was having the surgeries for his TV career, he now realizes that vanity played a huge part in his constant schedule of surgeries.
Buck had his 8th hair replacement in 2011 but something was different when he woke up. He had lost his voice. Buck thinks his vocal cord became paralyzed because of a cuff used during the surgery to protect him during the procedure. One doctor told him that the cuff probably got moved during the surgery and sat on the nerve responsible for helping to operate his left vocal cord. The added stress of his marriage falling apart at the same time makes Buck think he was more prone to nerve damage. Instead of admitting what happened to him during surgery, Buck told his bosses and viewers the lie about the virus. He was embarrassed and scared and didn’t want to admit what had happened especially after a voice specialist gave him no guarantee that his voice would come back.
His road to recovery finally took a good turn when he was referred to a doctor in Boston who injected Buck with a long needle that filled his vocal cord with Restylane normally used for lip enhancement. Buck returned to the doctor often for additional treatments. The doctor informed him that the more he used his voice, the more likely his vocal cords would swell from the usage and he would continue to sound better. By October of 2011, Buck was calling baseball games and starting to feel like his old self.
After all this time, why tell the public the truth about his voice?
Buck wanted to write a book about that time of his life and talk about the stress and his divorce. He wanted to share his story with the world and be honest about what happened to him. While Buck would tell himself he needed to look younger for TV and have thicker hair, he now realizes that his ego drove him to have the surgeries regardless of the fact that he was on television. Buck needed to set the record straight for himself and share the truth with others. He found writing the book to be cathartic and something he needed to do to put the virus story behind him.
- MA
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