Bob Uecker was Dick Allen’s buddy on the Phillies, and his broadcasting career started in Philly. Kind of.

The Phillies were flying to another city in the late 1960s when Bob Uecker, then the team’s seldom-used backup catcher, told the flight attendant he was sick. Uecker, who died Thursday at 90, asked for a vomit bag.

“She gives him the bag,” wrote Dick Allen, who was seated next to Uecker. “And when she turns her back, he makes this big noise like he’s vomiting. The whole time he’s making the noise, he’s pouring a can of Campbell’s clam chowder into the bag. Except I’m the only one who can see him do it.”

Uecker hit just .202 over two seasons with the Phillies, but the talent that would make him a Hall of Fame broadcaster — wit, self-deprecation, and the timing of a stand-up comic — were evident.

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Allen, who considered Uecker his best friend on the team, said he played with a lot of guys who thought they were funny. But Uecker really was.

“When the stewardess comes back,” Allen wrote in his memoir Crash, “he asks for a spoon and starts eating the stuff out of the bag. Guys started running for the bathroom.”

Uecker’s first broadcasting gig was in Atlanta and he started calling Milwaukee Brewers games in 1971. Before that, he called Phillies games. Uecker used to sit in the bullpen at Connie Mack Stadium and deliver play-by-play commentary into a beer cup.

He lived in Manayunk, frequented a bar in Belmont Hills, and loved how the Phillies could open a door in the back of their bullpen that led to the street. A spot across the way would deliver sandwiches.

“I had a good time in Philly,” Uecker said in 2003 before being inducted into the broadcasters wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. “We had fun.”

Uecker and Allen sang songs together in the clubhouse, which led to a fine from manager Gene Mauch. Uecker cracked that the reason they got fined was because Allen was in the batter’s box and Uecker was up there with him singing.

“When I tell people we were together on the same team, he denies it,” Uecker said when Allen joined him in the booth during a 2012 Brewers game.

It was Uecker who called Allen “Crash” after Allen played the field wearing a batting helmet. The quiet superstar and the affable bench player were a perfect pair.

“Dick was pretty quiet,” former Phillies first baseman Bill White said Thursday. “Dick was different. They were both a little bit different. Dick didn’t laugh that often, but Bob knew how to get him to laugh. Bob always kept you loose. He was always funny. If you broke your bat, he’d come by and have something to say that would make you chuckle. He was a good teammate.”

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Uecker won the 1964 World Series with St. Louis after the Cardinals raced past Allen’s Phillies that September. He didn’t play in the World Series against the Yankees but often joked that he helped the Cardinals win by coming down with hepatitis.

“The trainer injected me with it,” Uecker said.

He arrived in Philadelphia the next October as part of a six-player trade. By then, the magic of 1964 was gone.

“I remember Gene Mauch doing things to me in Philadelphia,” Uecker said in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech. “I’d be sitting there and he’d say, ‘Grab a bat and stop this rally.’ Send me up there without a bat and tell me to try for a walk. Look down at the first base coach for a sign and have him turn his back on you.”

Allen, Uecker cracked, led the Phillies to a fourth-place finish in 1966.

“You couldn’t not like Bob Uecker,” former Phillies catcher Clay Dalrymple said Thursday. “He wasn’t that outstanding as a catcher, but he was well liked as a human being. If you watched Bob on Johnny Carson, that was the way Bob was. There was no difference. Carson loved him just like we did. He was well liked by everyone.”

Uecker had just 15 extra-base hits during his two seasons with the Phillies but perhaps none was more memorable than his final one, an eighth-inning double in June 1967 that triggered a rally as the Phillies erased a four-run deficit to beat the Cubs.

Minutes later, Uecker was traded to Atlanta. Mauch received a call after the win from upstairs, alerting him to tell Uecker he was moving. Mauch peeked out into the clubhouse and saw Uecker’s teammates celebrating around their lovable catcher. Ten more minutes, Mauch said.

He finally interrupted, called Uecker into his office, and told him the news. Allen nearly cried and said he wished he was traded, too. The friends made a deal to have breakfast the next morning and share one last laugh before Uecker left town.

“This is the third time. I ought to be used to it,” said Uecker, who retired after that season. “Hell, I got sent from Legion ball to the Police Athletic League. I’ll probably be back here in a couple years as the bullpen catcher.”

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