“We’ll see you … tomorrow night.”

I’m among those who thought it was perfect.

Just perfect.

Like a lot of Arkansas natives my age, I grew up listening to Jack Buck broadcast Cardinal baseball games on the radio. Whenever Jack would do a network radio or television broadcast (which was often), it was like having a familiar uncle behind the microphone.

Many of us in Arkansas smiled and nodded as Jack Buck called Kirby Puckett’s walk-off home run in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. Minnesota defeated Atlanta to force a Game 7.

Ol’ Jack had done it again, we said to ourselves. He had delivered a line for the ages.

How could Joe Buck, raised in St. Louis with the home broadcast booth at Busch Stadium as a second home, not have ended Thursday’s classic Cardinal win over the Rangers with the same words his dad had uttered two decades ago?

Here’s how Ed Heil put it at www.storytellermn.com: “A sportscaster’s call of a game can define the sportscaster. It can define the moment, and it can define the athlete. In many cases, it is recorded in history connecting all three. The most famous sports call of my lifetime is Al Michaels’ ‘Miracle on Ice’ call during the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. … You know they’re great calls because you remember them together. There have been great sports moments, with great athletes, but you may not remember the call.”

Heil concluded: ‘We like to own our teams, our players and certainly our moments in sports history — our ‘where were you when’ moments. As people, though, we love our parents. As sons, we love our dads, and when they’re gone we miss them terribly. I’ve never met Joe Buck, but I understand he and his father were extremely close. Joe Buck followed in his father’s steps in his career, and I assume Jack Buck was quite proud of his son.

“This wasn’t the first time Joe Buck has spoken the words of his father in a telecast — he’s recognized him through his words on many occasions in the past. Many Minnesotans want to own the moment in 1991 and keep it as their own. I understand that. Yet as a person whose father passed away 10 years ago, I see last night’s call as a beautiful salute from son to father. … How wonderful it must have been for Joe Buck to pay public tribute to his dad, a person he likely respected and loved dearly. Yep, he said it, and I’m glad he did.”

Cindy Boren wrote for a Washington Post blog that Joe Buck “nailed this call with just a simple, elegant sentence, taken from his dad’s 1991 call. Perfection.”

Thank goodness the Cardinals returned this year to their old home on KMOX-AM, 1120.

I was the master of ceremonies last night for the UAM Sports Hall of Fame induction banquet at Monticello. After the banquet, I drove through those dark pine woods in the rain, listening to Mike Shannon and John Rooney all the way home.

At 10 p.m., as I passed through Pine Bluff with the rain coming down hard, my wife called my cell phone.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m mad at the Cardinals,” I replied. “They’re down by three.”

I pulled up to my home in Little Rock with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. I thought about just listening to the final out on the radio. Deciding that I would watch the Rangers’ celebration, I went inside, where I knew my 14-year-old son (a baseball player who loves the game) would be glued to the television set.

Almost one hour later. . .

You know the rest of that story.

The Cardinals’ connection to KMOX, whose 50,000 watts reach across the country at night, dates back to the 1920s. The club had a consecutive run of games from 1955 through 2005 on KMOX. I wasn’t born until 1959, so I never knew anything else.

Following the 2005 season, the Cardinals moved down the dial to the less powerful KTRS-AM, 550. Now, they’re back home.

I thought about Jack Buck as I listened to the Mighty Mox on the way home last night.

I remembered the call I had placed to KMOX in early 1986 when I was the assistant sports editor at the Arkansas Democrat. I was hoping to interview Buck when he came to town to serve as the master of ceremonies for the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame induction banquet.

I wondered if he would return my call.

He called back that day.

I would have known the voice anywhere: “Jack Buck returning your call.”

I made my request, and he said: “I’m coming in a day early to go to the races at Oaklawn with my friend Jim Elder. But I have to eat breakfast, don’t I? Meet me in the lobby of the Excelsior Hotel.”

He was resplendent that day in a green blazer. We sat down in the Apple Blossom Cafe in the lobby of the Excelsior for breakfast.

I asked him if he still thought about Don Denkinger’s call from the previous October.

For Cardinal fans, no explanation is needed.

For those of you who are not Cardinal fans, here is the short version of perhaps the worst call in sports history: St. Louis led the Kansas City Royals three games to two in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series. The Cardinals had taken a 1-0 lead in the eighth inning on a single by backup catcher Brian Harper.

Todd Worrell came in to pitch for the Cardinals in the ninth. Batter Jorge Orta hit a slow roller to Jack Clark on first base, who tossed it to Worrell for a clear out.

Denkinger called Orta safe. The Royals went on to win Game 6 by a score of 2-1.

The Cardinals were demoralized, losing Game 7 by a score of 11-0.

Here’s how Jack Buck answered my question that morning in February 1986: “I think about it every day. I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, doing my call of the play.”

Then, in his best radio voice, he repeated the call as people in the restaurant turned and stared: “Orta, leading off, swings and hits it to the right side, and the pitcher has to cover. He is … SAFE, SAFE, SAFE.”

Later that year, the newspaper sent me to Washington, D.C., to cover Congress.

I lived in the basement of a townhouse on Capitol Hill. I couldn’t pick up KMOX inside, but I could pick it up in my car after dark.

On the night of Oct. 14, 1987, the Cardinals were on the verge of defeating San Francisco in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.

Rather than watching the final inning on television, I decided I wanted to hear Jack Buck proclaim “that’s a winner” on KMOX. So I sat alone in my car to listen.

I would not meet Melissa until the following summer. I had no way of knowing while sitting in my car listening to 1120 AM on that night of Oct. 14, 1987, that my wedding would be exactly two years later — Oct. 14, 1989.

At any rate, it brought back a number of memories listening to Mike Shannon on KMOX last night as I drove home from Monticello.

And Joe Buck’s ending to the Fox telecast brought back even more memories of Jack Buck, one of my broadcasting heroes.

As the home run in the bottom of the 11th sailed over the fence in center, I looked at my son and said: “I don’t believe what I just saw!”

He didn’t understand the context of those words. But I did, and that’s all that mattered.

Bobby Thomson died Monday night.

He was at his home in Savannah, Ga. Thomson was 86 years old and had been in failing health for several years. He had moved to the South about five years ago to be closer to one of his daughters.

Those of us who love the game of baseball never really tire of hearing Russ Hodges’ call of The Shot Heard Round the World.

“The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”

Yes, he said it four times. It was October 1951.

Thomson’s three-run home run off Ralph Branca in the bottom of the ninth inning secured the pennant for the Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds. It will forever be one of the most famous moments in baseball history.

“I never thought it was going to be that big,” Branca told The Associated Press. “Hell no. When we went into the next season, I thought it would be forgotten. I’ll miss him. I mellowed over the years, and we became good friends. I enjoyed being around him.”

There’s an outstanding book by Joshua Prager titled “The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World.”

Prager, a former Wall Street Journal writer and a 2011 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, says he made literally thousands of phone calls while researching and writing that book.

As it turns out, one of those calls was to my parents’ house in Arkadelphia.

Here’s the story:

My father joined the Army Air Forces as it was known at the time in 1943 following his freshman year of college at Ouachita. He was sent for training to Saint John’s University, an all-male Catholic school in central Minnesota that’s surrounded by thousands of acres of forests, prairies and lakes. It was not unusual for college campuses to be used for training during World War II. George Wallace, for instance, received his training on the Ouachita campus in Arkadelphia long before becoming the governor of Alabama and a presidential candidate.

It was quite a change of scenery for my dad, a poor boy from Benton whose family had no money to travel during the Great Depression.

He occasionally would mention how beautiful it was there. He saw more snow than he had ever seen. Unable to return home for Christmas, he accompanied a fellow recruit to the family home in South Dakota for the holidays. He remembers more snow, seeing pheasants for the first time and staying at the house to watch young children while his friend and the other adults attended midnight mass (my dad is Baptist).

Beyond that, however, Dad never talked much about that time and certainly would never have dreamed of bragging about any personal accomplishments. As I’ve written on this blog before, he truly is part of the Greatest Generation, one of those silent men who did their duty during World War II and then returned home to raise families and build businesses.

By the time the call from Josh Prager came, my dad’s hearing was such that he was unable to carry on a telephone conversation.

Here’s what my mother remembered: A nice man called from New York, said he was working on a book about a famous baseball player and wanted to confirm that this was the home of the Red Nelson who had spent time at Saint John’s in Minnesota during World War II.

Mom confirmed that he indeed had the right Red Nelson but told him my dad was unable to do a telephone interview.

Prager, in turn, told her that he initially had been under the impression that Thomson had been voted “most athletic” among that group of Air Force recruits. In interviewing someone who was there, however, he was told that the “most athletic” was not Bobby Thomson. It was a guy named Red Nelson from Arkansas.

I anxiously waited for the book to come out so I could buy my father a copy. His name wasn’t mentioned. After all, there was no reason for Prager to mention any awards Thomson didn’t win. Still, Dad enjoyed reading the book, and our family had a great story to tell.

Dad had remembered a Bobby Thomson. He said he had just never made the connection that it was that Bobby Thomson.

I asked him why he had never mentioned being “most athletic.” He said he saw no reason to mention it.

The more I’ve read about Bobby Thomson since his death Monday, the more I’ve become convinced that he and my dad were a lot alike.

Prager wrote this earlier today at www.tnr.com, the website for The New Republic: “Bobby Thomson did not recognize his own renown. No matter that the home run he had hit in a Harlem horseshoe on Oct. 3, 1951, remained 49 years later the unsurpassable high point of a national pastime, a life marker for a generation of Americans who remembered where they were when the Giants won the pennant (the Giants won the pennant!) as vividly as they did the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the assassination of Kennedy. And so, after we agreed over the phone to meet at his New Jersey church, he was sure to tell me, lest I not recognize him, what he looked like.”

Prager said Thomson told him, “I’m tall and thin and I wear glasses.”

Thomson’s late wife had once said of him, “He’s sensitive and humble to a fault with a tendency to play himself down.”

Thomson was a three-time All-Star who hit .270 with 264 career home runs and 1,026 RBIs in a career that spanned from 1946 until 1960. He often would call himself “the accidental hero.”

It later was revealed that the Giants had a system that season for stealing signals from opposing catchers. Thomson always insisted he did not know what pitch was coming when he hit The Shot Heard Round the World.

Prager, who has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize four times, says Thomson later admitted that he had made use of stolen signs in his first three at-bats that day but not the last.

Thomson had been born in Glasgow, Scotland, and named after an uncle who died in World War I. He came to this country in 1926 when he was just 3 as his family settled in Staten Island. He signed a contract with the Giants in 1942 but ended up spending three years in the military.

Prager writes that Thomson’s father, a cabinetmaker, “ingrained in Bobby and his five older siblings the importance of reserve.”

“We were brought up to be seen and not heard,” he told Prager.

After his famous hit, Thomson told the Daily News of New York: “It was a pitch that Musial or any other good hitter would have taken. It was high and inside. I didn’t deserve to do a thing like that.”

My father will turn 86 on Oct. 14, which incidentally will be my 21st wedding anniversary.

The dementia is such now that I can’t really carry on a conversation with him. If I could, though, I’m sure he would continue to maintain that he never knew it was the famous Bobby Thomson he beat out for “most athletic” all those years ago in the woods of Minnesota.

And even had he known, he wouldn’t have felt it was anything worth mentioning to his son.

Yes, they raised them differently back in those days.