Writing for The New York Times and The Daily News, he was known for his combative style and relished tweaking the powerful people in the sport.

He found beauty in the prosaic: bars, phone booths, hamburger joints, barber shops — first in a downtrodden Paterson, then throughout the state and beyond.

Uecker turned his meager baseball career into humorous fodder covering games on TV and as a commercial pitchman.

He directed the playwright’s “The House of Blue Leaves,” and they helped turn “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” into a hit musical.

He conducted Broadway shows and worked with Bernadette Peters. But he was probably best known for writing the music for the darkly comic “Ruthless!”