How desperate am I to change the subject from something — anything! — other than Madison Bumgarner’s mastery of the New York Mets (and Jeurys Familia’s continued fallibility in the postseason)? Desperate enough to lobby for public sympathy for JOE FUCKING BUCK.

Fox Sports’ primary baseball and football voice has a new book hitting the shelves, “Artie Lange Ruined My Life” “Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, And The Things I’m Not Allowed To Say On TV,” and in excerpts quoted by the New York Post’s Zach Braziller, Buck admits the paralyzed vocal cord he suffered in 2011 was caused an addiction to hair plugs.


“Broadcasting is a brutal, often unfair business, where looks are valued more than skill,” he wrote. “I was worried that if I lost my hair, I would lose my job.

“OK, that’s bulls—. It was vanity. Pure vanity. I just told myself I was doing it for TV.”

A few weeks before the 2011 baseball season, Buck had his eighth hair replacement procedure. When he woke up from the anesthesia, he couldn’t speak. Buck thinks a nerve in his vocal chord was damaged when a restraint used during the hair operation got jostled.

He was treated by a Harvard laryngeal surgery expert who also has worked with Adele, but Buck lied to everyone about how the impairment happened.

“I was too scared and embarrassed to tell them the truth,” wrote Buck, who hasn’t had hair plugs since. “But I’m doing it now.”