Remembering Joe Garagiola

We all lost the same Joe Garagiola on Wednesday, but we all lost a different one as well.

Garagiola, the baseball player who became an announcer, a gameshow host, a TV personality and an anti-tobacco activist, died in Phoenix at the age of 90. You might have known him better as one than the other, but you knew him.

You’ll remember him as a light-hitting catcher from St. Louis who grew up in the same neighborhood as Yogi Berra. And as one of the radio voices for the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks. As part of NBC’s Game of the Week team. As the author of “Baseball Is A Funny Game.” As a panelist on NBC’s Today show, and a fill-in for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.

Humor served him well. He played nine so-so years, all in the National League, but was constantly on the move. Noting how he had been traded three times in the NL, which at the time had but eight teams, Garagiola said: “I thought I was modeling uniforms.”

His hometown pal Berra, who died last year, starred with the New York Yankees, which led to this observation from Garagiola: “Not only was I not the best catcher in the major leagues, I wasn’t even the best catcher on my street.”

He was, nonetheless, well appreciated and deeply loved. He won the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting in 1991, and in 2014 he received the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hall.

He contributed much to many, from those he educated on the dangers of smokeless tobacco to his efforts with the Baseball Assistance Team, which helps needy members of what Commissioner Rob Manfred called “baseball’s family.” He was fun and he was funny and he will be sorely missed.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman