There has been an outpouring of thoughts and prayers from the baseball community for the 90-year old and his family, with many using the time to reflect on the impact Garagiola had on baseball through his Hall of Fame career as a broadcaster.
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Prior to calling Major League Baseball for the Peacock Network as part of their regular team, Garagiola was a regular part of their World Series coverage. He created the Baseball Assistance Team (B.A.T.), which was formed to “help members of the Baseball Family who were in need of assistance with nowhere else to turn”.
The Cardinals signed Garagiola to their farm system when he was just 16 years of age. After an eight-year tenure in the majors with four teams from 1946-1954, Garagiola called Cardinals games on the radio until 1962.
Longtime major-leaguer Joe Garagiola, who spent 15 seasons as lead baseball analyst for NBC, died in Phoenix on Wednesday at age 90, according to several media outlets. Garagiola first co-hosted NBC’s Today Show from 1967 to 1973.
After retiring as a player Garagiola went into broadcasting. During that time, he called three World Series. His broadcast career with the Diamondbacks ended in 2013.
Jumping from the field to the broadcast booth is no simple task, and not everyone is cut out for it (looking at you, Harold Reynolds), yet there are certain individuals who truly understand the game and can articulate their thoughts that keep fans engaged and interested. He also served as a guest host on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, including during the only live appearance on that show by two Beatles during the group’s existence (it featured John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and Garagiola later joked that “I might have made them feel uncomfortable when they saw how much hair I had)”. He was the son of Italian immigrants, born and raised in St. Louis.
The Arizona Diamondbacks announced his death before their exhibition game against San Francisco, and there murmurs of shock and sadness at the ballpark. The 2014 Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient and 1991 Ford C. Frick Award victor was known for his nine-year playing career followed by a Hall of Fame broadcast career, as well as the many charitable endeavors that spanned his lifetime. Garagiola served as a play-by-play man for NBC’s Game of the Week from 1974 to ’82, with Tony Kubek as his color commentator beginning in ’76.
Mr. Garagiola had no experience in on-air work, but he felt that all those games when he wasn’t in the lineup prepared him well. “I said, ‘Yogi, I haven’t played in six weeks.’ And Yogi said, ‘you play better when you’re not playing'”.
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Garagiola played for the Cardinals, New York Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs.
