Garagiola was a true one of a kind

Do you ever have those days where you feel part of your childhood has left you?

I know I speak for many in my age group (do the math, I’m 43) or much older but that feeling reared its head when I got home from work on Wednesday to log online. I check my Facebook page and in the “trending” category is the death of legendary Major League Baseball broadcaster Joe Garagiola, who died at 90 years old.

At first glance, we should all be so blessed to live until 90. Look up the term “baseball lifer” in the dictionary and you may as well plant a picture of Garagiola right next to the words. You would have to look long and hard to find one that defined the term more than Garagiola. Heck, anyone that grows up down the street from Yogi Berra. The ironic backdrop to that story was that Garagiola was rated as the better prospect than Berra even though Berra wound up having a Hall of Fame career. To that, Garagiola quipped: “Not only was I not the best catcher in the Major Leagues, I wasn’t even the best catcher on my street.”

The St. Louis native played nine mostly nondescript seasons as a Major Leaguer for four different teams (St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Chicago Cubs and New York Giants). He was also well known outside of baseball for having been one of the regular panelists on The Today Show for many years and for his numerous appearances on game shows both as a host and panelist.

Though he was a ham and egger as a player, Garagiola’s impact as a broadcaster was undeniable.

After his career as a player ended, Garagiola turned to broadcasting in 1962. Most people associate him with his time as an NBC color commentator, most notably with Tony Kubek and Vin Scully. Garagiola later spent 22 years as a color commentator for the California Angels and later the Arizona Diamondbacks before retiring in 2013.

In my opinion, several others probably share it as well, Scully and Garagiola are the best baseball broadcasting tandem ever. That tandem was to network baseball broadcasts what Pat Summerall and John Madden were to the NFL. I know they did not have staying power like Madden and Summerall but their chemistry was similar.

I don’t remember the first game I watched that Garagiola broadcast but the first thing that appealed to me was that he had an Italian last name and his name was “Joe.” It reminded me of my dad, the one and only Joe D’Adamo.

Garagiola defined what a baseball broadcaster was. With sports like basketball or football, you expect broadcasters to carry themselves with some emotion. Baseball, however, is slower paced with more down time between pitches. In that format, you need to be a story-teller.

Having received my college degree in broadcasting before going into writing, I discovered that you can’t broadcast baseball the same way as you do football. Garagiola fit the baseball broadcasting mold like a hand in a glove. He had the perfect story-telling mentality for baseball broadcasts. Even if you had no connection as a fan with the ones that were subject to his stories, his folksy demeanor lured you into the story. If you were looking for someone to rattle off stats, Garagiola was not your guy but his story-telling approach was second-to-none.

Scully recently commented about how Garagiola’s preparation for broadcasts were second-to-none. I find that to be a very telling trait because sometimes you get a former player that becomes a broadcaster and they think they know it all but Garagiola took the opposite approach.

Garagiola came up as a broadcaster in a different culture, when broadcasters were the reporter of the story rather than the creator. Today’s broadcast climate has its share of shrill voices that think louder is better.

Garagiola was more than just a legendary broadcaster. He made his mark in other forms of media as well. He also wrote three different books: “Baseball is a Funny Game,” “It’s Anybody’s Ballgame” and “Just Play Ball.”

He also made his mark by supporting the presidential candidacy of Gerald Ford. As much of a lightning rod as politics is today, that would get people up in arms today. In addition, Garagiola was an advocate against chewing smokeless tobacco. He picked up that habit as a player but quit cold turkey in the mid-1950s.

Whether as a broadcaster or human being, I can honestly say there will never be another Joe Garagiola.

He’s probably enjoying a game right now at a ballpark in the sky.