The Arizona Diamondbacks’ news release showed up on my computer screen at about one o’clock Tuesday, and I spent most of the rest of the day reliving my youth. I doubt that the announcement of Joe Garagiola’s retirement at the age of 87 had that effect on anyone else.
Most people hearing about Garagiola’s retirement probably didn’t know he had still been working and those who did know most likely knew and thought of him as a baseball announcer, maybe a baseball comic and one of the best. Bob Uecker wouldn’t very likely exist if Garagiola hadn’t blazed the path.
But I was familiar with Garagiola before his 58-year television and comedy careers began. Garagiola was a baseball player, and he spent part of his major league career squatting behind home plate about three miles from where my mother put dinner on my plate at home every evening.
In the approximately 20 to 25 percent of his nine-year career that he played in Pittsburgh, Garagiola was part of one of the worst teams in history. The 1952 Pirates had a 42-112 record, which computes to a .273 percentage, seventh lowest since 1900, the Elias Sports Bureau says.
“That ball club gave me enough material,” Garagiola said, referring to his comedy career.
That ball club gave me a lifetime of memories, living through the eyes of a 13-year-old fan whose entire family lived for Pirates games.
That ball club had two Pittsburgh kids, center fielder Bobby Del Greco (who celebrated his 19th birthday a week before the season began) and first baseman Tony Bartirome (who turned 20 five weeks after the season started).
That club had a right fielder, Gus Bell, whose son and two grandsons would play in the majors. Gus Bell and Del Greco had a third outfield mate you might have heard of, fellow name of Kiner, known to his friends as Ralph.
Another “name” from that team was the rookie shortstop, Dick Groat, who eight years later would be the National League most valuable player when the Pirates won the World Series.
But what about third baseman Pete Castiglione, first baseman George (Catfish) Metkovich, shortstops George Strickland and 5-foot-4 Clem Koshorek, third baseman Dick Hall, outfielder Ted Beard (my favorite player), second baseman Johnny Berardino, later to be better known as Dr. Steve Hardy on the long-running soap opera “General Hospital,” and pitchers Murry Dickson, Bob Friend, Howie Pollett, Ron Kline, Ron Necciai, Bill Werle and Paul LaPalme.
“When we played the Dodgers,” Garagiola related, “Don Newcombe said ‘We’re having a helluva time getting someone to start against you guys.’
He said all the pitchers get in a room to fight to see who gets to pitch against you.”
There are still more memories from the following season, when the O’Brien twins, shortstop Eddie and second baseman Johnny, joined the Pirates. So did Vic Janowicz, the 1950 Heisman trophy winner as a tailback with Ohio State, who initially passed up the National Football League to play baseball.
Janowicz, a catcher, lasted only two inept seasons before returning to football. Garagiola recalled a game in which Janowicz missed two foul pops, then had a chance for a third.
“A fan,” Garagiola related, “yelled – and everyone could hear him – ‘signal for a fair catch.’”
Janowicz played his first major league game May 31, 1953, apparently making Garagiola expendable because the Pirates included him in perhaps the most stunning trade in their history. He went to the Chicago Cubs with Kiner on a day when the teams were playing in Pittsburgh.
“That whole thing was incredible,” Garagiola recalled on the telephone Tuesday. “We’re out in batting practice, and I’m standing next to Metkovich. I said look at the press box. I said there has to be something going on. He said, yeah.
“They called both teams off the field. Fred Haney, the manager, said, ‘Ralph, you’ve been good for me,’ and he praised him. Then Haney said, ‘Where’s the Dago?’ I said which one?”
When Garagiola learned the manager meant him, he spoke up, invoking the name of the general manager, Branch Rickey. “I said Mr. Rickey said I was in his plans. Haney said ‘I guess this was in his plans to trade you.’”
Metkovich, who was also going to the Cubs in the 10-player trade, in which the Pirates also received $150,000, a hefty sum in those days, said to Garagiola, “What’s going on?” “This is a troop movement,” Garagiola said he replied, adding that the players switched clubhouses and uniforms for the day game.
Kiner played left field for the Cubs that day, and Garagiola and Metkolvich pinch hit. “Mrs. Garagiola was out shopping that day,” the catcher said, “and she said, ‘I was listening to the game and I thought Rosey Rowswell lost his mind. He said Kiner’s in left field for the Cubs.’”
Garagiola played for the Cubs until the New York Giants claimed him on waivers with three weeks left in the season. He played the last five games of his career with the Giants that year.
He began his new career the next year, and it took him all the way to this week. “I’ve had such a good ride,” he said. “We were talking about it tonight.” He referred to his wife of 63 years, Audrey.
Garagiola, who grew up in St. Louis with Yogi Berra, began as a Cardinals’ announcer and subsequently did Yankees’ and Angels’ games. He was best known, however, for his nearly 30-year association with NBC.
It wasn’t all baseball. He was a panelist on NBC’s “Today” show, occasionally hosted Johnny Carson’s “Tonight” show and hosted a variety of game shows and the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. Somewhere in there was his comedy career.
“My biggest break came in Pittsburgh,” he said. “One of my favorite guys was Chilly Doyle,” a Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph sports columnist. “He was a wonderful guy. He was retiring so I bought a ticket to go to the banquet. I wasn’t on the program, but he spotted me and said, ‘Hey, come up here and do those things you do in the clubhouse.”
Hearing Garagiola at that dinner, another Pittsburgh columnist, Al Abrams, asked him to do the Dapper Dan dinner, which at the time was one of the biggest winter sports/social events in the country.
Garagiola was a hit. A representative of the Hickok belt award to the professional athlete of the year scouted the Dapper Dan dinner “and they asked me to do their banquet in Rochester (N.Y.) I said yeah, I’d love to do it.”
“That was the year Mantle got the gold belt,” he went on. Barney Kremenko, a New York writer, was there and asked me if I’d do the New York writers’ dinner. I was on the program with George Gobel. Jack Paar’s friend was at the dinner. He tells Paar about this baldheaded guy.”
“I had no agent,” Garagiola said. “I was doing Optimist and Kiwanis dinners.”
Not that many people see it too often, but Garagiola has a serious side, too. “I’ve been working at the Indian mission for 15 years,” he cited as an example. An Arizona resident, he referred to the St. Peter’s Indian Mission in the Gila River Indian Community.
There has also been his work for the Baseball Assistance Team (BAT), which helps needy former players, and for years he made a spring tour of baseball camps, trying to discourage players from using smokeless tobacco. He often would be accompanied by Bill Tuttle, a former major league outfielder, who had oral cancer. Tuttle died in 1998.
“I have testified four times before Congress,” Garagiola said. “At the last one I was told I had five minutes. I said I didn’t come all this way for five minutes. I took 20 minutes.”
Garagiola was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2009, but it was removed successfully and was found to be benign. He wasn’t taking any chances.
“I lit enough candles they had to call the fire department,” he said.