Joe Garagiola Still Winning

Joe Garagiola Still Winning

Veteran baseball broadcaster Joe Garagiola wasn’t exactly expected to be impartial last year when the Arizona Diamondbacks battled the New York Yankees to win the World Series title. Garagiola is a television analyst for the Diamondbacks, and son Joe Jr. is the club’s senior vice president and general manager.

“I can’t be objective,” Garagiola, 76, admits as he predicts this year’s matchup. “I think the same two teams will be in the World Series this fall. And revenge will not be a factor for the Yanks. You don’t get even, you just win.”

Garagiola knows a thing or two about winning. A St. Louis native, Garagiola won a World Series title in 1946 with his hometown Cardinals as a 20-year-old catcher who threw right-handed and batted left-handed, just like next-door neighbor and lifelong friend Yogi Berra. He also played pro ball with the Chicago Cubs, New York Giants, and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Broadcasting became his post-game career, and he announced for the Cardinals and Yankees before joining NBC for nearly 30 years. He called baseball and did two stints on the Today show, eventually earning a place in the broadcasters’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Now, Garagiola’s life in Scottsdale, Ariz., continues to revolve around baseball; the family—three children and eight grandchildren—he and his wife Audrie started when they married in 1949; and community service.

He and Audrie love to travel and frequently take off on long cruises. “We’ve gone to Alaska on cruises three different times. We’re going to go to Italy. We will also probably take a cruise up to the northeastern states,” he says.

Such trips make this marriage of more than 50 years even stronger. “It’s her and me, and we spend practically 24 hours a day together,” Garagiola says. “I’m a big believer in that line I read somewhere that real love stories never end.”

Although Garagiola has been vocal, particularly to young people and athletes, in his campaign against the use of spit tobacco—“My motto is ‘Smokeless does not mean harmless’”—his work with St. Peter’s Indian Mission may be one of his enduring legacies.

He’s been known to trade speaking fees for building playing fields and improving classrooms at the mission school on the Pima Indian Reservation south of Phoenix. The school, in return, has dedicated a playing field to Garagiola.

In 1998, Garagiola earned the Children’s MVP Award presented by the Jim Eisenreich Foundation to a former ballplayer who has made significant contributions to children’s causes.

Garagiola, indeed, knows a thing or two about being a winner.

Phil Sweetland is a Nashville, Tenn., freelance writer.

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