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Joe Garagiola has passed away.
Back in the 1950s when I was a kid, I had a crystal set radio at the head of my bed. For those too young to know, a crystal set was powered solely by radio waves. You needed an earphone to listen and a long wire antenna out the window to catch the signal. KMOX was one of the most powerful AM radio broadcasting stations in the country. Along with the frequencies from a scattering of stations from other big cities in the eastern half of the country, the US government kept KMOX on a 'clear channel' free of interference as a method of communication in case of national scale emergencies. With a powered radio you could listen to it at night across the Midwest from Ohio to Saskachewan to Oklahoma. I was close enough to the transmitter that relatives who slept in my bed during visits sometimes heard voices that were unexplainable until they found the earphone. When they mentioned it in the morning and I apologized and offered to tune the set off station, usually they said it was perfectly all right and that they enjoyed listening before going to sleep. KMOX was the home station of the St. Louis Cardinals, so most nights from spring till fall, there was baseball on my crystal set. In those days baseball was much bigger than football.
In the mid 1950s the Cardinals had three broadcasters, Harry Caray, Joe Garagiola and Jack Buck. Harry was the lead, we'd call Joe the color-man these days, and Jack filled in when the others took their innings off. Harry was a master at making a dull game sound wildly exciting. Jack had a smooth voice that fit right in with doing the frequent beer commercials. Joe had the most unbelievably extensive store of baseball stories in his head. Unlike the other two he'd been a professional player. Like his childhood buddy, Yogi Berra, he was a catcher. Just to give a taste of Joe, he used to call the equipment catchers wear (the mask, the chest protector, shin guards and oversized baseball glove) "the tools of ignorance." He had funny stories about himself as a player, practically everyone he ever played with, and as time went on about a lot of guys he interviewed over the years. The Cardinals were a mediocre to poor baseball team in those years, but the three of them always made the games fun to listen to.
After a few years, Joe got a better job broadcasting Saturday games for NBC network TV, and moved to New York. He eventually was hired to do the Today Show for a time. Harry's drinking got out of control for awhile and the Cardinals fired him while I was in college. He moved to Chicago and after a time with the White Sox, became a fixture with the Cubs' broadcasts. Jack moved seamlessly into the radio lead on the Cardinal games, and pretty much did them for the rest of his life, along with NFL football games across the country for one TV network or another. All three of them are part of the Baseball Hall of Fame as broadcasters.
When I moved to Arizona I was very pleased to hear that Joe Garagiola was doing some broadcasts for the brand new Arizona Diamondbacks. There were many of the same old stories. But there were so many of them they never grew old, and there were newer stories about all sorts of people he interviewed on the Today Show. Joe was the last of the three to broadcast and the last living connection to that part of my childhood. I'm going to miss him.
Back in the 1950s when I was a kid, I had a crystal set radio at the head of my bed. For those too young to know, a crystal set was powered solely by radio waves. You needed an earphone to listen and a long wire antenna out the window to catch the signal. KMOX was one of the most powerful AM radio broadcasting stations in the country. Along with the frequencies from a scattering of stations from other big cities in the eastern half of the country, the US government kept KMOX on a 'clear channel' free of interference as a method of communication in case of national scale emergencies. With a powered radio you could listen to it at night across the Midwest from Ohio to Saskachewan to Oklahoma. I was close enough to the transmitter that relatives who slept in my bed during visits sometimes heard voices that were unexplainable until they found the earphone. When they mentioned it in the morning and I apologized and offered to tune the set off station, usually they said it was perfectly all right and that they enjoyed listening before going to sleep. KMOX was the home station of the St. Louis Cardinals, so most nights from spring till fall, there was baseball on my crystal set. In those days baseball was much bigger than football.
In the mid 1950s the Cardinals had three broadcasters, Harry Caray, Joe Garagiola and Jack Buck. Harry was the lead, we'd call Joe the color-man these days, and Jack filled in when the others took their innings off. Harry was a master at making a dull game sound wildly exciting. Jack had a smooth voice that fit right in with doing the frequent beer commercials. Joe had the most unbelievably extensive store of baseball stories in his head. Unlike the other two he'd been a professional player. Like his childhood buddy, Yogi Berra, he was a catcher. Just to give a taste of Joe, he used to call the equipment catchers wear (the mask, the chest protector, shin guards and oversized baseball glove) "the tools of ignorance." He had funny stories about himself as a player, practically everyone he ever played with, and as time went on about a lot of guys he interviewed over the years. The Cardinals were a mediocre to poor baseball team in those years, but the three of them always made the games fun to listen to.
After a few years, Joe got a better job broadcasting Saturday games for NBC network TV, and moved to New York. He eventually was hired to do the Today Show for a time. Harry's drinking got out of control for awhile and the Cardinals fired him while I was in college. He moved to Chicago and after a time with the White Sox, became a fixture with the Cubs' broadcasts. Jack moved seamlessly into the radio lead on the Cardinal games, and pretty much did them for the rest of his life, along with NFL football games across the country for one TV network or another. All three of them are part of the Baseball Hall of Fame as broadcasters.
When I moved to Arizona I was very pleased to hear that Joe Garagiola was doing some broadcasts for the brand new Arizona Diamondbacks. There were many of the same old stories. But there were so many of them they never grew old, and there were newer stories about all sorts of people he interviewed on the Today Show. Joe was the last of the three to broadcast and the last living connection to that part of my childhood. I'm going to miss him.