Joe Garagiola waves to the fans.
People ask him what it was like to play with Babe Ruth. Are you kidding? Without taking offense, Joe Garagiola reminds his young fans that the Babe was long before his time. Garagiola broke into baseball as a catcher for the St.Louis Cardinals in 1946. He was 20. (Babe Ruth retired in the mid-1930s — do the math.) The problem is that thousands of baseball fans feel as if Garagiola has been with us for a loooong time. In his book, Just Play Ball, he doesn't want to sound like some old fogey, recalling "the good old days" — and he doesn't. Passengers on a certain flight to Phoenix on Wednesday might have heard me laughing out loud at his memories. He seems to have known every player in baseball. Groin injuries, demigod players and victims of "gotcha" pranks. Example: a trainer advising a young pitcher named Tommy Lasorda on his sore arm: "Go find a toilet bowl, put your arm in it, then flush it three times and pretend it's a whirlpool." Highly nuanced with sharp wit, the over-30 crowd might remember him announcing games on NBC Sports, but the Hall of Famer also made several appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and the Today Show. Today, Garagiola gives us the play-by-play on baseball memories and how the game's changed.
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