Sportscasting legend and onetime Major League Baseball catcher Joe Garagiola has passed away at 90, reportedly after a long illness. The announcement was made by the Arizona Diamondbacks organization; Garagiola called D-backs games from 1998-2012.
Garagiola began his post-MLB career calling Cardinals games on KMOX/St. Louis and kept that post for many years, even after he began his stellar national television career in the early ’60s. Working for NBC on Game of the Week pregame shows and play-by-play, the good-humored Garagiola became so popular that he occasionally filled in as a guest host on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.
Garagiola became a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame as a broadcasters in 1991 and in 2014 was honored with the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the sport.
