Remembering Joe Garagiola hanging with Willie Mays in Giants’ clubhouse
The Arizona Diamondbacks announced Joe Garagiola has died at 90.
A great baseball ambassador who did more to promote the game than most everyone else who played it, Mr. Garagiola was a legend on many fronts.
[...] he would light up any room he entered.
Including the Giants’ clubhouse.
Here’s my story from 2013 about a day Garagiola and Willie Mays hung out and laughed it up in the clubhouse at Scottsdale Stadium:
Covering spring training for three decades, I've seen my share of PFPs (pitchers' fielding practices), jersey numbers 65, 78 and 99 and red-eyed players missing workouts because of, ahem, "flu-like symptoms."
' clubhouse and sat down with
In front of a handful of blessed people, it was Joe's show, and he eloquently chatted about baseball in general and Mays in particular, including what he considers Mays' greatest catch.
Not from Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, for which Garagiola had a bird's-eye view.
Garagiola, 87, retired as a Hall of Fame broadcaster Wednesday after 58 years - he had been a part-timer in the
TV booth since 1998 - and held a news conference in Scottsdale that more closely resembled a comedy act.
At one point, the former catcher spoke of finishing his playing career with the 1954
[...] he taps the plate and backs out and says, 'What the hell are you doing there?'
Garagiola has a ton of stories, and never mind that one might be a bit off base.
Not that we should allow details to interfere with a master storyteller.
Garagiola wasn't on the roster and was in the center-field clubhouse peeking out a window when Mays raced back for his over-the-shoulder grab and magnificent whirling throw to the infield.
In some pictures of the play, a man can be seen in the window.
Garagiola said he saw a better catch by Mays in July 1951, shortly after the Say Hey Kid burst into the majors.
Garagiola was a Pirate, and the Giants were at Forbes Field.
, a left-handed hitter, drilled a ball that sent Mays running deep, but it tailed away from him, away from his glove side.
Branch Rickey, then Pittsburgh's general manager, called it the "finest catch I have ever seen."
For a guy who has witnessed two of Mays' greatest catches, Garagiola called his wife of 63 years, Audrey, "the best catch I ever made."
' clubhouse, sat next to
Garagiola's final weeks as a player were as a rarely used catcher on the '54 Giants, who swept Cleveland in the World Series.
[...] Garagiola, as he often does, turned the conversation to his fight against the use of smokeless tobacco, and nobody laughed.
Emulate him, not some guy who has tobacco in his back pocket.
Garagiola, 86 and six years older than Mays, has spent much of his life talking to players about the hazards of chewing tobacco, testifying before Congress and state legislatures and citing horrid examples of the deadly effects of tobacco use.
Major League Baseball
[...] the players' union finally budged, albeit an inch.
The regulations, which certainly are being overlooked in spring training, are cosmetic - Garagiola wants tobacco banned; no use at all on the field - but at least they're a start, he admitted.
[...] it's like blaming the Johnstown Flood on a leaky faucet, for goodness sake.
Why don't you just let a ballplayer smoke a cigarette in the on-deck circle?
What the hell's the difference?
Tobacco is banned in the minors.
Minor-leaguers have no union, and the commissioner's office implemented a no-tobacco rule, but don't tell Garagiola that minor-leaguers don't dip or chew.
The other day, he vowed to thank Giants manager
Garagiola wants players to come out against tobacco use and eventually agree to have it banned, but he's getting little support.
An Arizona resident, he said whenever he walks into the
' clubhouse, players scatter, knowing what message he's about to deliver, knowing they don't want to be told to kick the habit.
All these guys say, 'Oh, when I get out of the game or when my kids grow up, I'm going to quit.'
When did you get that contract from God?'
John Shea is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.