Whatever happened to Joe Garagiola?
or a time back in the late 1970s-early 80s he seemed to be all over the place: baseball color man, game show host, the Today Show. Where’s he been for the last 15-20 years? Working on a new book, it seems, a follow up to his successful Baseball is a Funny Game, originally released in 1960.
His new offering, Just Play Ball (Northland), almost strikes me as the ruminations of another old veteran’s commentary on how the game has lost its place in the American fabric and how we should strive to get it back. Sweet idea? Sure. Will it happen? Surely not.
Remember the song “Kids” from the musical Bye Bye Birdie? What’s the matter with kids these days, the singers wonder. It’s the same in every generation. The middle aged among us think (almost) everything should be like it was was when we were kids, that today’s generation doesn’t understand the value of fill-in-the-blank and has no appreciation for history or tradition. Like many of his generation, Garagiola, now 81 years old, laments the lost “innocence” of the game.
So how will his latest book do? According to Amazon’s new and very specific best-seller lists, Just Play Ball ranks #13 in the Baseball/Essay category and #22 in baseball/history (just ahead of Kent Hrbek’s Tales from the Minnesota Twins Dugout).
The Amazon Report: Baseball Is a Funny Game
Just Play Ball
is available on Amazon.com,
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