Joe Garagiola may be the reason I have anything in common with my dad.

As the youngest of five kids, and a girl to boot, that I have anything in common with Dad is amazing. That our common ground is a baseball diamond is astounding.

It’s 1973, I think, and I’m trying to procrastinate on doing the dishes. I wander into the family room where Dad is watching the Game of the Week, and the camera is close up on a very handsome ball player.

“Who’s that?” I wonder, and Dad says, “Johnny Bench,” and the Cincinnati Reds catcher promptly hits a home run, Joe Garagiola calls the play, and I am hooked.

Several things happened right away: I got a poster of Johnny Bench standing up to make the throw to second (Fun Fact: he says he kept his throw straight by making sure his elbow brushed his ear on the upswing; I know this because I have his book, “From Behind the Plate”) and I started watching a lot of baseball with my Dad.

It must have been annoying to try to watch the games with your decidedly unathletic teenaged daughter pestering you about the rules and strategy of the game, but Dad didn’t seem to mind. In between Joe’s and Tony Kubek’s stories he told me his own memories, about playing high school ball (he was a catcher, too) and how he had visited some the major parks of his time…old Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, and Ebbets Field.

One story he liked to tell was how in high school he had been given the task of catching a wild, but speedy pitcher named Rex Barney. Dad must have drawn the very shortest straw, because Barney’s legendary wildness terrified everyone on the team at Creighton Prep.

Years later, we’re watching a game together and Tony Kubek idly asked Garagiola, “Who’s the fastest pitcher you ever saw?” Without hesitation, Joe blurted “Rex Barney,” and the baseball connection was forged even stronger over our amazement at the coincidence.

Dad would bring me back books on baseball from the library, and I read them all, and because of Dad’s choices I am now a trivia threat on people like Honus Wagner and Wee Willie Keeler and Tinkers to Evers to Chance. Dad took me to the Phoenix Giants minor league games and taught me how to keep score.

Joe Garagiola’s easy story telling is the soundtrack of the much of my teenaged summers spent with my dad.

And now he’s gone. Say it ain’t so, Joe.

© E. Stocking Evans 2016