[2] He was previously senior vice president of baseball operations for MLB from 2005 to 2011 and the general manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1997 to 2005.

He is the son of Joe Garagiola Sr., who played catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In 1973, Garagiola, along with Chris Hart, appeared on the game show To Tell the Truth as impostors pretending to be police detective Richard Buggy.

Garagiola's father and Hart's mother, Kitty Carlisle, were regular panelists on the show at the time and both appeared as part of a prank on their parents.

[1][3] In the 1990s, Maricopa county supervisor Jim Bruner discussed the idea of putting in a bid for an expansion team in Major League Baseball to play in Arizona with his friend Joe Garagiola Jr., who at the time was a Phoenix sports attorney.