Baseball Hall of Fame

This East Peoria native and Spalding ('82) graduate took the Irish to the 1982 state finals before obtaining an industrial engineering degree from Northwestern University, where he was an All-Big Ten catcher in 1985 and 1986. Selected in the fifth round of the MLB draft by the Chicago Cubs, Joe turned a successful major league playing career into a managerial career, first as bench coach of the New York Yankees, and recently as manager of the Florida MarIins.

Joe's playing career spanned 15 seasons with the Cubs, Rockies, Yankees and Cardinals, winning World Series rings in 1996, 1998 and 1999. He was selected to the National League All-Star team in 2000. He caught Dave Cone's "perfect game" in 1999 and Dwight Gooden's no-hitter in 1996.

His career stats include a .267 batting average, 186 doubles, 26 triples, 36 homers, 454 runs scored and 422 RBI's. He played in 1,277 games, collecting 1,100 hits. A superb handler of pitchers, his career fielding average was .991 bettered by only two major league catchers with 15-year careers in MLB history.