Baseball Hall of Fame

An East Peoria native, Joe Girardi led Spalding to the 1982 state baseball finals. He took a baseball scholarship to Northwestern University, where he obtained an industrial engineering degree and 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 with the Florida Marlins, New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies and piloted the Yankees to the 2009 World Series championship.

Joe's playing career spanned 15 seasons with the Cubs, Rockies, Yankees and Cardinals, winning World Series rings with the Yankees 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 at the time of his retirement by only two major league catchers with 15-year careers in MLB history.