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Jocketty, a three-time executive of the year who built the Cardinals’ 2006 World Series championship club, died overnight Friday into Saturday morning in Arizona after lengthy battle with health issues that included a year of hospitalization. A close friend of the family and the Cardinals confirmed Jocketty’s passing. He was 74.

“Walt was our first GM when we purchased the ball club, and he helped to lead our baseball operations through some of the franchise’s most successful and memorable years,” chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said in a statement Saturday. “He will be sorely missed, but long remembered for his distinguished career in baseball.”

Earlier this year, Cardinals ownership notified Jocketty personally he would be inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame on Sept. 6 and the club was able to congratulate him on the red jacket, a team official told the Post-Dispatch. A announcement on the 2025 class was already planned for Friday when Jocketty will formally be named a Cardinals Hall of Famer.

Jocketty had started writing his acceptance speech, a Cardinals official said.

The Cardinals were seven years removed from their most recent playoff appearance and a few days removed from a losing season when they announced hiring Jocketty. He emerged from a group of 17 candidates that included former players and household names. He was neither. Pulled out of the expansion Colorado Rockies’ front office and toting a resume that included a minor-league leadership role for the great Oakland teams of the 1980s, Jocketty acknowledged in his introductory press conference that he was “not flashy or the outgoing, flamboyant type.”

His audacious moves sure were.

Early in his tenure, Jocketty hired Hall of Fame-bound manager Tony La Russa, who became the Cardinals’ all-time leader in wins, and traded for history-bound slugger Mark McGwire, who pushed the single-season home run record to 70 in his first full season with the Cardinals. Jocketty’s moves brought Scott Rolen, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Jason Isringhausen, Larry Walker, and Chris Carpenter to St. Louis. In the same winter, he acquired a 20-game winner in Darryl Kile and a 40-homer Gold Glove-winner in Edmonds.

Jocketty helmed baseball operations when the Cardinals drafted Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina and upset MLB’s draft practices by aggressively offering market-raising bonuses to J.D. Drew and Rick Ankiel. Jocketty established elements of roster construction the Cardinals continued to follow a decade after his departure. His style of moves helped draw 3 million perennially to the ballpark and restored the Busch Stadium traditions of contending and star-gazing.

During Jocketty’s leadership from 1994 through 2007, the Cardinals won six National League Central titles in 13 seasons, two NL pennants, and punctuated seven postseason appearances with the 2006 World Series championship.

“When you’re in a position like he is, and now you’ve gotten that World Series credential, that gives you certain stature within (the game) that no one can take away from you,” La Russa in October 2006. “He really deserves the success.”

That was the pinnacle of Jocketty’s era with the Cardinals. Later, after he was relieved of his role due to a front office that had splintered into factions by October 2007, he reflected back on the annual postseason appearances.

“I hope,” he said, “that is how it is remembered.”

“As I reflect back on our time together, it makes me smile,” John Mozeliak, the Cardinals’ president of baseball operations and Jocketty’s long-time lieutenant, said on Saturday. “Whether we were traveling with the major-league club, traversing through the minor leagues, or late nights in the office — our front office had a lot of great chemistry led by him. Walt was my boss, my mentor, and my friend. He impacted my life in so many ways. I am grateful that I had the opportunity.”

Walter Joseph Jocketty was born Feb. 19, 1951, in Minneapolis to Ruth and Joe Jocketty. Described by the Star Tribune once as “the patriarch of one of Minneapolis’ more famous sports families,” Joe Jocketty was a social studies teacher and coach, spending most of his career at Marshall High School in Minneapolis. There he coached baseball and hockey. Two of his sons, Joe Jr. and Peter, were standouts in both sports. Walter played baseball and basketball at Marshall. The school’s mascot — the Cardinals — was part of the Jocketty home décor, and during his childhood Walter would listen to Harry Caray and Jack Buck on KMOX/1120 AM call ballgames in St. Louis, sometimes pretending to be a Cardinals pitcher in the backyard with his brothers.

On Fridays, Walter would get The Sporting News and devour its baseball coverage, and his among his first experiences building rosters came playing APBA, a tabletop simulation and strategy game using real statistics and dice.

Jocketty, who pitched briefly for a junior college, graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1974 with a degree in business administration. Newly married that same year, Walter and Sue Jocketty headed off for their honeymoon in New Orleans — the site of Major League Baseball’s Winter Meetings.

That trip began five decades for their family in professional baseball.

The first step on Jocketty’s climb to the majors came in Iowa with the Class AAA Oaks, and it was while there in the late 1970s that he first met La Russa. Sporting a recommendation from famed baseball executive and scout Roland Hemond, Jocketty landed an offer from Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley and, in 1979, became the A’s director of minor-league operations. Jocketty reinvigorated the Athletics’ farm system and under his guidance it produced three American League Rookies of the Year — Jose Canseco, Walt Weiss, and McGwire — and fueled clubs that won three consecutive AL pennants. In 1993, Jocketty left the A’s to join the new club in Colorado as its assistant general manager.

Within the next year, in October 1994, he was introduced as the Cardinals’ GM, only the organization’s 12th in more than 100 years in the National League.

A hearty endorsement from La Russa helped.

“It would have been easier to hire someone you’ve heard about but in some respects I was convinced that wasn’t the right thing to do,” said then-club president Mark Lamping at the introductory press conference. “There’s some risk involved, but I have every confidence in the world that we’ve chosen the right person.”

Jocketty aimed high soon after being introduced and made a bid to sign one of the most talented free agents available that same October, all-world outfielder Larry Walker. Although unsuccessful in that pursuit, Jocketty’s aggressive plan to rebuild the Cardinals and restock their dugout with headliners was clear. In the coming years, he would trade for a parade of All-Stars, present and future.

But first, in 1996, he hired La Russa as manager and forged one of the strongest partnerships between the dugout and front office in Cardinals’ history.

At the July trade deadline in 1997, Jocketty orchestrated a deal with his former club, the A’s, for McGwire — and changed the course of baseball history.

McGwire hit 24 home runs in his first 51 games with the Cardinals, setting the stage for his pursuit of Roger Maris’ untouchable record in 1998. The Great Home Run Derby of ’98 — the one credited with saving baseball following the mid-1990s players’ strike — brought thousands to Busch Stadium to watch batting practice, let alone the millions who tuned in to watch McGwire and Sammy Sosa duel to be the first to hit a 62nd home run. In early September, McGwire connected for No. 62 and surged past to reset the record at 70. That summer and the country-wide homer fever is now stained by baseball’s Steroid Era. McGwire would later admit to using performance-enhancing drugs during his career.

While McGwire’s feats brought a world of attention to the Cardinals, they did not translate into the standings. The Cardinals finished third in 1998, fourth in 1999.

Jocketty plotted his masterstrokes.

From 2000 through 2006, the Cardinals appeared in the postseason six times, won 100 games twice, became the dominant presence in the NL Central, and had the best winning percentage (.581) in the NL. Under Jocketty’s guide, they collected and produced stars.

“He was one of the most inspired, creative, and impactful general managers of his time,” agent Scott Boras said Saturday morning. “He was willing to do things other general managers would have ignored. He was also a patient, kind man who was accepting and understanding, and what he did for Rick Ankiel through his struggles as a pitcher and the small possibility he could return as an outfield — those moments should not be forgotten.”

As Jocketty led the Cardinals into the 2000s, they drafted Pujols and later signed him to the club’s first $100 million deal. Jocketty traded for Hall of Famers Rolen and Walker, acquiring the three-time batting champion Walker in 2004, nearly a decade after first trying. Jocketty landed Edmonds and shortstop Edgar Renteria in other trades that shaped the 105-win 2004 team. Jocketty established a practice of bringing in stars, selling them on St. Louis, and then prioritizing extensions to keep them — a practice the Cardinals’ ownership sought to maintain into the 2020s.

Jocketty signed 2006 NLCS MVP Jeff Suppan and 2006 World Series MVP David Eckstein as free agents and also signed contributors for that same era such as Reggie Sanders, Tony Womack, Mark Grudzielanek, and Mike Matheny. Years before the Cardinals had a team Hall of Fame, Jocketty was acquiring the players who would populate it: Carpenter, Edmonds, McGwire, Rolen, Isringhausen, Matt Morris, and eventually Pujols, Wainwright, and Molina.

That same Hall honors officials Jocketty brought to St. Louis in La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan. Mozeliak was brought to St. Louis by Jocketty and replaced his mentor atop baseball operations in 2007 to become one of the longest-serving and most-successful in the role outside of Branch Rickey.

Back in New Orleans for another Winter Meetings, Jocketty sought a deal with the Braves in December 2003 that would help define the next 20 years for the Cardinals. The rule of thumb in the industry was once Atlanta started talking about trading for pitchers, leave the room. Jocketty, famously, did not. Not until he had a deal that sent Drew to Atlanta and returned a young prospect, Wainwright.

The right-hander would close out a championship and win 200 games as a Cardinal.

“We lost a great man, baseball mind, and friend,” Wainwright shared on social media Saturday.

“You would have to look long and hard to find someone who doesn’t like and respect Walt Jocketty, and there’s a difference,” La Russa told the New York Times in 2010. “People like him because he’s a good man, but they respect him because he’s honest. The reason he makes deals is he isn’t hiding information. Both sides prospect and want to make another deal.”

Beneath the surface of success in 2005 and championship in 2006, fissures and friction had started to form in the Cardinals’ front office. In an attempt to modernize the Cardinals’ scouting with a dash of Moneyball, DeWitt hired Jeff Luhnow from outside of baseball to develop the team’s analytics department and a more data-driven approach. As the Cardinals crumbled to a losing record in 2007, the disconnect between departments in Jocketty’s front office could not be ignored. DeWitt called it a “divide” — and decided it had to be repaired by someone else.

He fired Jocketty in October 2007 and a few weeks later, on Halloween, named John Mozeliak, Jocketty’s longtime assistant general manager, to head baseball operations.

Jocketty would later say he could have done more to embrace the changes and create more cooperation and collaboration but felt “uncomfortable” at the time.

Within months, the Cincinnati Reds hired Jocketty as an adviser and soon promoted him to lead their baseball operations. In almost nine seasons leading the Cardinals’ division rival, Jocketty built the first winning team in Great American Ball Park’s history, three playoff clubs, and signed MVP Joey Votto to a record 10-year, $225-million extension. Jocketty moved back into an advisory role after the 2016 season and remained with the Reds, serving most recently as an executive advisor to the CEO in 2024.

While in Cincinnati, Jocketty won his third Executive of the Year Award, putting 2010’s honor beside 2000 and 2004. Following the 2006 championship, Jocketty was inducted into the Missouri ������Ƶ Hall of Fame in 2007.

“We’ve never worked for anyone better than Walt Jocketty,” La Russa told the Post-Dispatch on the night of the 2006 championship clincher. “He’s built a strong core in the relationship to where we’ll do whatever it takes for this man.”

The Cardinals held a moment of silence for Jocketty before Saturday’s game.

Jocketty is survived by his wife, Sue, and their two children, Ashley and Joe. His son, who folks called “Joey” at the ballpark during Jocketty’s tenure with the Cardinals, followed his father into baseball and is a professional scout for the Cincinnati Reds.

Information on memorial services are pending.