2024 marks the 25^th anniversary of River Cats baseball here in Sacramento and I can’t believe its been five years since I first started my journey of documenting their 20^th anniversary in my book “Let’s Get it All” which is the story of the 2019 season and the River Cats road to the Triple-A National Championship.

Since then, its been a rough road for River Cats fans as the team has put up some of its worst records in team history but I have a feeling that’s about to change here as the season gets under way here in 2024.

The River Cats opened up the season with a three-game series against the Salt Lake Bees and took two of the three nail biting games. They honestly could easily have started the season 3-0 if it were not for an error in extra innings that allowed the Bees to pull ahead in the second game of the double header this past Easter. The Cats showed last minute heroics at the plate which started with a Brett Wisely walk off home run in the bottom of the ninth on the postponed Opening Day, and a game tying home run in extra innings in game two of the Easter Sunday double header by Heliot Ramos. The team’s starting pitching looks strong in this small sample size as Mason Black and Carson Whisenhunt showed why they are some of the Giants’ top pitching prospects by not allowing any runs while striking out a combined 11 batters over eight innings.

The Cats then traveled to Reno for a six-game series against the Aces, splitting the series 3-3 including two more extra inning game wins. The Cats come back into Sacramento on a three-game skid and now have a 5-4 record after starting 5-1. Fans shouldn’t be too concerned, it’s a long season, its early and the team just finds ways to win.

The performances we’ve seen this year from Black and Whisenhunt are reminiscent of the Cats’ first season when Barry Zito and Mark Mulder put on the River Cats jersey 25 years ago. In honor of the River Cats 25^th Anniversary, here is an interview with former Sacramento River Cat, Oakland Athletic, and San Francisco Giant Barry Zito. This interview was conducted in December 2018 and originally slated to be included in my book, but as the book changed directions in how I originally envisioned it this was left from the final draft of the book.

I first met Barry in 2018 when he made an appearance and threw out the first pitch at a River Cats game. I ran into him in the press box and pitched him my idea of my book, we exchanged information and a few months later set up the interview.

Barry was living in Nashville at the time and called me after he dropped his kid off at school but was telling me about the increase in crime in Nashville at the time and how he had to drive out of his way to get home because of some streets being closed due to a shooting the night before.

Interesting enough as we were making small talk, Barry dropped that he was currently writing a book himself, which would end up being his 2019 memoir.

Dugout Tales (DT):
“Coming into the 2000 season, you were hands down the biggest star on the River Cats roster. From the outside and beginning with the 1999 draft to when the River Cats finally opened their season at home in May 2000 it seems like it must have been a whirlwind experience. Looking back, can you tell l what it was like going from college to Triple-A, and then in a matter of months being the face of a new franchise”?

Barry Zito (BZ):
“I was 21 and the ’99 season was definitely a whirlwind. Going from A ball to Double-A, and then getting called up to Vancouver to help the team in the playoffs as most of their guys went to the Big Leagues as September Call-Ups. Coming back to Spring Training with the A’s, I didn’t think I had a chance to make the team but just being in Big League camp was just incredible. I remember my big moment in that Spring Training and I got to face Frank Thomas, one of my childhood heroes, and he got a base hit up the middle but I was proud to give up a hit to Frank Thomas. Then I remember when Art Howe told me, “Hey we’re going to send you to Triple-A”, he continued, “We think you’ve been great, but we think you can use some time down there”. I told him, yeah, no worries, I’m already talking Triple-A right now, this definitely more than I expected…I was in college just a year ago”.

“Once I found out the details of the Triple-A thing it was exciting but also…we didn’t know what to expect because we had this new city and this new ballpark. [It was] so exciting to have all that energy and momentum around a new town and a new facility, but the catch was the park is not going to be ready for six to eight weeks [after] the season starts. [The team] was like, so what are we gonna do with this? Oh, we’re just gonna go on a road trip for two months. And that was kind of strange. You just don’t have that in baseball. So it was it was definitely kind of a bittersweet beginning there in Sacramento”.

DT:
“You mentioned that you grew up a Frank Thomas fan, and got to face him in your first Spring Training. Jumping ahead five years in your career, you’re no longer a rookie in his first Spring Training, you’re an elite professional and you’re now one of Frank’s teammates. Did you still feel like, hey, that’s Frank Thomas, or did you have a chance to get to know him before you joined the A’s”?

BZ:
“I got to play with Frank I think in ’06 and by that time all that stuff wears off. I mean once you’re out of the Minor Leagues, you’re not really playing against anybody you’ve never heard of, and I played with so many of my childhood heroes, Dave Justice, Ron Gant, and Frank Thomas were three of probably five guys that I looked up to as a kid so the fact that I ever got to play with them was just incredible”.

DT:
“Going back to that 2000 season, what were those first couple of months on the road like and do you think spending that much time on the road affected you in any way”?

BZ:
“You kind of have a transient lifestyle as a baseball player. Even through my college career I went to four colleges in three years, and my father, being a former talent manager was making a lot of moves for me, so, I was already used to that kind of transient lifestyle. Then going to the Minor Leagues the year before I played in three different towns in three months so I was used to it and I didn’t have any expectations of trying to have a stable home life”.

“I think it just takes its wear and tear because in Triple-A, people don’t understand the travel is much more difficult. You’re basically contracted to be on the very first flight out. Let’s say there’s a 5:30am flight from Sacramento to Oklahoma City and you’re laying over Denver. Well, Oklahoma City wants to put…fans in the seats that night. Let’s say through layovers or bad weather, the Sacramento team can’t make it. Well, Sacramento has to prove that they did everything they could to get there that day, so they literally have to be on the first flight out. You always have a night game the night before, so you’re literally getting home, at 11 o’clock from your game and you’re up at 3:30 in the morning to pack and get to the airport. It’s a really rigorous travel schedule, and you’re flying just regular airlines with regular people. It’s pretty heavy to be on the road doing that, I think for seven weeks. I remember that road trip was so long. You could probably go back in the schedule and confirm, but we went to some cities [twice] on that road trip, like Salt Lake. I think it was the first week and then here we are five weeks later we came back to Salt Lake on the same road trip”.

Barry puts me on hold while he goes through a drive-through to get some breakfast before he arrives to meet his cowriter, Robert Noland, for a morning writing session. When Barry returns, he wanted to discuss a little more about being the face of the River Cats back in 2000.

BZ:
“As a young player I think it’s part of the beauty when you’re just an up and comer, but when you said that it was like the first time ever heard that I was the guy of the franchise because I just I had no clue about any of that. I just knew that I was trying to get to the big leagues. I guess prospect wise there really wasn’t any other high-profile names, but its just funny to hear, and I think that’s the beauty of being a young player, you’re not really aware of your impact or of what anyone is thinking. So, for me, man, it was just like, keep grinding and get up to the big leagues”.

DT:
“Speaking of Sacramento, are there any particular memories that stand out from your short time here? Did you have a host family or live in an apartment”?

BZ:
“No, I had an apartment, I was a bonus baby so I could afford the apartment” Barry chuckled sheepishly. “I had a roommate and I don’t even know who my roommate was, I’m terrible. But I had I had a girlfriend, my first girlfriend was a girl from USC, and I remember I lived right by…the old Kings arena, off Truxel. So you get off and there was an On The Border restaurant there on the left and you’d go down and take a right turn before the arena, and that was like all farms and then it was my building. But as far as memories go, I remember me and the boys would go out down to [Harlow’s] on J Street. There wasn’t a lot of action. There was a place that had this like 70s, funk, r&b kind of like cover band [Wonder Bread 5] and they were super cool. There wasn’t a whole lot going on man. Then we’d actually go out to Bobby McGees out in Citrus Heights like on Tuesdays or something they had some kind of dance party thing going on out there”.

DT:
“Art Savage, the owner of the River Cats who was responsible for bring the River Cats to Sacramento from Vancouver, passed away in 2009; did you have a chance to get to know him or do you have anything that you want to share about your relationship with him”?

BZ:
“Art was always so graceful and always seemed like a really nice man…I didn’t get a chance to know him in depth but for my time there he always treated me very well. He seemed to have a true passion for the game which is really cool”.

DT:
“Prior to 2015 the 18 games you spent with Sacramento back in 2000 were the most that you spent in the Minors. In 2015 you had the chance to return to Sacramento when you were playing with the then Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland A’s. In that game you pitched six shutout innings with five strikeouts. What do you remember about that game”?

BZ:
“That was definitely incredible for me. I think it was 2003 or 2004 I pitched one of those exhibition games between the A’s and their Triple-A team so that was the first time back since I had left in 2000 but that was obviously a different dynamic. So in 2015 I was in Triple-A and I just remember the organization being changed and I was playing for the A’s but just being the Giants and my history with the A’s and the Giants, it was surreal because they presented me with a jersey on the field that day which was a half A’s, half Giants, River Cats jersey which was some kind of custom made thing. It had my number on it, 34, which a lot of people don’t know but I wore 34 all through the Minors and college because of a guy named Kris Benson who was a pitcher at Clemson. He wore it because of Nolan Ryan, pretty the reason everyone wears 34, but I wore it because of Kris Benson, so it was cool to get that jersey in ’15, because once I got to the Big Leagues, Rollie Fingers had 34 retired so I couldn’t wear my number anymore. But yeah, it was just amazing to come back and see all the fans and I had this scoreless inning streak that year with the Nashville Sounds and I remember that Sacramento game was in the middle of that…and it was really cool to pitch well there”.  

DT:
“That’s an interesting fact about Kris Benson, and a name I hadn’t heard in a while”.

BZ:
“He was the first pick in ’96 when I was a senior in high school and that was the first time that I was paying attention to Baseball America and he was on the cover. I got to tell him years later. We were playing long toss with our partners and we backed into each other in centerfield and one point when I was with Oakland and he was in Pittsburgh. I was like, “Dude can you sign a ball for me”, and he was like “Yeah, man, what?”. I was like, “Bro, you were like my favorite pitcher”, and he was like, “What?!” because it was super surprising to him. So I got to get my Kris Benson ball and it really meant a lot to me”.

As we started to wrap up, I asked Barry what his future held for him and if she saw himself coming back to baseball as a coach or in the front office.

BZ:
“Right now for me its all music. That was actually my first love. I came from a musical family, my father was a jazz conductor and arranger for Nat King Cole, my mom was a singer for Nat. So that’s in my blood. I’m in the process of writing a book this entire year but originally when I retired out here in Nashville, I went into song writing full time and started co-writing country music to pitch to artists, more as a song writer than an artist myself. So, I did that and released a little songwriter EP to give people an indication of my songwriting. I did that last year and now I’m getting into musical production, audio engineering and trying to learn all sides of creating, and I have no idea where its going to take me but I’m loving every day of it, its so much fun”.

History really does repeat itself as this past week we learned that the Oakland A’s will be playing here in Sacramento at Sutter Health Park for three seasons, and possibly a fourth, while their new stadium is constructed in Las Vegas. There’s a lot to unpack from all of that but thats for another time another place. This move brings the ties between Sacramento and Oakland full circle in a sense with the River Cats who at the time were the A’s Triple-A affiliate and began their tenure in Sacramento on the road for a couple of month waiting for then Raley Field to be completed; and here we are 25 years later, the A’s are coming to Sacramento as a team without a home until 2028.

Barry’s six song EP titled No Secrets was released in January 2017, and his book Curveball: How I Discovered True Fulfillment After Chasing Fortune and Fame written with Robert Noland was released in 2019. My book, Let’s Get it All, the story of the 2019 River Cats’ Road to the Triple-A National Championship was published in 2023.