By DANIEL DULLUM
Sports Radio Service
Saturday, March 22, 2014

PHOENIX, Ariz. – After many years of describing Oakland Athletics baseball on radio, Ken Korach will tell you “spring training means nothing.” At least as far as exhibition game results apply to the bigger picture.

“It doesn’t mean a thing a week from Monday,” Korach explained. “The big thing is health with the injuries to Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin, so you do get concerned with those issues. The A’s feel they have the depth to withstand those kinds of things. But I learned a long time ago that you can’t make much out of what happens in spring training.”

The veteran A’s play-by-play man didn’t say if that was one of the lessons he learned from his old broadcast partner, the late Bill King, but the book he penned about King has resonated in a positive way with everyone who has read “Holy Toledo – Lessons from Bill King: Renaissance Man of the Mic” (Wellstone, 2013).

“It’s been a labor of love and the response has been great,” Korach said

King, who excelled in play-by-play for the Athletics, Raiders and Warriors, died in 2005. Korach, who grew up in Los Angeles listening to King, had the idea of writing the book for a while, but didn’t start in earnest until October 2012.

“Then, it was sitting down with the publisher, then it was about a 10-month process before it was published last September,” Korach said. “I knew it would be a lot of work. The reason I hadn’t written a book before that was 1) I didn’t really have a subject to write about, and 2) I never thought I could do it.

“I never thought I’d have the discipline to sit down and write a book because it’s a daily thing. You have to have a stick-to-itness so I knew what was ahead when I started the project,” he continued. “There was no actual deadline, but we thought it would be nice to get it out before the end of the (2013) season.

I think it really worked out well to do that, with the A’s in the pennant race and going to the postseason. With the book being published on the 6th of September, I think that was good timing.”

From a national standpoint, few heard King’s unique and enthusiastic, yet scholarly, way to describe a ballgame, a factor that has prevented posthumous recognition from the baseball, football and basketball halls of fame. Thus, as Korach points out, King may have been underrated on a national level, but never in the Bay Area.

“On a national level, Bill just wasn’t that well known, but that was his choice,” Korach said. “I’m sure he could have worked nationally, but he was very happy and satisfied to stay in the Bay Area, which was a great fit for him.

“Bill was going to do things his way, and I think the Bay Area allowed him to be himself,” he added. “But as John Madden said in the book, ‘Bill King would have been a star anywhere because he was that good. He was so brilliant that he could have been a big star in any market.’”

It doesn’t happen very often that an aspiring sportscaster gets to work with their hero, but that’s exactly what happened with Korach, the 2013 California Sportscaster of the Year, when he joined the A’s broadcast crew in 1996 after a stint with the Chicago White Sox.

“Bill was great to me, he was gracious to me, and there were so many ‘Holy Toledo’ moments that I would hear from Bill sitting next to him, that would take me back to my youth listening to him.

“I think it’s exceeded expectations and it just speaks to Bill and what he meant to people in the Bay Area,” Korach continued. “He was a man who impacted lives for so many years and I think that maybe, in a small way, the way he touched so many people, that’s come through from the book.”

As Korach sent the day’s game notes and scorecard to the circular file, he acknowledged the fact that the Athletics, regardless of who is on the roster, seem to find a way to win games

“No question,” Korach said. “It starts in the clubhouse where they believe they can win. The new players get indoctrinated into that attitude. Nick Punto, for one, has talked a lot about the opportunity of being with a team that’s hungry and going for the postseason again.

“They’ve gotten a taste of it. Now, they want to go deeper.”

A’s EDGE MARINERS: An enthusiastic gathering of 7,260 watched the A’s edge Seattle’s split squad 6-5, giving Oakland a 6-3-1 record over its last 10 Cactus League games.

Stephen Vogt hit a pair of home runs for Oakland, driving in four runs. Eric Sogard and Daric Barton had the other RBIs.

Starting pitcher Scott Kazmir worked 4 1/3 innings, giving up three earned runs on four hits and three walks while striking out five. Kazmir’s spring ERA went up to 2.38. Dan Otero (1-0) blew a save opportunity, but got the win. Joe Savery earned his third hold with a scoreless sixth, and Arnold Leon worked the final three innings to get his first save.

Mariners starter Scott Baker took the loss, giving up all six earned runs in four innings with no strikeouts and six walks. Baker, who was 46-28 from 2008 to 2011 with Minnesota, appeared in three games last season for the Chicago Cubs after undergoing “Tommy John” surgery in April 2012.

CACTUS NEEDLES: Oakland OF Billy Burns stole his 10th base of the spring on Saturday, giving him the Major League spring training lead. Burns is one of two non-roster invitees still in camp. … A’s OF Sam Fuld, the other non-roster invitee on the Oakland roster, is tied for second in the Cactus League in runs (13) and tied for fourth in triples (three). … A’s 1B Daric Barton is hitting .308 (4 for 13) in four games after coming back from left hamstring injury. … Seattle 2B Robinson Cano seems to be enjoying his first spring in Arizona, fashioning a .563 CL batting average through Friday. Because the Mariners cutoff for the team record is 50 at-bats, Cano (18-for-32) won’t be credited with the M’s all-time spring mark. That belongs to Michael Morse, who hit .492 (32-for-65) in 2008. … Cano has recorded a hit in 11 of the 12 CL games he’s appeared in.

(TAGS: Oakland Athletics,spring training,Cactus League,Ken Korach,Bill King)