ZITO HAS A HIT!
Ex-A’s star goes from Cy Young Award to Billboard music charts
The one-time A’s and Giants pitcher has landed on the Billboard music charts.
MESA, Ariz. — Barry Zito is back in the news. The one-time A’s and Giants pitcher has landed on the Billboard music charts.
Zito’s EP, “No Secrets,” charts this week at No. 14 on the Americana/Folk Album chart and at No. 39 on the Country Album chart. According to Billboard, Zito is the first Cy Young Award winner to appear on any of their charts.
“I saw that, and I’m not surprised,” said A’s pitcher Chris Bassitt, a former teammate. “I’ve already got the album. I’ve heard everything he’s done. I’m impressed, to say the least. Baseball turned out very well for him, and now hopefully music turns out well for him.”
Zito, 38, has always been musical; his parents both were musicians. But he didn’t get serious about it until 2015, when he was demoted to the A’s Triple-A team in Nashville. There, he took advantage of the booming music scene to both write songs and learn from the masters.
Bassitt is one of two A’s pitchers who were on Nashville’s roster with Zito that year. Kendall Graveman is the other.
“He was always passionate about baseball,” Graveman said. “But his career was winding down and he found another passion and he was able to harness it. I remember him talking about going back to the place he was renting and when his wife and his kid were asleep, he’d work on playing the drums or the guitar before going to bed.
“We kind of saw him switching gears.”
Said Bassitt: “He was totally into it that year. Almost every bit of off time he had, he was into it. He was very protective of the music, though, but he didn’t usually play for us.”
Graveman said some of his favorite memories of Zito from that season took place off the field when neither one was pitching.
“It was something he would talk about when we were charting in the stands,” he said. “Either he’d be holding the radar gun and I’d be doing the charting or vice versa, and he’d talk about music a lot. It was fun, but we also talked baseball. He tried to help me along with my career. That’s a testament to the kind of person he is.”