I’ll Be Damned. Baseball Pitcher Barry Zito Is Not Half Bad at the Music Thing
How you feel about baseball pitcher Barry Zito probably depends a lot on what side of the baseball you find yourself on, or what side of the San Francisco Bay. Or if you’re a baseball fan at all.
In the early 2000’s he was part of the vaunted Oakland A’s pitching lineup, winning the Cy Young in 2002 and becoming one of the most feared hurlers in all the majors. After seven years with the A’s he became a free agent in 2006 and went across the Bay to play for the San Francisco Giants for what at the time was the biggest contract ever awarded to a pitcher. From there his performance became choppy during some seasons, and by the time the Giants got to the World Series in 2010 and won their first championship since 1954, Barry Zito wasn’t even on the postseason roster. The story of Zito and his monstrous contract was one of a bust, and the Bay Area that once held him up as a hero began to turn on him.
The sentiment turned so bad for Zito, it inspired one particular Giants fan named Willy “Tea” Taylor to write him a song called “Letter to Zito.” Willy Tea is a well-respected songwriter from Oakdale, California—not too far down the highway from San Francisco. The song was about how to cherish the game more than winning, and looking back at all your great accomplishments and the friendships won as opposed to focusing on what someone’s done for you lately.
In 2012, a year after Willy “Tea” Taylor released “Letter to Zito,” Barry experienced a major comeback in his career. The Giants won his last 11 starts of the season, and his first two starts in the postseason, including against the Cardinals in the NLCS when Zito threw 7 2/3’rds scoreless innings. Appearing in the first game of the 2012 World Series, Barry Zito and the Giants shut out the Detroit Tigers on their way to winning it all once again.
Not many know that when Barry Zito’s massive contract ended and his pitching production began to taper off again, he decided to re-up with the Oakland A’s and actually pitched for Nashville’s AAA club called the Sounds, which are part of the Oakland Athletic farm system. When the season ended for the Nashville Sounds in September of 2015, Zito didn’t head back to his home in California immediately, he stayed in Nashville to work on another type of pitching—the one involving writing songs and trying to place them with singers.
“I don’t think I want to be an artist,” said Zito at the time to The Tennessean. “My goal is not to play in front of 20,000 people in a stadium, my goal is to be at home with my family and to collaborate with great writers and make a living as a songwriter. Most of my songs in the past are about self-discovery, about spiritual revelation. When I went through some really difficult times, I would write about them. I started to love country music about four years ago. And I think that’s the vein that I’d like to write in.”
In that vein, Barry Zito has released an acoustic version of a song called “Secret to Life” that is supposedly going to be the first song released on an upcoming album of his. Though he’s a little flat on a few notes and probably won’t win many traditional fans over wearing a backwards baseball cap and plucking poorly at chords, the songwriting to “Secret to Life” about coming to the understanding that being on top is not all that is cracked up to be is steeped in wisdom, and Zito shows skill at turning a phrase to get there. As he said himself, he may not want to be a performing artist, but his voice has a Cat Stevens quality to it in his upper register, and there’s definitely worse coming off the sausage factory on Music Row.
At this point it’s nothing more than an interesting story, as it always tends to be when the topics of music and sports intersect. Barry Zito may not be the next Lori McKenna, but for baseball fans from the Bay Area and beyond, it will be fun to follow the story of a man who struggled many times throughout his career yet eventually came out on top trying his hand at another craft where you many times lose more than you win, but the journey is where you find the fulfillment. It’s a decision, and direction in life I think Willy “Tea” Taylor would approve of.
November 30, 2016 @ 8:42 pm
He sounds quite good. I’ll buy it when he releases an album.
It’s sad when a baseball player can write better music than the highest paid songwriters in Trashville and has a better voice than the biggest names on country radio.
November 30, 2016 @ 8:42 pm
Barry Zito had one of the nastiest curveball’s back in the day, watched a lot of my beloved Yankees strikeout because of him. Me being from nor cal he was all you ever saw in the papers when it came to baseball, it’d be awesome to see him bust out a CD that was in the ballpark of country. No pun intended.
November 30, 2016 @ 9:05 pm
Better than most mainstream music lol.
November 30, 2016 @ 9:45 pm
Takes courage to stand up as a celeb and pour your heart out. No one will give you a chance and I’m sure he was met with plenty of smirks. Follow your heart Barry… we know you’re not in it for the money.
November 30, 2016 @ 9:58 pm
I’m a Giants fan and Barry has endured the struggles of being torn apart by fans and had enough grit to make it back to the top. If he puts his mind to it I’m sure he can be a great writer, seems like a good dude and actually has some talent for this.
December 1, 2016 @ 4:29 am
Sounds honest. Count me in.
December 1, 2016 @ 6:53 am
Hard to tell what his album will sound like from this one song. I’ll give it a wait and see.
December 1, 2016 @ 6:56 am
He’s come a long way from his performance on the Jim Rome Show about 10 years ago.
December 1, 2016 @ 7:23 am
Nice article trigger. Look at you dishing out baseball stats like an ESPN analyst. Haha keep up the good work
December 1, 2016 @ 11:35 am
All good trigger. But how bout giving some of us non baseball playing non pop star going country unknowns a review? Why so quick to shine the light on the oddballs? You’re doing the same thing the cma and acm does. I’ll bet there’s a better album sent to you by an unknown that you won’t review.
December 1, 2016 @ 1:29 pm
Hey John P,
I appreciate the concern.
First off, Saving Country Music posts more reviews for independent and underground artists than any other major country music periodical by a long shot, and those reviews are also much longer than normal, comprised of at least 7 paragraphs as opposed to the 1 or 2 paragraph reviews posted by corporate outlets. This is simply a fact that is often overlooked by the folks that love to spread the misnomer that Saving Country Music does not support independent music. As you will see illustrated when I post my essential albums list for 2016 in a couple of weeks, I review and feature an astounding number of independent/unknown releases, even if they get overshadowed by more high-profile posts.
It is a grand misnomer than when posting about a certain subject or artist, that means I’m taking away from posting about another. This is just not true. I didn’t not write about an unknown artist in lieu of writing about Barry Zito. I write about whatever inspires me at any given moment, regardless of what that subject matter is. Otherwise, I spend my days staring at a blank page, just like songwriters do when they’re uninspired. If you want me to write about your music, than inspire me in a way that gives me no other choice but to do so. One of the major differences I see between artists who are successful, and artists who are unsuccessful, is the unsuccessful spend their time blaming others for their shortfalls, and the successful ones spend their time blaming themselves. Don’t think for a second that I don’t see all the chatter directed towards this site and others for ignoring certain artists, when half the people bitching don’t even put the effort out to even alert me they’ve released an album. I’m a one-man operation doing the best I can. I can’t cover everything, but I cover a lot of it, and very rarely miss the important stuff. At this time of the year especially, I catch up with what I’ve missed throughout the year, and you can see that in the reviews I’ve posted recently. So just because an album hasn’t been covered yet, doesn’t mean it won’t be at all. Just because I don’t cover someone’s current album doesn’t mean I won’t cover the next one. You want people to pay attention to your music? Give them no other choice. Inspire them. Blow our minds. Make enough racket. Generally speaking, the good stuff usually rises to the top, and Saving Country Music gives more equal opportunity out there than any other periodical. That said, sometimes stuff gets missed. I’m not perfect. But I’m trying with incredibly limiting resources in a marketplace of tremendous adversity. There’s a reason why blogs like Saving Country Music have virtually disappeared over the last couple of years.
And finally, take a second look at this article. It’s about Barry Zito, but it’s also about an under-the-radar songwriter, Willy “Tea” Taylor. I have been covering him for years, and the reason I felt inclined (and inspired) to write about this story is because it was the story of Willy “Tea” Taylor coming full circle. Bigger names can help shine a light on smaller names. I can write features on unknown artists all day, but if they’re ignored, what’s the point? All I’m doing then is attempting to be cool in a “scene.” So I try every day to find the BEST story, regardless of who it involves, that will engage readers, and report that. Sometimes it involves Barry Zito, sometimes it involves someone like Willy “Tea” Taylor. In this case, it involves both, and a rising tide raises all boats.
I hope this makes sense.
December 1, 2016 @ 12:22 pm
He’s no Keifer Sutherland, but I’ve heard worse.
December 1, 2016 @ 5:26 pm
Not bad. Seems that I recall something about his father being a professional musician.
May 16, 2020 @ 9:05 pm
Barry Zito, masked singer