Country singer Kix Brooks' pitch for a baseball tale a bit off-key

Here's a tall tale that only faintly resembles the facts about an Indians playoff game.

View full sizeChuck Crow / The Plain DealerCountry singer Kix Brooks threw a strike with the first pitch of Saturday's game, but his baseball memories are a bit wide of the plate.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Kix Brooks said he has been here before.

Brooks, a solo act after 20 years teaming with Ronnie Dunn, is still making music, hosting radio's "American Country Countdown" and honing his chops for a budding movie career.

And telling stories, which is what good country music is all about.

Relaxing in one of the leather recliners of his plush tour bus in the bowels of Progressive Field, where he threw out the first pitch for Saturday's 8-3 Indians win over Baltimore, he tells the story.

It was Game 3 of the Yankees-Indians division series, Oct. 4, 1997. Although in Brooks' version of the story, it's Game 7. Brooks and Dunn were touring with Reba McEntire and playing across the street at what was then Gund Arena.

As usual, the three stars opened the show together, then Brooks and Dunn plummeted through trapdoors onto beds under the stage, there to be whisked backstage by a pneumatic train.

"My road manager [Randy "Baja" Fletcher] says, 'It's the sixth inning! Let's go, man!'

Brooks was incognito, but Fletcher was in full Bronx Bomber plumage.

"We're at the ballpark and it's so cool," Brooks said. "The Yankees are down three, it's the ninth inning, [Paul] O'Neill's at the plate and I'm looking at my watch. I've got seven minutes before Ronnie and I are supposed to go back onstage and Reba's show ends.

"Baja says, 'We gotta see this pitch!' and sure enough, O'Neill rips a grand slam.

"The place just goes 'Noooooooo.' Except for Baja. He's jumping up and down and going, 'Yeah! Yeah!' The wolves are circling us AND I gotta be onstage in THREE minutes," Brooks said.

Time to boot, scoot 'n' boogie.

Which is cool, except O'Neill hit his grand slam in the fourth inning with the Yankees already leading, 2-1. They won that game, 6-1, but lost the series two nights later as the Indians headed to the World Series.

But hey, why let facts ruin a good story?

Source: http://www.cleveland.com/tribe/index.ssf/2011/04/country_singer_kix_brooks_pitc.html

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