Throughout their history, the Oakland Athletics have been one of the most audacious and individual franchises in all of baseball. As the longtime radio voice of the A's, Ken Korach has called countless improbable, unforgettable moments. As the San Francisco Chronicle's veteran beat reporter, Susan Slusser has become the preeminent scribe of the A's modern era. Both have witnessed more than their share of team history up close and personal. In If These Walls Could Talk: Oakland A's , Korach and Slusser provide insight into the A's inner sanctum as only they can. Readers will gain the perspective of players, coaches, and front office executives in times of greatness as well as defeat, making for a keepsake no fan will want to miss. Ken Korach has served as a radio broadcaster for the Oakland A's since 1996. He has also been a broadcaster for the Chicago White Sox, San Jose State University, UNLV, and Sonoma State University. He is the author of Holy Toledo: Lessons from Bill King, Renaissance Man of the Mic. Susan Slusser has been the San Francisco Chronicle’s Oakland A’s beat writer for more than 20 years. She is an MLB Network correspondent and is a former president of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. She is the author of 100 Things A's Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.  Dennis Eckersley pitched for the Oakland A's from 1987-1995, winning a World Series championship in 1989 and earning both the AL Cy Young and MVP awards in 1992. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004. If These Walls Could Talk: Oakland A's Stories from the Oakland A's Dugout, Locker Room, and Press Box By Ken Korach Triumph Books LLC Copyright © 2019 Ken Korach and Susan Slusser All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-62937-580-9 Contents Foreword by Dennis Eckersley, 1. Ken Korach: "It's Great to Have You with Us", 2. Rickey Henderson: Leadoff (Super)man, 3. Ken Korach: A Mother's Legacy, 4. Susan Slusser: Brought Up with Baseball, 5. Dave Kaval: Relentless Ingenuity, 6. Ken Korach: So You Want to Be a Broadcaster?, 7. David Forst: From Harvard to Hatteberg, 8. Susan Slusser: So You Want to Be a Beat Writer?, 9. Bob Melvin: Calm, Cool, and Collaborative, 10. Cooperstown: Kings and Angells, 11. Mickey Morabito: Steinbrenner, Martin, and the A's Real MVP, 12. Moneyball: "It's Incredibly Hard", 13. Clay Wood: Groundskeeper's Field of Dreams, 14. The Best Games We Ever Saw, 15. Keith Lieppman: The Man Behind the Future Stars, 16. Susan Slusser: All the President's Scribes, 17. Jonas Rivera: The A's Most Animated Fan, 18. Ken Korach: Broadcast Tidbits, 19. Allan Pont: The Doctor in the House, 20. Baseball Travel: Going, Going, (Always) Gone, 21. Steve Vucinich: Half a Century of Inside Dirt, 22. An Improbable 2018, Acknowledgments, CHAPTER 1 Ken Korach: "It's Great to Have You with Us" I can't pinpoint the exact date I began thinking about a career in broadcasting, but I imagine it was around the time the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and I first heard Vin Scully's voice on the radio. It was 1958 and the move west proved to be the perfect marriage of baseball, broadcasting, and the new team in town. L.A. didn't have a baseball stadium ready yet, so the Dodgers spent their first four years in the cavernous Memorial Coliseum, where a diamond was fit awkwardly into a football configuration. It seemed like the field was a mile away from the seats, but because so many people brought transistor radios, following the game was easy. It was like a giant speaker system was placed all over the stadium. It was Vinny who introduced Major League Baseball to a wildly growing population. L.A.'s history with pro baseball went back over a half-century to the early days of the Pacific Coast League. Teams like the Hollywood Stars and L.A. Angels featured players who would go on to become all-time greats and when visiting teams came to town fans got a look at young guys named Williams and DiMaggio. But this was different. The Dodgers were the first MLB team in town, and Vinny's broadcasts introduced teams and players to a city that had only been exposed to the big leagues from a distance. It's impossible to overstate the ubiquity of Vinny's voice. People listened in their living rooms, back yards, and at work. And because the Giants were the only other team west of the Central time zone, Vinny's voice during night games from the Midwest and East accompanied another growing reality of life in L.A. — rush-hour traffic. In 1964, Robert Creamer wrote a wonderful profile of Vinny in Sports Illustrated: "Everybody" probably is not a mathematically precise description of the number of people who listen to Scully's broadcasts, but it is close enough. When a game is on the air, the physical presence of his voice is overwhelming. His pleasantly nasal baritone comes out of radios on the back counters of orange juice stands, from transistors held by people sitting under trees, in barber s