Country Fastball

Lest you forget that a good share of ballplayers are good ole boys, I give you Country Fastball:

. . . baseball players and country musicians have long enjoyed a relationship based on mutual respect for each others' crafts, and it's only fitting that combining the two would lend itself to a perfect radio show.

Enter Robert Buan, the longtime Oakland A's radio man and country music fan. With a bold idea, support from A's president Mike Crowley and Major League Baseball's Vice President of Western Operations, Laurel Prieb, plus backing from country-loving Georgia native and star pitcher Tim Hudson, that show now exists.

It's called "Country Fastball," it's in its second year, and it's syndicated on 10 stations nationwide, including several in California and Nevada. Every Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT) from San Francisco -- and streaming live online at http://www.countryfastball.com/ -- Buan comes across the airwaves with two hours of programming featuring different players talking country music and more.

I'll accept the country music-baseball link. Heck, someone even wrote a book about it a few years back.

I'll take it a step further and say that modern Nashville is much the same as pre-Beane baseball, in that they appear to be far more interested in selling jeans (or, well, sequined shorts) than signing quality. Indeed, when someone writes the country music version of Moneyball, they can substitute Hayes Carll for Jeremy Brown.