But I Really Wanted to be Vin Scully…
By Kitty Felde

It was because of baseball that I got into radio in the first place. Years ago, the Dodger station realized that few women were listening to sportstalk. The theory was: put a woman on the air and you’ll get that demographic. So KABC had a contest for would-be sportstalk hosts. Seventeen hundred people tried out. Including me. I didn’t win, but I was one of the ten finalists. Not bad for an actor with NO radio experience.

So I went back to school with a new goal: I would become the first female play-by-play announcer. I called a few college games, but soon realized I had a fatal flaw: I have no depth perception. Such a shortcoming matters little in most professions. But it’s deadly in baseball. Every pop fly looked like a home run ball to me. My career was over.

But if I couldn’t call the games, I could produce radio features and documentaries on sports subjects. One of those was a five part series about how the Dodgers nearly stayed in Brooklyn. I called it “Bum’s Rush.” And it won an Associated Press award – my first broadcasting award.

My love of baseball has never left me. Neither has my love for the theatre. I was a drama major in college and spent ten years trying to make a living as an actor. But when not acting, I was writing plays. And have continued to write plays. My work has been performed at the National Theatre in Washington, DC, off-Broadway in New York, and in tiny theatres here in Los Angeles. One play – a romantic musical comedy called “Bum’s Rush” – combined my love of baseball and my love of theatre. And it’s getting a staged reading Friday, November 22nd, at the Museum of Natural History of LA County.

“Bum’s Rush” is at its heart the story of a woman caught between her ex-husband con man (who’s been hired to keep the Dodgers out of Los Angeles) and a married Puerto Rican sportswriter from Brooklyn (who’s out on the story of the Dodger’s defection from New York – and discovers the Latino families who call Chavez Ravine their home.) There’s even a singing Walter O’Malley who shares his secret for true love. The very talented Glenn Mehrbach wrote the music and lyrics.

The show is one night only: Friday, November 22nd in the P Jean Delacour Auditorium at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (across the street from USC). The museum is opening up their Cooperstown Hall of Fame exhibit at 7 p.m. and a five dollar ticket gets you into the museum AND the staged reading of “Bum's Rush.”

About the Author
Kitty Felde hosts “Talk of the City” on NPR affiliate 89.3 FM KPCC Monday through Friday at 1 PM. She has been named this year’s LA Press Club “Radio Journalist of the Year.”