(Not sure based on his gate with one of those word puzzle clues whether this went through to the man himself, but I’ll throw it out there like a message in a bottle, or like when an old guy is asked to throw out the first pitch and it skips like a stone that long 60 feet, six inches)

1) Saturday is the 61st anniversary of Roger Maris‘s 61st home run, in 1961 the upside down year;
2) As I was composing this in my head, sure enough the phone rang and Steve Poltz the singer-songwriter from The Rugburns and from the Jewel video calls me to advance our 5:30 show and I ask him if watching Yankees-Blue Jays will delay our soundcheck; no, and I didn’t know that he used to hang out with Tim Flannery, Bruce Bochy, Steve Finley in San Diego and then switched his allegiance to my Giants when some of them did, too, or first or in Flannery‘s case third base.
3) OK smarty-pants, who besides Bernie Williams and Jack McDowell had MLB stats and were signed to nationally-distributed record labels?
4) This is not really your problem but the announcers misstated that Aaron Judge is from the Bay Area –San Joaquin is near Stockton even if he did root for the Giants; Linden — Wiki says the Speed Freak Killers were from there but is not a band it is an actual group of miscreants.

Answer to my own question is Pulley with a tall punk rock relief pitcher for the Cards with a Polish name repulsing or pulsing with Poltzian meming or meaning or moniker like Hammaker…

edit to add: I updated this slightly at quarter to four: Poltz is in the area, checking in to his hotel, catching a cat nap. He drove five hours to play an hour for us; maybe next time I can catch him when he drives one hour and plays five. Maybe after his set I’ll say “let’s play two”. This started when Robert Christgau ’62 wrote an interesting essay about constantly listening to music but also following the Yankees pitch-by-pitch and play-by-play using newfangled and scientific doohickey and thing-a-moroos.