BASEBALL AND PAVEMENT >>>

Mike Curto's shoes sit beside his chair. He works with them off. "Always," he tells me. The voice of the Tacoma Rainiers since 1999, it's not the only thing about the Triple-A radio guy that surprises me during a recent hour-long conversation inside his newly remodeled Cheney Stadium broadcasting booth. For one, Curto comes off much younger in person than he does in his official capacity over the airwaves, or in the often-used photo on his blog (the Mike Curto I'm expecting when I show up), where a headset obscures part of his face and a bland blue shirt gives him a bit of a high school math teacher aura.

Mike Curto is no high school math teacher.

But it gets more interesting than that.

"I'm a Malkmus fanboy," Curto tells me at one point, referring to Stephen, the Pavement frontman, lanky ‘90s indie rock icon and current-day leader of Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks. It's an unexpected detour that, of course, leads to a discussion of music.

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