The Athletic: Meet the 56-year-old rookie: His big break in The Show took 30 years

Feel like A’s fans could use a feel-good story.

There are 90 miles between the Triple-A ballpark in Sacramento and the major-league stadium in Oakland. Traffic can be brutal, especially on Fridays.

Still, there’s no way the trip should take 30 years.

But when Johnny Doskow pressed his foot on the gas pedal on a mid-April morning, having turned the keys of his gray Infiniti a little before 10 a.m., he was embarking on the final leg of an epic baseball journey.

He started his broadcasting career in 1993 as the radio voice for the Cedar Rapids Kernels. That Low-A team was so cash-strapped it had to make a hard decision about whether to splurge on a fax machine or a mascot costume. (Behold, Mr. Shucks was born.)

Doskow was good in that first job and listeners gravitated to him. He figured he’d spend two years in the Midwest League, get a solid year of seasoning at Triple A and settle behind a major-league mic by 1996. His estimate was only off by three decades.

“Put in there that I was on the fast track,” Doskow said with a laugh.