Sarah (Palin) and Donny (Baarns) chat at a baseball game BF (Before Fame)
Long before we knew anything about pit bulls and lipstick and Wasilla and all the kids with T in their names, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin stopped by the broadcast booth of a minor league summer ba
seball game up in Alaska.
This was a year ago and Occidental College grad Donny Baarns happened to be broadcasting the game between the Goldpanners and the Miners when suddenly into the radio booth walks this yet-to-be-famous politician with her father, who used to coach her.
So in between pitches and a sharp line drive to left center, a very professional Donny and a very casual sports enthusiast named Sarah have this five-minute conversation about Alaska and political ethics and being governor and sports.
Neither had an inkling that a year or so later The Ticket would be publishing their chat (thanks to loyal Ticket reader Bob) as a revealing eavesdrop regarding the 44-year-old mother of five who's aroused such curiosity after becoming the next possible vice president of the United States -- and the first woman to do so.
One thing the former high school runner and basketball star reveals, well, actually, two: She likes sports a lot (the governor even asks if she can hang around the radio booth a while longer) and also she doesn't go for all that "gender stuff."
--Andrew Malcolm
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Photo credit: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin crosses the finish line in a charity race before her nomination as Republican vice presidential candidate with Sen. John McCain. Getty Images.
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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