A's fan Tom Hanks voicing vendors in virtual Coliseum crowd
If you listen closely to the artificial crowd during Oakland Athletics home games this season, you might hear a familiar voice.
The A's are enlisting Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks to provide the voices of beer and hot dog vendors to make the empty stadium sound more realistic. Hanks will be heard in his newest role during the team's home contests, and his voice will be mixed with the piped-in crowd noise.
Life is like a box of... popcorn. 🍿
— Oakland A's (@Athletics) July 24, 2020
East Bay's own @tomhanks is reprising one of his first roles as a Coliseum vendor! See if you can hear him mixed in with the crowd noise during tonight's #OpeningDay broadcast.#RootedInOakland pic.twitter.com/o84TzuTLiX
Hanks didn't need to do a lot of research for this role. The East Bay native has long been an Athletics fan and worked as a vendor at the Oakland Coliseum in the 1970s before he started acting.
"That was a really fun thing to put together with Tom," A's president Dave Kaval said, according to Matt Kawahara of the San Francisco Chronicle. "He has a lot of passion for his time in Oakland and growing up there, and his first job was at the Coliseum. This was just a natural way to create a little more fun this season."
Hanks is, of course, no stranger to baseball as a whole. One of his most famous roles was portraying manager Jimmy Dugan in "A League of Their Own."
The A's are hosting the Los Angeles Angels in Friday's season opener.