He’s Confident and Determined

But Still Learning from Van Morrison

By Hal McCoy

The fire in his eyes glowed behind a pair of glasses, threatening to send the napkin on the plate in front of him into flames. Dusty Baker was talking about losing—about how he hates to lose, abhors it—despises it.

“My daughter, Natosha, once asked me, ‘Daddy, why do you always have to win?’” Baker said, staring at the napkin as if it might burst into flames at any moment. “I never let my kids win at anything.”

Baker said it is mostly about not losing, which is what he did his last two years as manager of the Chicago Cubs (2005-06). Those two losing seasons followed eight straight winning seasons at Chicago and San Francisco. “I don’t like that losing, man,” he said. “That losing makes me miserable. I don’t like that. I don’t like that ‘L’ by my name at all. I don’t want my name even associated with anything that starts with ‘L,’ you know what I’m saying? I like W’s.”

With that preamble, Baker walks into a losing situation as the new manager of the Cincinnati Reds, a team that hasn’t had a winning season in seven years, a team that hasn’t sniffed the postseason since 1995. “My last year in Chicago? Man, that ate me up big-time,” he said. “I don’t want to go through that ever again, hopefully the rest of my life.”

After the Cubs relieved Baker of his duties, he spent a year working at ESPN as a baseball analyst and was feeling comfortable in the studio chair. But he became squirmy at times, thinking about an even more comfortable swivel chair in a baseball manager’s office. So when the Reds came calling, Baker answered, his psyche recharged, his enthusiasm a boiling cauldron once again.

“I’m very motivated for this job,” he said. “It was a wonderful year (2007) and I did a lot of healing, emotional healing. You know, whenever you have scars, scars heal back stronger than the skin that was there the first time.”

In addition to time in the ESPN studios, Baker took a trip to Africa, fished in Montana, fished in Quebec and shot turkey with his son, Darren. “Those are things I never had time to do before and they were wonderful,” he said. But baseball grumbled in his belly and he knew the only traveling he wanted to do was on charter airliners as manager of a major-league baseball team.

“It’s time to get back,” he said. “I talked to a number of people about how long I should stay out of the game before they forget you, and about whether I should come to Cincinnati,” he said. “I talked to Joe Morgan. I talked to Al Attles (former Golden State Warriors coach). I talked to Al Rosen (former Giants general manager) — a number of people whose opinions I trust.”
Baker talked with his wife, Melissa, and his father, Johnnie, who has been ill and was another reason Baker took a year off, “So I could be around him and help him.”

Baker didn’t take long to say yes to the Reds and a three-year $11 million deal. “It’s a good organization with a great history and if I have to make a change I might as well make a major change,” Baker said, smiling. “I’ve never been in red. Every uniform I had on had some blue in it all my life, so it is the first time for red. Let’s take it back to the top.”

Here’s Johnnie
Johnnie B. “Dusty” Baker Jr. was born in Riverside, CA. and lives in San Francisco. He was a decent major-league player for 15 seasons, mostly with the Atlanta Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers. In his rookie season (1971), he hit .321 for the Braves. It was his best season at the plate. Early in the year, before it was known how good he would be, Baker hit a late-inning home run to beat the Reds and manager Sparky Anderson was fuming after the game.

“I can’t believe we just got beat by Dusty Frigging Baker,” Anderson said.
When his career ended in 1986 with a .278 lifetime average, 242 homers and 320 doubles, Baker wondered what path his life would take. He was a sullen stockbroker in 1987.

“There was that Wall Street crash and then I got a divorce and my life was spinning,” he said. That’s when the general manager of the Giants, Al Rosen, called and asked, “Would you like to be in baseball?”

Baker didn’t leap at the chance. His indirect answer was: “I don’t know.”

“What would you like to do?” Rosen asked.

“I’d like to be your assistant so I could be general manager some day,” Baker said.

Rosen told Baker he would fit better on the field and when Baker said, “What are you talking about?”

Rosen said: “A field manager. It’ll take you five years to get the player out of you and you’ll be ready.”

“It was exactly five years,” Baker recalled. “And I’m glad because as a stockbroker I didn’t like asking people for money.”

Success and Criticism
He is, however, adept at asking baseball players to do the right things on the field. His first team, the 1993 Giants, won 103 games, but finished second to the Braves in the NL West and didn’t make the playoffs because there was no wild card at the time.

The 2000 Giants lost the World Series to the Angels and the 2002 Cubs lost the National League Championship Series to the Florida Marlins. Along the way Baker won 1,162 games and lost 1,044. And he developed a reputation as being a player’s manager, but smiles and says, “I don’t even know what that means.”

He also has a reputation of overusing and abusing pitchers in some quarters and is blamed for the demise of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. He vehemently denies the allegation. “It is a misnomer,” he said. “You have to look at my total history, my 14 years, not just the last couple. There are always misconceptions about anyone. I just did what I thought best at that time for the team, the organization, the city to win, and the players. You look at my history I don’t feel the need or desire to have to defend myself.”

Dusty’s Trappings
Baker always has a toothpick in his mouth when he manages and always wears wristbands, even though he doesn’t play and doesn’t sweat. It leads some to wonder if Baker hasn’t been able to leave his playing days behind. Are they for flash, are they trademarks, are they commercially motivated?

“People talk about those things but don’t know the stories,” he said. “The toothpick is a replacement for dipping tobacco. I used to dip but stopped and the toothpicks replace the tobacco — until the other team has the bases loaded in the eighth inning.”

And what about the wristbands? “I’ve always worn them — since I was a kid and consider them a part of me,” he said.

No Proving Ground
Baker says he has nothing to prove to himself in Cincinnati. “I know I can manage,” he said. “I don’t have to prove that or prove anything. I never felt like a loser, no matter what. That never came to mind. I had to win for my own sake of winning. I don’t want it to end like that (as he did in Chicago). I want it to end on how I am—simple as that. I’m not a TV man, I’m a manager.”

Baker said after he left Chicago he had to recreate himself, become a different person. “You know, when you’re 58 years old, there is not a whole bunch of difference,” he said. “You just sort of reposition things. I weigh the same, but the clothes fit differently. I’m the same guy because that’s the only guy I know. Like (singer/song-writer) Van Morrison said, ‘It takes a lifetime to learn about yourself and how you are going to learn about somebody else.’ I’m still learning about myself at this moment as much as I can.”
Hal McCoy covers the Reds for the Dayton Daily News and is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.