Baker’s choice
Brian T. Smith says the new skipper is a silver lining for the scandal-plagued Astros.
Rain threatens.
Rain finally falls.
The media keeps surrounding the Astros’ new manager. TV cameras roll, audio recorders remain on, more rapidfire questions await.
Take cover beneath the dry safety of an overhang? Or tough it out and keep firing away with the Qs that never end for the most controversial and hated team in professional sports?
Dusty Baker coolly speaks up, answering the uncertainty of the moment like only the 70-year-old Baker can.
“Rain don’t bother me. I’m a duck hunter,” said Baker, during the early days of spring training at The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Laughter roars in the rain.
But the serenity only lasts a moment. Baker soon walks beneath the overhang and, of course, the media follows.
A.J. Hinch’s sudden replacement is asked about opponents retaliating against the 2020 Astros because of what the 2017-19 team did. Whether all technology should disappear in Major League Baseball from the first pitch until the final out. Baker’s squad is speaking out daily, defending itself as a team while also feeding a fiery national conversation that isn’t close to the final scream.
On Friday, Astros players revealed that they and their families have received death threats.
A reporter asks the Astros manager to repeat something lost in the transition from rain to dry ground.
Baker digs in. Didn’t he cover that already? More importantly, he semi-jokes, he can’t remember what he said.
“I hate repeating myself,” said Baker, who’s already had to say the same words too many times this February.
Baker also knows, better than anyone, that he is back where he belongs. The 19-year major leaguer and former manager of the Giants, Cubs, Reds and Nationals has received one final shot at the helm during a chaotic time when the Astros are in desperate need of veteran guidance, all-seeing wisdom, inner peace and patience.
Another reporter asks Baker if being backed up against a wall, surrounded by the media, is really where he belongs. Up against a wall?
“I’ve been there. All my life,” said Baker, who was 19 and working his way through the Atlanta Braves’ system in 1968, in West Palm Beach and
the old, divided south.
A new decor
The morning path was always the same.
Walk through the front door. Look up and see framed, joy-filled images of the Astros’ golden era on a vertical wall, a Minute Maid Park-themed sign proclaiming the franchise’s 2017 World Series championship on another wall and the Astros’ oversized orangeand-blue logo on a third wall. Walk through another door, take a left, take a quick right, look back before walking forward into the clubhouse, and Hinch would always be there.
Sometimes sitting at his desk, alone. Sometimes in the middle of an in-depth conversation. Sometimes with the door closed.
During the initial days of the 2020 Astros, with the nation howling for harsher punishment and remaining superstars from Hinch’s best teams just trying to get through another spring-training day, two images stood out on a morning path that is forever changed.
Baker commanded Hinch’s old desk. And in the middle of Baker’s new desk rested a white candle, lit and glowing. It had to be a symbol, right? It must represent …
“I like my room smelling sweet,” Baker said.
The candles come from Hawaii. He burns one every morning. Mainly because baseball rooms can “get kind of funky.”
The candle sets the tone for Baker’s day. So does his music, which begins playing when another day in MLB starts ticking.
“Depending on whatever mood I’m going to be in,” Baker said. “Yesterday, I’m listening to Muddy Waters. Today, I was listening to the (Rolling) Stones.”
A happy place
When a nationally televised apology failed on the first day of spring training, Baker shared a makeshift stage with owner Jim Crane, Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman.
When reporters came back for more on the days that followed, Baker stood his ground. An outside fire burned — the Astros’ dominated Twitter, national TV shows, the internet, opposing clubhouses in Florida and Arizona and ESPN’s rolling news ticker. The Astros’ manager opted for old-fashioned calm and cool.
Baker acknowledged that he was still learning the inner workings of his team and giving his new players space. He kept mentioning famous names that trace back to Baker’s selection in the 1967 amateur draft: Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Maury Wills, Tommy Davis, Roy Campanella, Willie McCovey, Willie Mays, Bobby Bonds.
“I was on a team with Satchel Paige,” Baker said.
Before LeBron James harshly tweeted about the signstealing Astros and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, Baker mentioned James when explaining his belief — which he first learned from Aaron — that MLB players require monthly mental and physical rest during a season that lasts from February through October.
The true on-field test awaits for a manager who took over a club that won a franchiserecord 107 games in 2019.
The Astros also hired Baker for deeper reasons.
In 2020, he needs them and they need him.
“I didn’t know how it was going to go, really, to tell you the truth,” Baker said. “And I’m happy to be back. I mean, this is — I was happy where I was, watching my son and sitting behind a desk. But this is where … I was happiest.”
Backing up the reputation
The media swarms Justin Verlander.
The 2019 American League Cy Young winner and 2017 world champion, eventually, is asked about his new manager.
“He’s got that kind of statesman presence — somebody that’s very well respected around the league,” Verlander said. “I haven’t heard anybody say a bad thing about him. I’ve enjoyed talking with him and he’s made it very clear that open communication is key. So far he’s been a fantastic leader.”
Reporters spend almost 30 minutes asking Manfred question after question, inside a spring training facility three hours away from the Astros. New general manager James Click watches the commissioner from the background, struggling to hear Manfred’s streamed words, then is forced to answer more questions about old Astros teams that were put together by a different GM.
Baker’s name, eventually, is mentioned. Click’s voice rises.
“It’s been great so far. It really has,” Click said. “I’m not just saying that. Dusty’s been awesome. He’s everything that he’s rumored to be and more.”
Baker hit 242 home runs, drove in 1,013 runs, stole 137 bases, batted .278 and posted a .779 OPS, long before OPS was a nationally accepted statistic. The two-time All-Star and Gold Glove winner has managed longer than he played and enters the 2020 campaign staring at his 23rd season as a big league skipper in The Show.
MLB’s steroid era, Steve Bartman … Barry Bonds’ 2002 one-win-away San Francisco Giants and Sammy Sosa’s ’03 heartbreaking Chicago Cubs. Seen it all, lived it all is an enormous understatement with the Astros manager.
“Possibly I helped in some small way, with race relations, to show people about my side,” said Baker, recalling rookie life in West Palm with the Braves, when he was called “boy” while being stopped by cops but also formed lifelong friendships. “I definitely learned about the other side. And then to realize that we’re on the same side.”
The Riverside, Calif.-born Baker remembers host families, a teammate cooling him down during a tense racial moment, fishing after daily workouts and the unifying southern forces of food and religion.
This musical line from Baker — one I heard two decades ago, but had forgotten the truth of — stands out: “Country western’s not the opposite of the blues, it’s almost the same.”
This is why the Astros hired Baker: “I learned a lot about how to deal with things at a very young age,” he said.
The new boss
The new leader stands on the back of a batting-practice cage, watching Yordan Alvarez’s first swings.
Baker leans against a fence, watching Lance McCullers Jr. pop a mitt beneath bright sunshine, big white clouds and deep-blue skies.
Autograph lines form and baseballs are held out. Eager fans ask for an old man to sign a familiar name.
A fan says that Baker doesn’t look like he’s aging. He is on the inside, he jokes.
In the middle of signing, Baker says that not many people know he was in the Marines. Another fan replies that you’re never really out of the Marines.
Baker looks back.
The Astros’ new manager nods and smiles, appreciating the truth.