AN ENDURING BOND
Baker’s personal touch serves Astros well as winning ways continue on his watch
After one run was scored during 18 surreal innings in Seattle, the Astros waited for their 73-year-old manager to enter a cramped clubhouse before the celebration began.
Then it was on as a dancing and drenched Dusty Baker stole the show.
“When you get a chance to party, party. You know what I mean?” Baker said Tuesday afternoon as a 106-win team waited another day to learn its American League Championship Series opponent, the New York Yankees.
Minutes before a manager in his third consecutive ALCS said those words, Justin Verlander described Baker’s relationship with the Astros.
Baker sat near the back row of a media room inside Minute Maid Park, listening to a future Hall of Famer before replacing him on the same stage.
“He relates to his players. I think he takes a lot of pride in that,” Verlander said. “He really tries to get to know everybody individually and understand what makes them tick and tries to connect with them on more than just a manager/ player-type level, and that goes a long way.”
After his club waited for Baker to enter the opposing clubhouse inside T-Mobile Park, the manager did “his thing,” and team-wide revelry followed.
The 2022 Astros partied like the 2015 Astros.
“You know that he’s always got your back, he’s always rooting for the best in you, and that’s all you can really ask for as a player,” said Verlander, who’ll take the ball first again for the Astros on Wednesday. “I’ve really enjoyed getting to know him, also personally, and just play for him.”
Depending on the day and final outcome, Baker is randomly championed or criticized on social media — a modern trend that follows every manager across Major League Baseball.
But for the past three seasons, a recurring phrase has been increasingly repeated the closer the Astros have come to their second World Series championship.
Dusty deserves to win one. Since taking over a team engulfed in national turmoil during 2020 spring training — then going through an abnormal 60-game campaign heavily impacted by the first year of the coronavirus pandemic — Baker is 230-154 guiding the Astros during the regular season and has overcome Minnesota, Oakland, the Chicago White Sox, Boston and Seattle in the playoffs.
“It’s been a good marriage for all of us. I loved the city even before I got here. Because I spent a lot of time here, got a lot of friends here, relatives here,” said Baker, wearing orange batting gloves and leaning on a bat. “With the players, I knew some of them from afar, and then you get to know them.
“It’s made it a little difficult with COVID to meet everybody in the organization. Because I still haven’t met everybody. … We didn’t have the freedom to meet them. By now I would have known most of the wives, most of the kids. But since I’ve been here, there have been two dozen kids born, and I didn’t even know the mothers.”
While the Yankees were defeating the Cleveland Guardians in Game 5 of their AL Division Series for the other ALCS spot, Baker stood behind the batting cage in downtown Houston as a mid-October sun covered the Astros’ field.
In 2020, the Astros turned a 29-31 record and endless outside noise into Game 7 of the ALCS.
Last year, Baker’s team hosted Game 1 of the Fall Classic before falling 4-2 to Atlanta.
This October, the Astros will again have home-field advantage if they return to the World Series. The 106 regular-season victories also mark a high point in Baker’s managerial career, which started in 1993 with San Francisco.
“There’s only four of us (teams) left,” said Baker, with another ALCS a day away. “So we feel very privileged and honored to represent the city and represent our families.”
Baker, like general manager James Click, isn’t under contract next season. But Baker has become one of the Astros’ most familiar faces since the 2019 season ended. It was clearer than ever after 18 exhausting innings in Seattle that the Astros are proud to play for a manager who’s already said he hopes to return next season.
“Dusty’s been doing this his whole life,” outfielder Kyle Tucker said. “He’s played, he’s coached, managed, so he knows the ins and outs of baseball, and he’s been around everyone. I mean, he loves this sport. He loves being in the clubhouse with these guys. So he tries to be as friendly and personable as possible, just because we are here every day with him.
“I think he’s done a phenomenal job with that. He loves winning, comes out here every single day — like, if we’re at the field, might as well win. So he’s really enjoying his time here, and we’re happy to have him.”
Baker provides invaluable experience, decades of wisdom and a daily big-picture reminder for these Astros. He also was the team’s most underrated asset during an ALDS sweep, while Scott Servais’ late Game 1 and 2 decisions helped put the Mariners in a 2-0 hole.
Before the Astros’ sixth consecutive Championship Series, an AL record, Baker backed Jose Altuve, who went 0-for-16 against Seattle and was 0-for-8 in Game 3.
The words Baker used to support the heart and soul of the 2022 Astros also could have been describing the series-byseries challenges that MLB’s best teams face every October.
“Sometimes it’s not always up,” Baker said. “I mean sometimes, no matter how great you are, sometimes there are down times. It’s how you deal with the down times versus how you deal with the good times. It’s easy to deal with the good times. But the mentally strong have a way of dealing with the down times. We just have to increase concentration and focus.”