San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
For Astros’ Baker, it’s all in the wrist
Manager honors dad with accessory made by his close friend
Throughout his long career as a baseball player and manager, Dusty Baker has maintained a consistent image built around unique values and style. This weekend, the Astros skipper hopes to make a memory combining a personal inspiration with one of his favorite accessories.
When the Astros host the White Sox for a game on Father’s Day, Baker will pay tribute to his late dad by wearing custom wristbands made for him by close friend and legendary baseball vendor James Mims.
Mims is the creator of Mimsbandz, wristbands known to baseball players and fans alike for their distinctive and realistic portrait stitching. Baker was the first wearer back in 1986 and helped make Mimsbandz famous among major leaguers. To this day, Mims’ designs have outfitted 144 players, including Darryl Strawberry, Barry Bonds, Tony Gwynn and Gary Sheffield.
Mims knew Baker’s dad and has crafted personalized Mother’s Day and Father’s Day wristbands for Baker to wear in seasons past. This year, the same season Baker reached his milestone 2,000th managerial win, Mims wanted to do something special again for Johnnie Baker Sr.
“I don’t know if this is going to be Dusty’s last year, but what I do know is I wanted to pay homage to Mr. Baker for what he meant to me in the time I had known him, and I know how important that is to Dusty,” Mims said.
The wristbands are based on a photo from Baker’s time managing the San Francisco Giants and embroidered with painstaking detail. Baker wears his Giants uniform and hat. His sig
nature toothpick hangs out of his mouth. A Mims wristband is visible on his arm. His father, smiling warmly, looms over his left shoulder, dressed in a suit with a matching wide-brimmed hat.
Baker often credits his father, who died in 2009, for teaching him discipline and how to move through the world as a Black man. When Baker began managing the Astros in 2020, he added “Jr.” to the back of his jersey to honor his dad.
The Father’s Day wristbands use a design Mims initially made last year for the Topps 70th anniversary project.
“When I showed Dusty that I did this, he was short on words — which is not easy for Dusty,” Mims said. “Dusty is a chip off the old block, so when you see Dusty, that’s Mr. Baker. That matter-of-fact tone that people can misread, that’s how (Mr. Baker) was. How he felt is what he would say, but he’d say it in such a way that it didn’t hurt you.”
Mims grew up in Los Angeles around Dodger Stadium, where his father has worked for more than 40 years. His godfather was Jim Gilliam, the former Dodgers player and coach. Mims was 12 in 1976 when he first met Baker, who was then in his first season playing for L.A. after being traded from the Braves.
Baker walked up and introduced himself to the boy, and the two struck up a friendship that still exists. Baker was the one who introduced Mims to Hank Aaron and in 1978 broke the news of Gilliam’s death.
“He’s been pretty instrumental in a lot of things that have happened to me in my life,” Mims said. “Outside of my dad and my godfather, he’s right up there with all of them.”
When Mims came up with the idea for a wristband business while a student at the University of Southern California in 1986, Baker, who was about to embark on the final year of his playing career with the Oakland A’s, served as the muse for his prototype.
Mims conceived a raw sketch
of Baker in his A’s cap and paid someone in downtown L.A. to hand-stitch it onto a green-andgold wristband along with Baker’s signature. It cost $175 for a single band, but Mims figured it was a worthwhile investment. He was right.
Mims drove to Baker’s house in Calabasas, Calif., to show him the wristband. Baker was encouraging without being overly enthused. Mims still has the prototype, which he keeps stored separately in a money pouch inside a safe underneath his bed.
“That’s the one that kind of started it all,” Mims said. “It had great bones, just needed a little tweak here, little tweak there. Once I tweaked it, that was it.”
A few months later, Mims drove down to Palm Springs, where the A’s were playing the Angels during spring training, to show Baker an upgraded version. Baker agreed to wear the
wristbands and began talking them up to his friends in the league, creating what Mims described as a “snowball effect” that transformed his idea into a full-fledged business.
“I had no idea what his reach was in baseball,” Mims said. “He just gave me a list of guys to talk to, and every single one of them said yes. They knew that if I came from Dusty that it was legit.”
Mims was soon customizing wristbands for some of MLB’s most notable names, each one adorned with the player’s face and autograph and a short slogan (often a Bible verse or, in the 1980s and ’90s, “Say no to drugs”). Reggie Jackson, now a special adviser to Astros owner Jim Crane, was a customer during his playing days and is one of a dozen Hall of Famers to wear Mimsbandz.
Baker, who celebrated his 73rd birthday Wednesday and is in his 25th season as a manager,
is Mims’ longest-tenured customer. Baker even took one of the wristbands he wore during his 2,000th win and donated it to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
The wristbands Baker wears today still bear his face from his playing days but are in Astros colors — orange, navy and white with occasional yellow or red as a nod to the franchise’s old rainbow uniforms.
Baker is especially a fan of tri-color wristbands, and Mims said he tries not to repeat color combinations. He estimated he sends Baker 40-50 pairs each season, with specially designed pairs for occasions like Father’s Day and the All-Star Game, which Baker will manage this year. Baker never knows what a new batch will look like until he opens the box.
“The excitement that I get out of it just by seeing my guys the way that they are and how they respond, that’s what does it for me even to this day,” Mims said. “I still get excited when I see my product on the field. When I see Dusty walking out of the dugout or doing anything in pictures, it is humbling. How it started, some of the challenges, things that have gone on just to make it to this point, it’s surreal.”
Like many people in baseball, Baker is superstitious. If a pair of wristbands was worn during an Astros loss, he gives them away to kids in the stands.
“They know it. ‘You lost yesterday, Dusty!’ ” Baker said, mimicking kids calling out to him after the Astros dropped a pair of games to the Marlins during their last homestand. He pointed to the navy and white wristbands he put on before the Astros won the series finale.
“I mean, I got these from way in the back of the locker,” he said. “I’ve got to go call my guy right now.”
Not everyone who wants to wear Mimsbandz can. Mims is selective about whom he chooses to represent his product, wanting each wearer to be a great person as well as a talented ballplayer. Current players who wear the wristbands include A’s second baseman Tony Kemp (a former Astro), Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado and White Sox infielder Josh Harrison.
Despite his wristbands’ longevity in baseball, Mims has encountered obstacles. The MLB Players’ Association sued Mims in 2017, alleging he violated its licensing agreement. The suit was settled, and Mims said he is even collaborating with PA executive director Tony Clark on ideas for league-wide wristband initiatives.
No matter who puts on the wristbands, Baker will always be the first.
“This product that I have represents the players unlike any other,” Mims said. “Everything else is about the brand. With this one, it’s about the player. … It’s not a swoosh. It’s not three stripes. It’s not a UA. It is them, and they appreciate that. There’s nothing else out there that’s like it.”