Dusty Baker
Dusty Baker
Johnnie B. "Dusty" Baker, Jr.is an American Major League Baseball manager and former player. He is currently the manager for the Washington Nationals. He enjoyed a 19-year career as a hard-hitting outfielder, primarily with the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers. He helped the Dodgers to pennants in 1977 and 1978 and to the championship in 1981. He then enjoyed a 20-year career as a manager with the San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, and now Washington Nationals. He...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth15 June 1949
CityRiverside, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I love my daughter, but she had me on couscous and fixed me pastas and made me eat oatmeal every morning and what else, turkey burgers, turkey bacon, and that kind of stuff. So she wants her dad to live a long time, and I do, too.
We're trying not to get that far ahead of ourselves. We're trying to take it slower versus faster. He is a rehab player. We'll analyze him and see how he feels.
We scored a lot of runs in a lot of different ways. We executed the hit-and-run. We had almost everything in there besides stolen bases.
We are still leaning probably toward 11 pitchers. Anything can happen these last couple days. But you don't want to tell somebody something and then say, 'Oh, so-and-so got hurt, and you're back on the team.
We are very impressed. That's not the issue here. The issue is for him to play and to prosper. And to get better at some of the fundamentals of the game. The only way to get that is to play.
We're in the process of making that decision right now. It's not about Kerry as much as it is about us (and) where we are, realistically.
You hate to have a guy have back problems, then he starts changing his arm angle and compensating for it and you end up hurting something else. His teammates, they really convinced me he had had enough.
You hate to say wait-and-see, but that's how it is, ... We're counting on him big time. At this point, I can't say in which capacity. We're hoping as a starter. If not, we'll do the next-best thing for him and us.
You hate to see it end in a tie.
To the best of my knowledge right now, nobody is leaving.
Until we have 100 percent of the facts it can't change. The amazing thing is it doesn't seem like it's affected him.
Todd did a good job playing first base in Spring Training. He likes playing first base. He'll play first most of the time and second base some of the time.
With his health conditions of the past, we sort of considered that it might be better if he doesn't play. It's not necessarily final at this point but he's leaning toward that.
You hear from being sub-.500 to the World Series. I don't think anybody really knows. There's a lot of variables here, a lot of variables that can go well and work. I don't see many variables that would cause it not to work.