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've heard it's a greater problem in high school with young kids. Baseball is attempting to clean it up by testing. That's where it starts. It appears to be cleaner now than a couple years ago because of the testing.
Just because you can hit, doesn't mean you know how to play winning baseball, ... That's what I'm trying to instill here, and it's not easy to do in the short time I've been here.
That's what baseball is all about right there, a matter of will.
He's one of the premier leadoff men in the game. Anybody that follows baseball knows it's tougher to find a good leadoff man than a good power hitter. We're very, very excited to have Juan Pierre.
The things I want to see out of him is baseball experience and work on fundamental instinctive stuff -- running the bases, hitting the cutoff man, knowing when to run. I've heard that when he gets thrown out, he stops running. When you get thrown out, you need to be more daring.
This guy is in great shape -- this is the best shape I've seen him in. Our trainers went down and checked on him. They saw him this winter. He's doing pretty good. He hasn't played baseball for awhile so we still have to break him in slowly.
It's at a point of no decision yet. It's not a 'no,' but it's not a 'yes.' I think he's leaning toward that way. Personally, I'd rather have him go down early while he's still in baseball shape and play, and then come home in December.
Be more specific of who you are talking about. Yeah, I talked to Walk. We got it straight.
The main guy will get the majority of the playing time. Is that 60 percent? Is that 70 percent? Is that 51 percent? I'll talk to them. Quite frankly, that's a fortunate situation to have three quality guys. It's not a problem; it's a fortunate situation.
It's rare to see your best player is your best citizen, too. He reminds me a lot of how Hank Aaron used to conduct himself.
It got a little hairy there when we had a 3-0 lead and Delgado hit that home run. But that was the only mistake Zambrano made.
Certain kids stick out, ... And when I saw Adam in spring training, I liked his attitude, his work ethic. He busts his butt.
He can't put any weight on it right now,
He likes being with the team and we like having Kerry around,