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
We were a lot closer before I got here. When you play 18 times against teams that have been long-time rivalries, and then it's against my former manager and my confidant before I came here, it increases things.
We're going to miss him big time but we know we're going to get him back, too.
When I look at my score sheet and I look at theirs, I'm kind of outmanned, ... I've never been in that situation in September. It's just one of those years, I guess.
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.
You're playing against guys who are younger than you, so you can set them up. You get to a certain point in your career and you almost know what's coming. You learn to trust your feelings. Hank Aaron told me you don't become a great player until you learn to trust your feelings.
This is judgment time for who's going to be playing next year too. You're not only playing for now. You're playing for 2006 as well.
You're always worried about injuries. But I can remind Carlos all I want to. When you get out there and Cuba or whoever they're playing starts banging him around pretty good, I think he'll forget exactly what I told him. That's how it is.
Baseball's not separate from the world. (Racism) is real. Nobody wants to talk about it. You don't hear guys talk in depth too much, especially minority guys, because you get accused of playing the race card.
He went that long on a team that's not playing well without being re-signed. I'm sure it came through his mind. Whenever anybody gets fired, it's tough.
They're playing hard. Corey circled the ball and missed and, like I said, we just played bad defense today.
Back in our day, they called this 'salary drive,' ... Try and continue to have a good year and win as many games as you can win. You are playing for respectability right now. What I'm looking for is you play hard and play for love of the game and respect and try to finish as high as you can.
Be more specific of who you are talking about. Yeah, I talked to Walk. We got it straight.
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.