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
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.
Other than the second home run by Dunn, the rest were legitimate. He missed location all day. That's the first time I have seen four solo home runs in each of the first four innings.
I talked to him last night and this is the first time he's been in a playoff situation. I just told him to go enjoy it.
Well there is always guys that don't get along. Whether that becomes public or not, that is another story. We don't have fights but guys don't get along sometimes. You're in this small building, a bus, you're on a plane, you are in some confined area with the same guys everyday for a long time with a lot of egos.
We don't have a whole bunch of kids, ... Really, we have two kids as (position) players. Most of our kids are pitchers. We're going to play them. They're going to get ... I can't say the majority of playing time ... (but) they're going to play.
We didn't have our team, No. 1. A lot of times you get new guys and they have a hard time adjusting to Chicago initially.
We sent him out to see if he can find more consistency. One time he's real good, the next time bad.
Yeah, I have a pretty good idea. I'm just not going to say right now. We still have time to see. It depends how the rest of the club shapes up and what we need offensively, defensively and speed-wise.
We're going to miss him big time but we know we're going to get him back, too.
We're going to give him as much playing time as possible this week, so we can make up our mind. I'm sure when you get to this point in your career you consider all the possibilities, and I'm sure he's doing some evaluation of his own abilities. So, yeah, these are important days for him.
He's had that from time to time. That's the first time he's had it this year, but when a guy comes to you and says his back is really tight, you can't leave him in there. It's just unfortunate that it happened tonight at the end of this trip, a bad road trip.
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.
We had a hard time holding up our end of the bargain.
Every time I think about giving him an off-day, he hits two or three home runs. Maybe I'll start thinking about that off-day. You don't want to give him time off against the Cardinals.