Dusty Baker: A good guy finally makes it back

Finally, Dusty has made it back. After he gave the ball to Russ Ortiz. After Steve Bartman took the ball that Moises Alou certainly would have caught.

After the Giants and Cubs, and Reds and Nationals. After the bad breaks and near misses.

Finally, Johnnie B. Baker Jr. is once again going to manage in the World Series.

And if you love baseball and appreciate what Dusty Baker has meant to the game, for the game, all we can do is repeat the two words a gratified Baker mouthed to the national TV audience Saturday night: “Thank you.”

That was moments after his team — his current team, the one he joined as an inspiration and savior before Covid-19 ravaged the 2020 season, the Houston Astros — won the American League pennant.

Lovable, cooperative Dusty Baker, who always left a door open to his clubhouse office; who never blamed players or the media for the failings of his teams; who was brought in to restore integrity and respect for a franchise that was in desperate need of both.

Exploiting a well-planned scheme of sign-stealing, banging pots and pans to provide information on pitches — basically, cheating — the ‘Stros won the 2017 World Series.

That they might have won it anyway with players like Jose Altuve, George Springer, and Justin Verlander became inconsequential, and properly so.

The method transcended the results. Those in the sport who weren’t outraged were embarrassed.

To save face, and to save baseball, a housecleaning was necessary. Who better to take charge than lovable, experienced, star-crossed Dusty Baker? 

He’d had his share of success as a player, gaining a World Series victory while on the Dodgers. But he couldn’t do the same as a manager.

The opposition and the fates conspired against him.

In Game 6 of the 2002 World Series against the Angels at Anaheim, the Giants led 5-0 in the seventh. Ortiz was struggling a bit, so Baker decided to replace him.

Dusty also decided to give Ortiz the ball, so confident he was about the win.

But the Giants lost that game, and then Game 7 and the Series. And Baker’s gesture to award a game ball for a game not yet complete would haunt him forever — the media dwelling on the incident season after season.

Dusty was, as they say, relieved of his duties after that World Series, but he was not out of work very long, hired by the Cubs, who made it to the 2003 postseason.

But in a playoff game at Wrigley Field, a fan named Steve Bartman reached out of the right field stands on a foul fly and kept Moises Alou from making the catch. The Cubs lost the game.

So much misfortune. You felt sorry for Baker. He moved on to the Reds, then to the Nationals. But he persisted. And so did the Astros, who after the irregularities not only needed a manager but an individual of character.

In Baker, they got one. At age 72 they also got someone who’s been there, done that — well, not including managing a World Series victory. So far.

“Game 6 has been my nemesis in most playoffs, and that’s what I was thinking,” he told the New York Times. “I mean, you’ve got to get past your nemesis. I was afraid of electricity when I was a kid, so now I’m an owner of an energy company. You try to get past things in your life.”

Baker was born in Riverside, where he grew up with the Bonds family — yes, Bobby and Barry, but also Rosie, the hurdler and toughest of them all. He then moved to Sacramento.

He’s a Californian all the way. More importantly, he’s a gentleman, the type of person who deserves to win a World Series.