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
You don't want to get beat, number one, and you hate getting shutout, number two, and even worse, no hits.
You hate to see it end in a tie.
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 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.
A lot of it depends on the strength of your starting pitching. If your starting pitching is good, you won't need 12 too much. Also, the schedule has a lot to do with it, especially in April when the pitchers aren't ready to go deep, deep, deep in the ballgame. You don't even know at that time if you'll need five starters. You might only need four. You hate to lose that guy's endurance by not pitching. It'll work itself out by the time we get ready to leave.
You spend this many days with the guys here. You live and die with them. You hate to see them go. To the best of my knowledge right now, nobody is leaving unless somebody just makes you an offer you can't refuse. Right now, they're here.
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.
That's the reality of it. Everybody has a big two or three. The health of those big two or three ... there's a lot riding on it.
I'm not a guy that sits around and does nothing.
The only thing that's in my control is to win ballgames and God is always taking care of me.
I love sharing my knowledge of hitting with others. Now coaches and players at all levels can learn my systematic approach to hitting a baseball with more consistency, mental strength and accuracy.
Everyone has a budget, I don't care who you are.
Everybody knows something, and nobody knows everything.
It's like fishing -- you got to get that first one in the boat. Once you get that first one, the skunk is off the boat and everything's cool from then on. You've got to get that first one. Once he gets the first one, I know he'll be fine.