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
No. 1, you have to make sure he's OK so this thing doesn't linger all year long. Fortunately for us, he did get some at-bats during the World Baseball Classic and the fact that he did pretty well shows he's not that far off. He saw better quality pitching in that than he would down here. It was to his advantage and ours that he did play.
We're not taking anything away from the young guys, but early spring is for the young. I said the other day, the young hit fastballs now, but they hit two breaking balls out. Those weren't quality breaking balls, but you've got to hit those if you are going to hit. I've got to give them some props for not missing them.
You've got to throw strikes. That's with most young guys. Throw strikes, throw quality strikes. Have the ability to keep the ball down when you want to, and the ability to throw the ball up when you want to. When you throw the ball outside, you don't want it to creep back inside. The main thing is just relax. Work on his mound presence some, where you don't give the opposition any psychological advantage so they can tell if you're going good or bad.
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.
We hung a slider and Albert doesn't miss sliders too much. He doesn't miss pitches up in the zone.
We hung a slider and Albert doesn't miss sliders too much, ... He doesn't miss pitches up in the zone.
We certainly don't need to start having this now.
We're going through a real tough stretch now. We've got to find a way against two tough pitchers the next couple of days to try and get out of this.
I've seen some greats leave the game. You never want to see them leave and you'd rather see them leave on their terms and leave on top. It's not over with yet. You don't know if somebody is going to offer Sammy a job here soon or what is going to happen. But Sammy has been one of the great players of the game for a long time and a guy who meant a lot to Chicago and a lot to the game. ... I just hope he gets a job somewhere.
I've never heard anybody booed in St. Louis.
I've never seen or heard of an assault with a belly. ... That's a tough sell in court -- assault and battery with a belly.
I've never seen him that wild. Anybody is capable of losing their control. He doesn't lose it that often. I don't think I've seen him blow one ever. We'll just take it and savor it.
It was very symbolic. It seems likes we get in that situation and we don't get anything. It's very frustrating. We had a great chance to win that game.
It was a perfect scenario, too -- day game after night game.