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
There's progress. He's going to try to push it a little bit this week to find out exactly where he is. Hopefully, he'll be on the field doing some fielding and throwing. He's doing some light running. The running part is the difficult part. He's working around the clock.
We didn't help ourselves. We had some chances. It's very aggravating to leave those runners out there. That was the ballgame.
We didn't help ourselves. We had some chances, ... It's very aggravating to leave those runners out there. That was the ballgame.
The things I want to see out of him is baseball experience and work on fundamental instinctive stuff -- running the bases, hitting the cutoff man, knowing when to run. I've heard that when he gets thrown out, he stops running. When you get thrown out, you need to be more daring.
Running is the hard part. It's getting close to having to make a decision.
We scored a lot of runs in a lot of different ways. We executed the hit-and-run. We had almost everything in there besides stolen bases.
That's the most unselfish, smartest spot in the lineup. You have to be able to handle the bat. It's also a position that won't run as much because then they'll walk D-Lee. It's a position for a more established, accomplished veteran player.
He's a ballplayer. These are things a ballplayer does -- they run the bases well, they hit well, they throw, they throw to the right base, they steal a base. I think we're very fortunate to get such a talent at such a low price.
I didn't have any choice because I had a short bullpen. If we tied the game up, and I'm out of pitchers, where I have to hit for them -- I only have five guys. That's why I double-switched, to get the most innings out of the guys pitching without running out of pitchers and running out of position players.
It's possible. I was there in L.A. and I was booed by 50,000 people every day. The next year, I hit 30 home runs and I made the Dodgers All-Time team. Performance changes everything. I've been on both sides.
A couple of balls caught too much of the plate early, ... but we were still in the ballgame. We ended up giving away 4 runs on defense. You can't give away runs in the big leagues, and we didn't play very good defense today.
A couple balls caught too much of the plate early. We were still in the ballgame, and we ended up giving away like four runs on defense. You can't give away runs in the big leagues. We didn't play very good defense today.
A couple balls caught too much of the plate early, ... We were still in the ballgame, and we ended up giving away like four runs on defense. You can't give away runs in the big leagues. We didn't play very good defense today.
It seems like whenever you walk a guy late like that, especially a speed guy, he ends up scoring. We had some opportunities early, but Drew drove in both runs with two two-out hits to beat us, and that's the name of the game.