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
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.
You guys are asking me stuff that he's not even answering.
Guys get a chance to get more rest, ... Guys get a chance to do life stuff: Go do laundry, go to the car wash, go to the bank, shopping. Regular stuff you don't get a chance to do, stuff that's closed when you get to the park, stuff that's closed when you leave the park.
If we can get them going in the middle of the lineup and get Juan Pierre on base, we've got a chance to have a lot of stuff happening.
When we hit it hard, it was right at somebody. He (Lowe) got strike one low and away. He had good stuff today.
There are some guys who have the nod because of experience. There are some guys who have demonstrated better control and better stuff than others. We'll see how they do the last couple weeks of spring and how they do when they go to Triple-A or Double-A.
He's kind of in no-man's land a little bit. He's early on breaking stuff and late on fastballs. Jim Edmonds is probably in the same zone. You've got to swing your way and fight your way out of it. You can't try to press, but it's easier said than done.
I'm open-minded with stuff like that, actually, because I was probably one of the first guys who took some relaxation courses in Venezuela in 1974. I even got hypnotized in '78. I was having trouble concentrating. . . . So, no, I'm very open to a lot of stuff.
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.