Astros’ Dusty Baker represents ‘so much for so many’ as he looks for his first World Series win as manager

"Team Dusty" has a deep roster of people whose lives have been touched by the 73-year-old Baker.

Astros manager Dusty Baker during a workout on Thursday at Minute Maid Park in Houston.Read moreHeather Khalifa / Staff Photographer

Updated Oct. 28, 2022, 10:00 a.m. ET

Published Oct. 28, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

Game 3 of the World Series is sure to be marked by the nerve-rattling roar of the fans at Citizen Bank Park.

Deafening? Guaranteed. Boisterous? You bet. Still, not any volume of noise never will be loud enough to drown out another significant strain in the soundtrack of Major League Baseball’s 118th Fall Classic, that of the Dusty Baker Whisperers.

These fervent followers, many of whom call themselves Team Dusty, are populated by a widespread band, from players, past and present, coaches, managers, and execs. They’re down to talk about the man who has graced the game for 54 years, weaving a rich tapestry of stories of careers enhanced, cultures and generations melded.

Johnnie B. “Dusty” Baker is a team unto himself, and his Whisperers stand ready to fill up notebooks and footage with tales of their most valued encounters and adventures with him with anyone ready to listen.

Being in Baker’s cheering section in no way means these folks have animosity toward Dave Dombrowski’s and Rob Thomson’s National League champion Phillies. The admirable, tough-nosed underdog conquerors of every NL opponent in October have won over fans near and far, and deservedly so.

Conversely, rooting for Baker in no way means these folks are necessarily rooting for the Astros, a team still trying to remove from their unis and resumés the scarlet letters signifying a not-yet-forgotten or forgiven cheating scandal. There will be a lot of hairsplitting going on, to be sure, as the baseball world waits to see if this three-time pennant-winning manager of 25 years finally wins the one prize that has eluded him: a World Series ring as a skipper.

For instance, take this major league manager whose team arguably was scalded first by the cheating, then by the Astros’ relentless run-up to the Series: “I just can’t express enough of my respect and admiration for Dusty. What a career he’s had. And he’s done it in ‘Dusty style.’”

That was Aaron Boone speaking Wednesday, just five days after Baker’s Astros swept his New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series.

Some contemporaries who are just as laudatory remain incognito because, well, they still are being paid to clobber the Astros. One such manager who, like Boone, is always scripted to be in a Hatfield-and-McCoy battle of attrition with the Astros. Yet immediately upon his team’s unceremonious exit from the 2022 postseason, he said: “I’m on Team Dusty now. Dusty all the way!”

“I don’t think you’d even be able to guess the number of people pulling for Dusty,” said Dave Stewart, Baker’s onetime Dodgers teammate, as well as a former pitcher for the Phillies and ex-Arizona Diamondbacks general manager. “If you go into every clubhouse or front office, you’ll find at least one person whose life Dusty has touched. I mean, he’s been in this game for, what, 50 years? That’s a half a century. Just think of all the players he’s impacted — teammates, guys he’s managed, guys who’ve had their careers changed because of the way he related, taught, guided.

“The only way I can compare what he’s capable of is this: If he were made an ambassador tomorrow, every country would be our friend, even Russia,” laughed Stewart.

Baker, who signed with the Braves as a 19-year-old out of Riverside, Calif., in 1967, played for 19 big-league seasons. He won a ring as a player on the 1981 world champion Dodgers. Baker began his 25-year managerial career with the San Francisco Giants in 1993 and set a major league record by taking five different franchises to division titles. The three-time BBWAA Manager of the Year recipient has 2,093 regular season victories, ranking ninth all-time.

Though the dean of all the current major league skippers, the 73-year-old Baker constantly reminds that no matter his age or accomplishments, he remains somebody’s son. He has stitched on the back of his uniform “Baker Jr.,” an ode to the original Johnnie B. Baker. And it was only this spring that he spoke lovingly of his mother, Christine Baker, upon her passing at age 90 last January.

It was his mother who signed off on allowing her 19-year-old son to go pro with a team in the deep Jim Crow South, but only after Hank Aaron assured her that her Dusty would be safe under his wing. “… Moms make the world rounder,” he said on his first Mother’s Day without Christine.

Such a loss may explain why a sense of ennui shrouded Baker at times this season.

During the ALCS, he declined to say if he will be back in the dugout in 2023, asking that inquiring minds focus on his team as the postseason plays out. On a personal level, Baker references his battles back from a stroke, from cancer, from COVID-19. He buried more contemporaries than seems bearable at times. With Aaron gone, Joe Morgan, Frank Robinson, Don Baylor — his brothers in arms, his mentors, all gone, the days at the office, and life itself can seem a little quieter and less colorful.

He’s often asked about Cooperstown. The rules governing the veterans’ ballot change so often that hopefuls like Baker would be wise to consult Philadelphia lawyers to know if and when they might be eligible. As of now, for Baker to be eligible for the next “Post 1980 Era ballot” to be voted on next fall, he would have to retire after the Series. Should he soldier on, he would not see his particular era come up for consideration for three years.

Baker doesn’t necessarily need a ring to be elected, but it means something to him to have one, enshrinement or no enshrinement. So do not mistake such fleeting moments of reflection as signals that his run is over. “You know I stay hungry,” he said after clinching the pennant, the twinkle and the swagger back.

“Dusty is timeless,” Stewart said. “He may be 73, but he is a young 73. I’ve spoken to him, and I don’t sense he is ready to go, win or not win.”

One reason for this, said Stewart, is “he represents so, so much for so many.”

The “so many” are African Americans in baseball such as Stewart who are striving to revive the Golden Era of Black-American baseball. Once a part of the record number of eight Black Americans who skippered teams in 2002, Baker is now one of only two African American managers in the game, alongside Dave Roberts of the Dodgers. And when he took the field in this Series, he entered baseball’s strange, ignominious new world, as neither the Astros or Phillies employ a Black American-born player.

“Dusty is literally holding all of our hopes,” Stewart said. “Dusty’s accomplishments — his brilliance, with no black eyes ever put by him on the game — that all means something. It tells others what is possible. It tells others to keep going forward, to keep following him, because he’s willing to keep holding the door open.”

“Dusty is the reason why I wore No. 12,” said Willie Randolph, formerly the manager of the New York Mets who is awaiting another shot. “Dusty has set an example of outstanding leadership over so many decades.”

Why he does it obviously matters. How he does it is equally admired.

“Dusty’s abilities to pull a group together are among the best ever … and that may be the most important quality a manager possesses,” said Joe Maddon, the former Los Angeles Angels manager who lost his job this spring thanks, in part, to the Astros’ refusal to allow the American League West to be competitive.

Baker’s teachers, friends and cohorts were men of amazing magnitude, from Aaron and Willie Mays to Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige. Cito Gaston, a contemporary and teammate of Baker’s and the skipper of two Toronto Blue Jays’ World Series-winning teams, saw an extraordinary gravitas in his friend even back when the two teens navigated minor league ball.

“You’re talking about someone who came up and batted behind Hank Aaron,” Gaston said. “Think about that. It was his job to protect Hank Aaron,” a reminder that it was a 24-year-old Baker who was in the on-deck circle when Aaron hit his 715th home run to surpass Babe Ruth’s lifetime mark in April 1974.

Once in the majors, Baker learned patience and the value of the eye test from Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda. To this day, Baker’s ability to mine talent and infuse youngsters with confidence remain parts of his art. And he’s notably managed some of the game’s most supposedly high-strung to the seemingly impossible …

Barry.

Sammy.

Bryce.

Yes, that Bryce. The Phillies’ major driver behind their first Series since 2009 played two seasons under Baker in Washington. Speaking last season as Baker approached his 2,000th managerial win, Harper keyed in on how relatability was Baker’s greatest ability. How does a man in his seventh decade win over a product of the 21st century? In Harper’s case, it was as simple as finding the right notes.

For Baker, noted foodie, vintner with his own wine label, green energy entrepreneur, also is a devourer of all things music. He’s won the praise on one of many levels with generation after generation of players not only because of his comfort with their culture, but their tunes. He speaks not only jazz, rhythm and blues, Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix and rock ‘n roll, but Nas and Eminem. “He loves music,” Harper said. “I love music as well, so, being able to talk about concerts he has been to, the people he’s met. Dusty, he can talk about anything!”

Then there is that look that oozes cool. “He always wanted to have that swag, he always wanted to look good, he wanted his players to look good, too,” Harper said. “He’s always got the wristbands on, he’s got the bracelets, he’s got the glasses, his lenses change so that they match his suits. I mean, he’s just cool — always eating his fruit during the game, doing what’s good for his body. He’s a good-looking dude and a bad man at the same time. By that I mean he’s somebody that’s always going to fight for his players. He’s going to be on the top step for his players always, and I love that about him. I do, I really do.”

“When [the Phillies] were in town that last series there was a knock on my [office] door, on the back door, and nobody knocks on the back door,” said Baker, referring to Houston’s final regular-season series Oct. 3-5. “It was Bryce Harper. And he came in and sat down and we talked for a long period of time.”

So there they were, one of most intense players in the game, and one of the game’s most chill and laid-back personalities, locked in a mutual admiration society on the very eve of their frienemies chapter.

What benefited Harper under Baker’s wing truly worked miracles in Houston. Baker was hired after the cheating scandal led to the ouster of his predecessor A.J. Hinch. Baker’s shadow was large enough to give hectored players like Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa just enough cover so that they could function in the seas that roiled around the team as it neared the 2020 season. The team hasn’t missed a postseason since.

“There’s no person on the planet that could have done what Dusty did to get that organization, to get those players, give those players an opportunity to move forward,” Roberts said. “Whether it’s caring for a teammate or a player he’s managing, he’s always going to be the voice of reason. You look at Jose Altuve — having that conversation with him, keeping his head right, knowing that the game needs him, that the team needs him — it just takes a unique person to really understand that to also be able to make those messages land with individuals.”

How those attributes were woven together is a key to his longevity, Stewart believes. Then coat those talents with what Boone calls “Dusty style,” and you have something unique and special that unfolds with each and every game.

“A lot of managers won’t celebrate accomplishments in-game with players,” Stewart said. “They tend to keep their distance, showing little emotion. That’s not Dusty. He celebrates with them, high-fiving up and down the dugout. He just relates.”

So it is that Baker remains relevant, at every stage of the game, often in spite of the game. There have been disappointments, for sure. The dismissals by the four previous teams managed despite division titles at every stop. No team called from 2017 through 2019 after he was dumped by the Nationals. When he finally got another interview, with the Phillies before the 2020 season, he lost the runoff to Joe Girardi.

Devastated, Baker retreated once more to Northern California and forced retirement. In the end it was his son Darren, 23, who lent the wisdom Dusty needed.

“He said perhaps I wasn’t supposed to have that opportunity, that perhaps it wasn’t the best place for me,” Baker said of Philadelphia. “I mean, that’s my son telling me what I’ve always believed, that maybe I have to wait to be where I was meant to be. That’s my son, with his beautiful knowledge and wisdom. He said maybe God’s got a better job, a better plan for me. A week later, I was called by the Astros.”

Now, for a second straight October, Baker and the Astros are within three victories of winning it all. They’ve never failed to reach the postseason with him, nor have they failed in his eyes, because he will not let them.

Claire Smith is on the faculty at Temple and is the co-director of the Claire Smith Center for Sports Media. She is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and a former Inquirer sports columnist.

Join Scott Lauber and Alex Coffey, Phillies beat writers for The Philadelphia Inquirer, as they preview the World Series on Gameday Central, Friday at 6 pm at inquirer.com/PhilliesGameday