Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker still chasing elusive World Series crown
Dusty Baker, then manager of the San Francisco Giants, had just left the stadium after a crushing loss to the Anaheim Angels in Game 7 of the 2002 World Series when he met up with his father.“He goes: ‘Man, after the way [you] lost that one, I don’t know if you’ll ever win another one,’ ” Baker recalled Sunday.
The 72-year-old Baker has thought of that conversation often over the years. And since the Astros dispatched the Red Sox on Friday night to reach their third Fall Classic in five years, his father’s words have grown even louder in his head.This is Baker’s second trip to the Series as a manager. As a player, he went three times with the Dodgers, winning it all as a big-hitting left fielder in 1981.
It’s been a whirlwind two years for Baker, who after being fired by the Nationals following a 97-win season in 2017 wondered if he’d ever even get another shot to manage, much less win that elusive title. Then came January, 2019 and the stunning revelation that the Astros had illicitly stolen signs in their run to the 2017 World Series championship and again in 2018. The cheating scandal cost manager A.J. Hinch his job, leaving a team with an almost unfathomable image problem in need of a strong leader.
It was with the Braves that he got his first major league hit a few miles from Minute Maid Park in the now-defunct Astrodome as a 19-year-old on Sept. 17, 1968, with “a little dribbler off Mike Cuellar.” Baker finds it fitting that he’ll return to Atlanta with the baseball world watching and looks forward to seeing Aaron’s wife and kids on the trip.
Brandon Phillips, a retired three-time All-Star second baseman, who played for Baker for six seasons in Cincinnati, is certainly one of those people. He’s thrilled to see the man he considered a father figure get another chance because he was worried it might never come.
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