Padecky: Dusty Baker wants back in the game

SAN RAFAEL

After everything Dusty Baker said, after he recited the litany of perceptions that are keeping him out of managing another Major League Baseball team, a moment of clarity emerged.

“You know why you aren’t managing, don’t you?” I said. “The real reason?”

At Albert Park on Thursday, here to honor Jackie Robinson in pregame ceremonies before the Sonoma Stompers-San Rafael Pacifics game, Baker stopped walking, turned to face the question.

“Because you are not a yes man,” I said.

Baker’s grimace relaxed and he said simply, “I know that. I know that.”

The guy who won the National League Manager of the Year award three times called Washington, Seattle and Detroit when openings became available. No one returned his call. Fired from the Cincinnati job in October 2013, Baker finds himself at the center of baseball’s oldest and most crippling tradition - gossip.

Maybe it’s because there is so much time to kill. Nine innings of a game or nine months of preparation and season, how does one pass the time when the pace slows, as it does inevitably in baseball? Gossip begins and perceptions form. In baseball, perceptions become tattoos. If you get one, good luck in getting rid of it.

“People talk about my salary demands,” Baker said. “I never talked about salary demands. And why is it no one talks about salary when the names of other managers are brought up? They talk about my health. (He suffered a mini-stroke in 2012.) But I’m in great shape. They talk about age discrimination but I can list a lot of guys successful at my age.”

Put together all those perceptions and add a dollop of individuality - OK, a big soup spoon of individuality - and Baker is seen as a complicated, maintenance-required dude who is not politically correct. He is compliant but also honest, a challenging combination for the general manager seeking simple and agreeable.

“Disagreements are healthy, if done respectfully,” said Baker, 66. “But if you disagree now in baseball you are being disloyal.”

Make no mistake. The guy who led the Giants to a World Series in 2002 is no cupcake. He’s a Marine. He uses his 1969 time with the Marines as an example of why he feels like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole.

“In this modern day, experience doesn’t matter that much anymore in baseball,” Baker said. “It’s all about sabermetrics and computer analysis. There’s a place for that, sure, but you can do anything with numbers. I’d rather be around someone who has experience. Like when I was with the Marines. If I was going to Vietnam (he didn’t), in boot camp I’d rather have a staff sergeant who’s been there as opposed to someone who’s never been there.”

It’s an insult to this Marine and someone who’s had 41 years in pro ball to be shrugged away. That’s what Cincinnati tried to do in 2013. The Reds wanted Baker to announce he was retiring, to make his exit less sensational. The implication: By retiring, Dusty, you’re telling everyone you’re through with the game.

“I’ll let you know when I’m retired,” Baker said. “I’m not retired.”

So the Reds had to announce they were firing Baker. And then came the phone calls that weren’t returned. And then came the painful withdrawal - 58 of his 66 years have been either playing or managing the sport. Baker would wake up and there’s no game, no practice, no plane to catch, no hotel to check into.

“I stayed in bed for two days,” Baker remembered. “Didn’t feel like getting out of bed. I didn’t know what this was. I wondered: What the hell is this all about? Is this depression? I called a friend who is depressed a lot and asked him. Yep, I was depressed. So it lasted three days.

“I worked on myself.”

At his home near Sacramento, Baker began that garden he always wanted. He began planting wine grapes that has led to Baker Family Wines. He became a distributor for a renewable energy company. And then he looked around him and got a huge dose of reality.

“I’m in Canada, fly fishing,” Baker said. “I’m 400 kilometers from the nearest town. I’m really out there. My wife can’t find me. It was relaxing. It was cool. And then I get home and I go to Darryl Hamilton’s funeral.”

Hamilton was a friend, a former teammate, shot and killed by his girlfriend.

“And then on my birthday I go to the funeral of Shooty Babitt’s dad,” Baker said. “On my birthday last year I go to Bobby Welch’s funeral. And then I think of Rod Beck and Steve Howe dying.”

All of them former players, good friends. Hamilton was 50. Howe was 48. Beck was 38. Welch was 57. Substance abuse, a slip in the bathtub, a car accident and a murder, all of them were still young enough to see a full life ahead of them. And Baker let go what wasn’t happening and embraced what was.

“I love watching my son, Darren (16) play baseball,” Baker said.

He lined his batting cage at home with bleacher seats from each ballpark he played in. He embraced his 19-year career - two-time All-Star, World Series champion - and the affection he still receives. He played for the Dodgers, but for the fans he remains one of the most popular Giants. And he’s not shy about tipping his cap to the Giants now.

“(Manager) Bruce Bochy doesn’t have that big ol’ head for nothing,” Baker said. “He’s got a lot of brains in there.”

When Dusty Baker is 80 years old, he will still say he can manage. He didn’t the handle the Marines or the Jim Crow South as a Braves minor leaguer without knowing who he was and who was around him. That awareness serves him to this day.

Baker doesn’t go to Major League Baseball games.

“I just want to sit and watch the game in the stands,” Baker said. “I don’t want to be in a luxury box somewhere. I want to sit with the fans. But I don’t want to sit there talking to everybody. I just want to watch the game. But if you don’t talk to someone then you come across as a jerk. I don’t want to do that, either.”

Instead Baker carves out his little space around the game, watching baseball on television or going to Darren’s games. He has redefined his heaven, as it were. Is it everything he wants? No. But Baker learned a long time ago that while you can’t control what happens to you, you can control your response to it. It’s called maturity. Baker would like to think that’s what happens when you live 66 years.

To contact Bob Padecky email him at bobpadecky@gmail.com.