CHICAGO (AP) – Dusty Baker popped up the steps in a red Cincinnati warmup jacket and made his way across the field to a familiar dugout, the one where he spent four years managing the Chicago Cubs through good times and bad.
There was a quick stop behind the batting cage for a hug from Chicago third baseman Aramis Ramirez and then a big embrace from Cubs broadcaster Ron Santo once he reached the bench area.
Baker was back at Wrigley Field on Tuesday night, ready to manage a baseball game in Chicago for the first time since his final season with the Cubs in 2006 ended with a last-place finish and a deluge of boos. His contract was not renewed.
It all changed in a hurry. When Baker first arrived, he was the toast of the town and the slogan “In Dusty We Trusty” played throughout the city.
And in that first season of 2003, he was on the verge of delivering. Five outs from going to the World Series for the first time since 1945, the Cubs collapsed in the eighth inning of Game 6 of the NL championship series against the Florida Marlins in what became the most memorable frame of Baker’s tenure.
The Cubs had a meltdown again in 2004, letting the wild card slip away in the final week. And as the team battled injuries to key players such as Kerry Wood, Mark Prior and Derrek Lee, Baker’s final two season were losers, including a 66-96 finish two years ago.
In came Lou Piniella to manage and the Cubs went on a $300 million spending spree after Baker left to try and end the longest championship drought in the major leagues. They won the NL Central last year but were swept in the first round of the playoffs by Arizona.
Now with the Reds, Baker said he’s tried not to dwell on the past or reflect on what might have been if he’d stuck around in Chicago. He got over that and has moved on after a year doing TV and spending quality time with his family.
“There was a time I thought of it,” Baker said. “You got to leave that back there because you can say what if all your life. Know what I mean? … I got a job to do where I’m at in Cincinnati and I’m happy. … That’s what I’m concentrating on, is turning us around and trying not to live in the past or play what if.”
Baker’s reputation as a player’s manager seems intact. While critics blamed him for overusing Wood and Prior and the late meltdown in 2004, many of his former players, including Wood, Lee and Ramirez, defend him.
“I think he was” blamed too much, Ramirez said Tuesday. “All he can do is change the pitcher or the lineup. Players have to get it done on the field and we didn’t get it done.”
During an interview with reporters in Milwaukee earlier this month, Baker said he even asked for another one-year contract to try to turn the Cubs around but didn’t get it.
He and his former boss, Cubs general manager Jim Hendry, shook hands Tuesday night behind home plate.
Baker was a three-time NL Manager of the Year while with the San Francisco Giants, taking them to the World Series in 2002. It was Piniella, when he managed the Reds, who initially talked to Baker and suggested he should try managing.
“Dusty is a good man and a darn good manager,” Piniella said. “I’m the one probably who gave him an idea and earnest to think about the managing profession when he was the hitting coach over in San Francisco.”
Baker remembers the conversation well.
“Me and Lou, we’ve been cool for a long time, even when we were playing against each other in the World Series, Dodgers-Yankees,” Baker said.
Baker, who spent an off day Monday visiting some old haunts, expected to be booed Tuesday night. Indeed, he received some boos when he brought out the lineup card, but nothing vicious.
“A lot of places are tough, but you got to be tough. It doesn’t matter what town you are in. You are the one who has to be tough within yourself,” Baker said. “I still got to do my job. I’ve been booed before. I’ve been booed in more towns than here. I’ve been cheered probably more than I’ve been booed. But everybody … sooner or later you’re going to get booed. So, what the heck?”
Asked what he’d learned from his experience managing the Cubs, Baker said: “Better not lose.”
But he insisted that it was a positive experience overall, even if it ended so poorly.
“I wouldn’t change anything. Nothing,” he said. “It made me a better, stronger and more positive and faithful person.”
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