Alan Truex: Can Dusty Baker bring serenity to the devastated Astros?
Updated Friday, February 28, 2020
Dusty Baker is famous for his sunny disposition. Whether or not the sun is shining. When it was raining at West Palm Beach over the weekend, the 70-year-old manager of the besieged Houston Astros said pools of water did not disturb him because “I’m a duck hunter.”
His equanimity could be the main reason he’s 227 games over .500 as a big-league manager. What other baseball manager keeps a candle flickering on his desktop?
I first met Dusty when he was a rookie center fielder for the Atlanta Braves and I was a teenaged intern for the Journal-Constitution. He could hit — .888 OPS before anyone knew what that was. And even at 23 he had polish as well as sociability.
Ron Hudspeth, Braves beat reporter, saw Johnnie B. Baker as Chuck Berry’s “country boy named Johnny B. Goode” who “played a guitar like ringing a bell.” This was back in the day that Hudspeth so coolly described as “who-put-de-bop-in-de-bop-de-bop.”
Baker impressed everywhere he played and managed. He was the ideal leader: diligent, reassuring, reliable and – most of all – fun to be around. Indeed, like ringing a bell.
By all accounts he’s made a good first impression on the Astros. Justin Verlander, an inevitable Hall of Fame pitcher, cited Baker’s “statesman-like presence.”
Upon hearing players on other teams threaten vengeance on the Astros for their epic sign-stealing over a three-year period, Baker showed his statesmanship. He reminded Commissioner Manfred: “In most instances in life, you get reprimanded when you have premeditated anything.”
So Manfred made a tour of all the baseball camps in Florida and Arizona to assure the managers that if any Astros get beaned there will be weeks, maybe months of suspensions. “It got away from me” won’t work as an excuse.
Baker was so persuasive that the other teams complained of the Astros’ special treatment. With the commissioner shielding them, won’t they be inclined to lean over the plate?
So far, indications are the Astros will be punished by their peers. In the first five Grapefruit League games they were hit by seven pitches, though no serious injuries resulted.
This is certain to be the most tension-wrapped baseball season the Astros have had in their six decades. Every day they see and hear more demands for Manfred to nullify their 2017 World Series championship. Whenever they play in someone else’s park they hear fans banging on trashcans.
Through all this turmoil and distraction they need the steadiest of skippers. That’s why it’s good that the toothpick man is their manager. He’s taking command of emotionally devastated people. If it’s not quite MacArthur in Japan, it’s something in that vein, and I have reason to believe Dusty Baker is up to the challenge.
He is no Tony La Russa or A.J. Hinch when it comes to chess. With Baker it’s not about analytics and code-busting, but throwing the ball and catching it.
He’s the antithesis of what’s wrong with the Astros, who could be a metaphor for a great American affliction of our times: no accountability. You break laws, you’re sorry you got caught. If you’re not cheating you’re not trying. Forget about it, move on, it wasn’t that bad. Thank you, Jim Crane. Thank you, Mr. President.
The guardians of the national pastime, like those of the nation itself, don’t know what to do. Many call for the suspension of Crane for denying that his team’s cheating mattered at all.
We’re told the commissioner can’t suspend any of the 30 franchise owners who pay his $11 million salary. We forget George Steinbrenner serving two years assessed by Bowie Kuhn in the 1970s.
Considering how much time Crane spent chatting at Minute Maid with Hinch and Jeff Luhnow, it strains credulity to think the owner, a former college ballplayer, was clueless about the code-breaking.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that MLB had misgivings about approving Crane for ownership because of allegations that a company he owned engaged in bigotry. We’ll see where that leads.
It’s impossible to redo three postseasons. But there could be restrictions on how much Jim Crane can capitalize. There should be no more 2017 World Champion T-shirts, no banners in the stadium.
In their first spring exhibition the Astros confiscated signs from fans that referred to them as Asterisks. To be fair, this team should not be allowed to market itself as the legitimate champion of anything.
Manfred can’t suspend the cheating players because he promised immunity to induce them to testify. And even if he could punish them, where would he start? And end? I’m certain George Springer was not interested in knowing what pitch was coming. Carlos Correa cited Josh Reddick as another who shunned the illicit info. As irony would have it, Reddick and his family have been receiving death threats.
Ben Reiter, Sports Illustrated reporter who in 2014 predicted the Astros would be world champions in 2017, authored Astroball, praising Luhnow as the most visionary of baseball executives. Reiter is planning a series of podcasts, TV shows and writings that will delve deeper into Astrogate. He said on MLB Network’s High Heat: “I’m devoting my life over the next several months to diving back into this story.”
It looks like the stories will go on and on throughout this baseball season, regardless of how the Astros perform on the field.
