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HOUSTON – As many of the Houston Astros celebrated their World Series championship on the field at Minute Maid Park Saturday night, a smaller, more exuberant celebration erupted in the near corner of the home dugout. It was there that his coaches and players piled on manager Dusty Baker, who had just won his first World Series title in 30 years of management with a 4-1 Game 6 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies.
In the end, the winning equation was simple: Framber Valdez pitched six dominant innings. Yordan Alvarez hit a three-run homer in the sixth to give the Astros the lead. His dominant bullpen held him. Perhaps, after all that, Baker had already endured the hard part.
The Astros completed an impressive two-game postseason run en route to their second title in six years, their first since the poster-stealing scandal that forced them to purge their coaching staff, what made them need it. a manager capable of weathering future legacy storms. Jeremy Peña, who had 10 hits and three RBIs in 25 at-bats, was the first rookie position player to be named World Series MVP.
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Whether this win qualifies as redemption for the Astros’ tainted 2017 title is a matter for baseball’s collective conscience, which can rarely agree on anything. But one thing he does agree on is Baker, a beloved presence around the sport. He is not a perfect manager. He’s not a perfect person, something he’s brought up many times since taking over here. The Astros made mistakes, he says. But so have all the people who overwhelm them, and so has he.
Fortunately, baseball does not reward perfection. It rewards resilience. Unearth the truth. And the truth about Baker, three decades into his managerial career, is that few people in this game are as universally respected as he is consistently, consistently, kind.
As the rest of the industry rooted for him, Baker trained himself not to need a degree. He had accepted a bequest that contained none; said no one would make him feel like a failure, not with 2,093 regular-season wins to his name, ninth most all-time, behind only Hall of Famers.
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But he didn’t take new jobs, again and again, only to put himself in a position to be fired, to answer questions about every decision, to be told he wasn’t analytical enough to handle this data-driven age. No, Baker always felt that fate was playing a role, that something bigger was at work. And for years, he held onto the hope that whatever it was, it would eventually get him here. When Kyle Tucker got the final out Saturday night, Baker became the oldest manager to win a World Series title, at 73.
Baker had not been on the verge of a title like this in 20 years. The Astros never managed a title win last season. But on Saturday, he did the usual pregame friend-celebrity handshake, adding country star George Strait to his long, long list of famous acquaintances. He leaned against the cage during Astros batting practice, and as usual, several people came over to lean with him, just to chat.
And he admitted that he held back the emotion. At times in his pregame press conference, he looked nervous. At other times, such as when he described the support he feels from African-Americans in Houston and the sport, when he talked about the responsibility that comes with his role as the most visible black coach in baseball history, something he never to order.
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He spoke of the souls who came before him. With each passing season, I watched friends and loved ones go, watched younger men leave the sport or die, watched the game enter an era where I sometimes thought it had no place. Earlier this postseason, Baker speculated that he might have “10 to 12 more years” left in him, and the implication was that he meant the Earth, not just the sport. He has never shied away from his mortality. But he also didn’t let the World Series dream die.
His son, Darren, was a 3-year-old batboy the first time he got that chance, too young to know what was going on, young enough for Giants first baseman JT Snow to put him out of harm’s way in one of the emblematic images from recent baseball history. Darren was there on Saturday too, old enough to share in the champagne celebration, old enough to know exactly how much that means.
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Baker began his quest for a title before Darren was even born. He managed 10 years before reaching his first World Series. That was 20 years ago now, two decades during which Baker wondered if his decision to pull starting pitcher Russ Ortiz in what could have been a decisive Game 6 would be his World Series legacy. The Giants bullpen couldn’t hold on to the lead Baker handed it.
Valdez was born a few weeks after Baker finished his first season as coach in 1993. Baker probably wouldn’t have that title without him. The lefty entered Saturday’s outing having allowed three total earned runs in three postseason starts this year. He left Saturday after allowing four earned runs in four postseason starts this year. At one point, he struck out the top five batters in the Phillies’ order consecutively, the second left-hander in World Series history to do so. The only other one was a guy named Sandy Koufax.
But Phillies starter Zack Wheeler matched him almost every step of the way. Both pitched in the fifth without allowing a runner to reach third base, let alone score. In fact, it was Valdez who blinked first when he allowed a no-doubt home run to Kyle Schwarber in the sixth. Then the Astros put two men on in the bottom of the inning. Now it was up to Rob Thomson to decide how best to hold onto the lead in a potentially decisive World Series game: stick with Wheeler, who had been dominant, or go to his best reliever and cross his fingers.
And it was Thomson who would be left wondering for years to come what might have been because the first batter Jose Alvarado faced was Yordan Álvarez. Alvarez hit a three-run homer 450 feet to center field. Baker was nine outs away.
When Alvarez returned to the dugout, Baker fell to the end farthest from home, a different spot than usual. Alvarez went all the way down, up the stairs and shared a high-five with Baker that might have been the most vehement the two men had ever shared in their lives. Legend has it that Baker invented this move during his playing days. Baker’s life has never been short of legend. In fact, he hadn’t missed much except for one World Series win as a manager.
The curse caught his promising Cubs in the 2003 NLCS. His Reds were never complete enough. The Nationals twice pushed the division series to five games on their clock, but fell on a hit, play or groundout both times.
The second time, in 2017, ownership wouldn’t work out a contract extension before the playoffs. After the Nationals lost Game 5, he waited a few days to close a deal. It didn’t happen, so he went back to California assuming it would happen there. He got a phone call, not a contract. And he found himself out of a job at age 70, torn from the team he thought would finally get him the title he craved. Two years later, she saw one of her tutors, Dave Martinez, lead them to her.
A week or so ago, Nationals owner Mark Lerner called him to congratulate him, to wish him well. This is Baker’s experience in the sport he loves, treasured until it isn’t, cast aside by the vagaries of a fickle sport. But that fickle sport gave him one last tricky chance when the Astros needed a fresh start. And as fate would have it, that last chance came with one of the most successful organizations in sports. If the Nationals hadn’t fired him, if the scandal had never happened… Well, Baker learned a long time ago that what he wanted wasn’t always what he got, and it wasn’t always what he needed.
But on Saturday, Baker got the title he wanted, the title everyone said he needed. The quest that has consumed most of his later adult life is complete. But Baker has always insisted that if he won one World Series, he would win two. After all that, he’ll be happy to have the chance to test the theory.