On Thursday, a future Hall of Fame career came to a close when Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker announced that he was retiring from the game.
In a scheduled press conference at Minute Maid Park in Houston, Baker let everyone know he was hanging up his managerial jersey next to his player jersey.
And he did it in both English and Spanish.
“I just want to say thank you,” said Baker to start off today’s press conference. “Retiring from the field here in Houston, I haven’t made up my mind yet about what I’m going to do, or where I’m going to go….first I’m going to go home.
“I’m going to spend some time with my grandkids and let the Lord tell me where to go and what to do with my life. I still feel like I haven’t done what I’m supposed to do in life, so I feel that the Lord has some great things ahead for me.”
After a managerial career spanning 26 years, including coming out of retirement four years ago to right the ship in Houston after the team’s infamous cheating scandal, Baker revealed that while he’d like to remain in the game in an advisory capacity, he’s calling it a career.
Baker leaves the game he started in as a player as one of the most successful coaches in MLB history.
Dusty ranks seventh in overall wins as a manager with 2,183. He made three World Series appearances, has one World Series title, led two teams to pennants in both the American and National leagues- the Astros in 2021-22 (AL) and the Giants in 2002 (NL)- and is the first and only manager to win division titles with five different teams (the Giants, Cubs, Reds, Nationals and Astros).
And he remains humble about his career as always.
“I don’t really think nothing, other than why was I on so many different teams,” Baker said, according to Hall of Fame writer Claire Smith in The Athletic. “I’m serious. I feel fortunate to have gotten that many jobs, but I feel unfortunate that I shouldn’t have lost jobs when I was winning.”
His coaching career began in 1993 with the Giants, where in 10 seasons Baker went 840-715. After winning the pennant in 2002, the Giants changed direction and Dusty ended up in Chicago with the Cubs for four seasons, going 322-326. Three years after the 2003 NL championship series collapse, Chicago let him go, and he went to Cincinnati for six years, going 509-463. But after two division titles and three playoff trips, the Reds dumped him and he went to Washington, where in two seasons (2016, 2017) Baker went 192-132 but lost in the first round in both years.
Dusty then stepped away from coaching until the Astros, who were mired in a cheating scandal, came calling in 2020. He then spent the next few years cleaning up the team’s image and helped them get back on the winning track, which included his first World Series win in 2022.
Although Dusty and the Astros lost to the Texas Rangers in seven games in this year’s ALDS, he has nothing to hang his head over.
Baker’s resume speaks for itself, and he will undoubtedly become the first Black manager in MLB history to be elected to the Hall of Fame, which will make other Black managers like Cito Gaston, Ron Washington and Dave Roberts happy.
As of today, only three Black managers- Gaston, Robers and Baker- have won World Series titles (Washington made back-to-back World Series appearances with the Rangers in 2010 and 2011). But Baker is the first Black manager to reach 2,000 wins, and the sixth manager overall to accomplish the feat.
“I think about the people that made it possible for me to get in this position,” said Baker to KPRC 2’s Howard Chen prior to winning his 2,000th game. “My dad, Jackie Robinson, Frank Robinson, Cito Gaston, the minority managers ahead of me.”
Out of this elite group of four, Dusty will be the first to get the call from Cooperstown, which he deserves for his four-year tenure in Houston alone. There he reached the ALCS four times and won three consecutive AL West division titles (2021-23), two AL pennants (2021-22) and a World Series title in 2022. He also became the oldest manager to win a World Series.
But let’s not forget his career as a player.
In his 19-year MLB career (1968 – 1986), Dusty played with the Braves, Dodgers, Giants and Athletics. He was a .278 hitter with 1,981 hits and 242 home runs. He was also a 2x All-Star, Gold Glove winner, NLCS MVP and won a World Series ring with the 1981 Dodgers.
While this season did not end the way Astros fans had hoped, Dusty Baker saved that franchise from itself and restored credibility to the team. And while he is retiring from the game as a coach, he still wants to be involved in baseball in some fashion.
“Whatever direction I’m sent, I gotta’ go,” said Baker today.
Dusty Baker did much more for baseball and made it a point to always teach, coach, give back and treat people with kindness and respect.
“God don’t like ugly, so I try not to be ugly,” he said.
Dusty’s career and life are definitely not ugly. And every single person in that room today, along with all of his players and people whose lives he touched can attest to that fact.
And for that, Dusty Baker should be celebrated and enshrined in Cooperstown.
