Dusty Baker Quotes (446 Quotes)


    What are you going to do when a guy throws a ball up around your head ... Tony said we hit Edgar Renteria in the first inning and he was hitting .500 and I said, 'No way in heck were we trying to hit Renteria to load the bases up with a 1-0 lead, especially with Tino Martinez coming up.' That didn't make any sense to me.

    We didn't have our team, No. 1. A lot of times you get new guys and they have a hard time adjusting to Chicago initially.

    I had Bo. I know Bo has good stuff, especially if he's healthy. He said his arm is good. The guy knows how to pitch. He can throw every day, he'll never complain, you won't know he's around. He was a pleasure to have on my team. He's looking for an opportunity, and that's what will give him an opportunity.

    I always tell people to just watch him, be like him.

    All day it was just a matter of us cutting down on the walks. It seemed like every time we walked someone, they scored.


    It was dangerous when you saw Eckstein went down. That's when you knew the field was getting too sloppy to play on. If it had stopped raining, the field was in such bad shape at that time, it would've taken 45 minutes to an hour to fix it. Then they risk Friday's field conditions, too. It's supposed to rain through Friday morning.

    The Cardinals have a fine team, a real good team. We'll come out next year and try to get the lead or at least stay close -- and stay healthy. They're No. 1 or 2 in pitching, and that shows you how important pitching is. We get our starting pitching healthy and we'll be all right.

    To the best of my knowledge right now, nobody is leaving.

    It's very intense. It's probably intensified more since Tony and I came here. When you play 18 times against a team that's had a long-time rivalry, and my former manager and my former confidant, that just increases things.

    You want to have those difficult decisions to make.

    No. 1, you have to make sure he's OK so this thing doesn't linger all year long. Fortunately for us, he did get some at-bats during the World Baseball Classic and the fact that he did pretty well shows he's not that far off. He saw better quality pitching in that than he would down here. It was to his advantage and ours that he did play.

    You can stress, but guys still have to react and do it on command,

    We didn't just give him the job. He earned it.

    We executed that cutoff play perfectly. That was a very athletic play. That ball went into the gap, and it was obvious that they were going to send him. It was a perfect hop, a perfect throw and a perfect tag.

    He's getting more confident, more control of the strike zone, more confidence to throw any pitch in any count. That's what you call progress and what you like to see of the young man.

    Stealing isn't just speed. Most of it is knowing the pitcher and knowing what a guy does. He might dip his head before he goes to the plate or he might drop his hands slightly before he goes to the plate or his feet are narrow when he goes to first or he might slide-step.

    You don't know what could transpire. You might need both of them. Some of it depends on the progress and health of the other guys.

    I asked him how much he wanted to play. Pierre said I'd have to monitor him more than he's capable of monitoring himself.

    You'd think he's left-handed when you watch him throw. He's one of the best athletes I've been around. People are surprised when they see him run. This guy can fly.

    I'm hoping we don't need him. We'll worry about Wednesday when we get there.

    It came at the right time. Michael, the last couple of days, came through with some heroics.

    Everybody says, 'Play the kids, play the kids.' But I've got seven games against Houston. Against Houston, I've got to play my best team. We could have a direct impact on who goes. There's always something to play for.

    The things I want to see out of him is baseball experience and work on fundamental instinctive stuff -- running the bases, hitting the cutoff man, knowing when to run. I've heard that when he gets thrown out, he stops running. When you get thrown out, you need to be more daring.

    He expects the ball to be hit back to him and he gets in good position. He reminds me of a guy I used to play with, Fernando Valenzuela . They expect the ball to be hit back at them and they practice it. Perfect practice makes perfect results.

    My thing is I've got work to do. I do my job. If we win, everything will take care of itself. That's how I live. If I'm approached, then we'll deal with that. But right now, I can't be worried about that.

    This is judgement time for who is going to be here and who's going to be playing next year, too,

    I like his approach. Anybody who can hit the ball up the middle and to the opposite field is going to hit. He'll learn how to hit with power. If he can hit balls to right field, he has power.

    The field's a lot faster than ours. That ball got to him a lot quicker than he expected. We'll try to get him some more time at second base, especially with the split squad coming up here.

    It wasn't a very clean play right there. That was poor judgment.

    I always enjoyed seeing broadcasters Jack Buck and talking to Mike Shannon. I nicknamed him Jack 'Big Money' Buck. I thought he'd go to the bank before he got here to show me he had a whole wad of hundreds. I always asked to see his bankroll. I miss Jack a lot. I like talking baseball with those guys.

    We need an extra bat. We are a little short, especially with the guys that are a little hurt, and big Ben has done an outstanding job of coming off the bench.

    I haven't been in this position in years. I'll mix and match and do what we can because we owe it to ourselves and to the fans to try to win. September is around the corner. We'll call up some people, though we don't know who yet.

    You're playing against guys who are younger than you, so you can set them up. You get to a certain point in your career and you almost know what's coming. You learn to trust your feelings. Hank Aaron told me you don't become a great player until you learn to trust your feelings.

    Usually you come right in and face 'live,' but you get into bad habits because you're trying to protect your hands and protect your bats. Basically, this is more for the pitchers the first couple days than the hitters. The main thing is, you hope they can throw strikes.

    I think the main problem was he couldn't feel the ball in his fingers. I guess it's cold, and the ball is a little slicker when it's cold, and he really couldn't feel it. Consequently, he starts trying to drop down, different things to try to command the strike zone, and he had trouble commanding the strike zone.

    With the injury he had, the biggest hurdle is everything. It's an injury to his core, which controls everything getting out of bed, getting in and out of the car, getting up and down, hitting, fielding, throwing.

    The main guy will get the majority of the playing time. Is that 60 percent Is that 70 percent Is that 51 percent I'll talk to them. Quite frankly, that's a fortunate situation to have three quality guys. It's not a problem it's a fortunate situation.

    I think we match up with anybody because our pitching. In a short series you run your big three out there or four out there. That generally is what wins a series - pitching and defense. If we can catch the ball and not give away any runs like we do sometimes.

    The guy's a stolen-base man. We had him one time on that pitch out in the third and didn't execute properly. We know he's going to run. We just don't know when he's going to run.

    Guys get a chance to get more rest. You play most of your games on the road at night. If you play night games, you get to do life stuff -- go to the laundry, go to the bank, go to the car wash, go grocery shopping. Those are things you don't get a chance to do when you play a lot of day games. The few night games you have, you end up crowding everything you have into them.

    His velocity appears to be up, his location was good. I'm sure he's not happy about not covering first base. He's been working on it, and we've been making him very conscious of it, but the way he falls off, I don't know, it just looks like he has a lapse or something. Other than that, he threw the ball good.

    Everybody was a rookie at some time. They've all had starts now they all know what it's about.

    I was very pleased to see Woody. He looked like he was doing pretty good. He didn't look like a guy who was operated on. It shows you what modern medicine can do. They told us when Woody went in, there was a good chance he wouldn't have much swelling because he didn't have much swelling on his shoulder.

    Baseball's not separate from the world. (Racism) is real. Nobody wants to talk about it. You don't hear guys talk in depth too much, especially minority guys, because you get accused of playing the race card.

    I mean the guy, he's progressing like we said. Mark's going good. I asked him. I get tired of asking how he's doing, actually. And I'm sure he's tired of answering the questions himself.

    He's had leg problems two or three years in a row. But I've got to play him enough to get him ready, too.

    It has to come through Jim Hendry, Cubs general manager. It's not up to me. We just have to see how he is today. He's not supposed to have any activity. We hope he doesn't have any activity. He's adamant about playing. He wants to play, he wants to help the United States win.

    We knew what we were getting with Juan. We've seen him do it so much against us. We did it a couple of times last year. I keep pointing out that you have to have the personnel to do something like that.

    He's going to play now because we're out of outfielders, ... This is an opportunity to salvage the season.

    I've always been told, 'You start the year hurt, it makes for a long year.


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