Dusty Baker Quotes (446 Quotes)

This is a performance business. The better you perform, the more chances you'll get. He's looking for another chance. When Todd Walker was out last year, he had plenty of opportunities to play.

Boy, that was a great comeback victory especially after we kind of gave it to them in the (sixth) inning with those two runs.

It's very exciting. Toward the end of Spring Training is when you show what you're made of. We've all been through this many times. Rarely have these guys been one of the last cuts in the course of their life. This is a different situation for all of them I'm sure.

It was supposed to be a promotional thing, but it's hard to be out there and be good at it and not do something. It's too late now, but I'm sure they won't have any other promotions.

It hurts us not to play Friday night games. We got home late Thursday from Puerto Rico and had to play a day game the next day on the 12th. We can get home at 1 o'clock not fall asleep until two and have to be back up at eight while the other team has been here. They are in bed before we even get home.

I hope it comes out well. I hope it's not anything serious. I hope and pray it's something minor and he recovers well.

You hope it's just a minor setback. We have to stay positive and keep our fingers crossed.

Maybe I shouldn't have cursed. I had just given him the highest compliment last week when I said he's one of the pitchers I respect most in the league, because he doesn't clown, he doesn't showboat. He just pitches.

That's not only bad for baseball, it's not good for him either,

The only mistake 'Z' made was on Delgado. It was supposed to be a fastball away, and it came back over the plate. He made some great pitches and had a big triple for us. It's a great feeling to have that kind of offensive support from everybody.

He's been hitting since he came into the organization.

It got a little hairy there when we had a 3-0 lead and Delgado hit that home run. But that was the only mistake Zambrano made.

I don't really spend a lot of time thinking back, but it means a lot that my son is here to see this. He never saw me play and is starting to ask about my career.

The ball kept coming over the heart of the plate. It was supposed to be outside and it caught too much of the plate. He threw a lot of pitches (105) in a short period of time.

You hate to have a guy have back problems, then he starts changing his arm angle and compensating for it and you end up hurting something else. His teammates, they really convinced me he had had enough.

And he has to work on his base stealing. We were told that when he gets thrown out, he shuts it down. He'll be fine. He left with a good attitude and thanked us for the amount of playing time that he got.

His knee was a miracle of modern medicine. Back in our day, they put a cast on it. Now you're walking around two days later.

Juan has a pretty good idea of when to run. There were quite a few guys who had green lights last year. It's just a matter of them running. I gave guys the green light a lot, but sometimes I was a bit upset when they didn't run. A real base stealer can run better when he feels he can run versus when you tell him to run.

That's the reality of it. Everybody has a big two or three. The health of those big two or three ... there's a lot riding on it.

The guy can pitch, but we had an opportunity to beat him today, just like we had an opportunity to beat him in St. Louis and he gets off the hook. He wasn't sharp early, he hung some breaking balls we hit hard, but we didn't find any holes.

So I let them be responsible for there particular areas. Then by the time it gets to me that means that there is a problem. I have my eyes open and I need to know something about every department but you don't want to micro manage any particular department.

We have a support staff here I think that can make a difference.

You know he's better than he's pitching. The good thing is his arm feels good and he's in great shape.

Other than the second home run by Dunn, the rest were legitimate. He missed location all day. That's the first time I have seen four solo home runs in each of the first four innings.

It certainly doesn't help the situation. It's a period of adjustment (for Jones), changing leagues. You got to give it some time.

You're teaching at the big-league level, but you can't teach them until they make mistakes because you don't know what they don't know, ... It's not like they have a 'Baseball 101' manual that everyone studies.

You know how I feel about things. Until you're mathematically eliminated, you've got a shot. Who knows (Sunday's 14-3 victory over Florida) could have started us on a long winning streak. I was thinking, 'What happens then' I had visions of 'Woody' being remorseful in (not pitching in) the playoffs.

We want to get him in the position to give him the best chance to make the club. He worked hard last winter. We know he can help this club. I can tell he's helping some of the young guys and the veteran guys about how to go about their business and how to play this game.

It's not a very pleasant situation, but it's here and it's real. This is a major blow. We'll play for him and play for us.

That's something I just deleted from my memory. Ninety-six was a bad year.

I talked to him. He's tired of it, too. You could tell he was a little distraught about the whole thing. He wants to pitch. He wants to pitch with nothing wrong.

There's too many things that you can hurt -- fingers, wrist, elbows, shoulders. There's a lot of things that can happen with a headfirst slide, but Rickey Henderson did a headfirst slide 1,000 times. It depends on the person.

There's good years and there's bad years. There's great years and there's good years. There's fair years and poor years. ... He only had 15 (great years) in a row. Maybe it was time.

He's ahead of schedule where he would be normally at this time because he knew what he had to do to get ready for the World Baseball Classic. We'll keep an eye on him.

It takes awhile. I'm glad all these guys are here. They've been doing a lot of drills. They've been doing a lot of things. You've got verbal direction instructions to each other. ... It's a unit you want to get together as quickly as possible, especially on defense.

Sometimes when you're 40 years old, it taps you on the shoulder and it's time to get out.

I'm seeing a fresh start to me. I've got a pretty good idea, watching him hit, of his strengths and weaknesses. When the games start, I'll get an even better idea. The thing I don't know yet is, is he a fast starter Slow starter It's like with D-Lee -- how many at-bats does he need

A couple balls caught too much of the plate early, ... We were still in the ballgame, and we ended up giving away like four runs on defense. You can't give away runs in the big leagues. We didn't play very good defense today.

You talk to him, and he's in a hurry. We're in a hurry to have him, but we don't want to do anything to set him back. I talked to him the other day, and he said that's the best he's felt after he has thrown. We want to continue on that same progress.

Our greatest cause of concern would be day-after-night games,

There are some guys who have the nod because of experience. There are some guys who have demonstrated better control and better stuff than others. We'll see how they do the last couple weeks of spring and how they do when they go to Triple-A or Double-A.

No. He pitched so well the last time out. This time out, he's a different pitcher. Sometimes you have to figure it out yourself. He has the stuff. You could see from the last time out. It was just a bad day.

A lot of it depends on the strength of your starting pitching. If your starting pitching is good, you won't need 12 too much. Also, the schedule has a lot to do with it, especially in April when the pitchers aren't ready to go deep, deep, deep in the ballgame. You don't even know at that time if you'll need five starters. You might only need four. You hate to lose that guy's endurance by not pitching. It'll work itself out by the time we get ready to leave.

Guys are throwing the ball well. We've just got to cut down on the walks. It seems like we walk somebody and they score.

For a while it didn't look too good because we were hitting the ball hard and on the nose, but right at people. We scored when we had to and the bullpen did a good job.

He's probably the front runner for that position. It's just a matter of how he looks, how healthy he is because at the end he had a few health issues.