Salon | Newsreal

T A B L E+T A L K
Is the Arab-Israeli peace process dead or alive -- and do we care? Join the discussion in Headlines

T O D A Y
Winning, and getting along
By Joan Walsh
Quote of the Day
Babysitting on the Internet

Quickies
O F F+Y O U R+C H E S T
"I take great exception to Camille Paglia's references to Camilla Parker-Bowles as being "unbeautiful" and "harridan-like" ...

R E C E N T L Y
School vouchers: the next conservative victory?
By Samuel G. Freedman
Why are black urban Democrats jumping on the same bandwagon as the Christian Coalition?
(09/30/97)
Battling bigots on a book tour
By Melissa fay Greene
The author of an award-winning book on the early civil rights movement thought that the lessons it taught about fighting the lunacy of racism had sunk in. She was wrong.
(09/29/97)
How recycling poisons the neighborhood
By David Bacon
Recycling is great -- unless you live close to where it's happening
(09/26/97)
Princess Di and other conspiracies
By Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen
Or, is a car crash sometimes just a car crash?
(09/25/97)
No harm, no foul
By Jonathan Broder
Campaign finance: Why Bill and Al will walk
(09/23/97)

Salon Newsreal
spacer

dusty's way

The San Francisco Giants' skipper has led his team to victory -- and proved that multiculturalism doesn't have to be a drag on merit and spunk.
BY JOAN WALSH | san Francisco Giants manager Dusty Baker is my mentor. He doesn't know that, which makes ours a little different from your normal mentoring relationship. But after the crushing 1993 season finale, when Baker's blue-collar, all-heart Giants won 103 games and still finished in second place, and the blue chip, soulless Atlanta Braves went to the playoffs, I went into a near-terminal sulk. I couldn't work, and I couldn't watch the playoffs, either. Baseball hurt. Then I caught Baker doing post-season commentary on television news, critiquing games he should have been managing, not just talking about on TV. But there he was: smart, excited, articulate, still in love with the game despite his personal disappointment.
I wanted to know how he did that. So I got an assignment to profile him for a local magazine. During our three conversations I found myself less interested in his ideas about baseball than about life. He was spiritual, multicultural, tough but kind, with musical tastes that run from Van Morrison to Tupac Shakur: I had to admit I didn't want to write about Dusty Baker, I wanted to be him. Neither of us knew then that Baker, named National League Manager of the Year in his rookie season, was headed for three long years in the wilderness, when his team would have to slide from first to last before they'd be first again.
At the start of 1997, baseball statistician Bill James predicted Baker would be gone by mid-season. Now, with the Giants in the playoffs, everybody is a Baker fan. In baseball terms, what he's done is clear: He took a roster of journeymen players without stars -- save Barry Bonds -- and made them into a genuine team. The Giants play scrappy Bakerball: They bunt the runner over to second, they sacrifice the run home from third base, pitchers throw an extra inning because the team needs them to. They are mediocre, or worse, in most of the major statistical categories -- batting average, earned run average, runs scored. But they lead the league in sacrifice flies, in one-run victories and in come-from-behind wins.
But there's another aspect of Baker's success that's gone undernoticed, and that's the way, as one of only two black managers in baseball, he's bridged the chasm of race that often divides major league locker rooms. The Dodgers put a diverse team on the field, one that matched the team's increasingly Latino and Asian fan market. But the team was a mirror of the city it represents -- a Balkanized, polyglot enigma that added up to less than the sum of its parts. Mid-season, star catcher Mike Piazza complained openly that players couldn't even talk to one another, and indeed, on the bench they didn't seem to try very hard. They looked like the United Nations of baseball, but without those cool translator headsets.
The Giants, by contrast, could be the poster boys of multiculturalism. Journeyman pitcher Rich Rodriguez, who's knocked around the majors, calls the Giants the most racially integrated team he's ever played on, and credits the 48-year-old Baker -- who grew up in an all-white suburb of Sacramento, speaks fluent Spanish and is married to a native San Franciscan of Filipino descent -- with setting the tone at the top. I think it's noteworthy that commentators almost never talk about this aspect of Baker's talent, or try to learn from it. Since he's my mentor, I thought I had to try.
The first time I met Baker, in 1994, he was tight-lipped on the topic. Did he think being a black manager made a difference? "I didn't even think about that. My attitude is, I've got a job to do, and it's not a matter of black and white." What about people who said his predecessor, Roger Craig, had problems with black players? "That's their opinion," he said coldly. Did he worry about clubhouse separatism? "That's in every job. You hang out with people you have the most in common with." I gave up.
A couple of weeks later, as I was finishing the piece, the phone rang. "This is Dusty," the voice on the other end said unexpectedly. He was alone in Scottsdale, Ariz., on the eve of spring training, without his players, family or his then-fiancée, and he was ready to answer a few last questions. We circled back around to the issue of race, and I got an earful.

N E X T+P A G E+| "I was very taken with the Black Muslims."