Living IN THE Present : For Baker, It’s More Pleasant Than Pondering Mixed Memories

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. —  It is difficult to say where it came from, how it developed.

All Dusty Baker really knows as he looks back is that “the innuendoes made me feel as guilty as a guy who got busted. I hit .260 and suddenly people are saying I’m on drugs.”

Who those people were is not clear, but the innuendoes drifted like storm clouds across the reputation of one of the Dodgers’ most respected leaders and players, contributing to a bitter departure after eight wonderful seasons in Los Angeles.

“Transitions are always difficult, but what happened to Dusty was a complete injustice,” former Dodger Steve Garvey said. “I mean, there was nothing to it, but an innuendo can be as vicious as an accusation because it’s more ambiguous.”

Baker would weather that difficult time as he weathered others, accepting the advice of his sister Tonya, a missionary in Latin America for 12 years, against “letting his heart harden.”

“It can either eat you up, or you can get on with your life,” Baker said. “It hurt then. It doesn’t anymore.”

Johnnie B. Baker Jr. has too much going for him to continue to live in 1983.

Ten years after he left the Dodgers, Baker is embarking on what he and others believe will be a wonderful new chapter as manager of the San Francisco Giants.

Seldom has a selection--Baker, after five years as a Giant coach, is succeeding Roger Craig--been more applauded by players, fans and media representatives.

“Dusty the Right Man to Start Giants’ New Era,” read one Bay Area headline, referring to the rebirth that began when major league owners vetoed a move to Florida and the Giants remained in San Francisco with new owners, new resources and a new commitment.

“It’s like getting a Vitamin B shot,” Baker said. “We know we have a chance to create something special.”

They already have.

Season-ticket sales are up more than $2 million over last year, so the $43-million investment in Barry Bonds seems to be returning an early dividend.

There is even a belief that some may be paying to see the manager, though it is more likely they simply believe in the manager, whose experience in the job consists of 53 games with the Scottsdale Scorpions of the Arizona Fall League.

Said Larry Baer, the Giants’ executive vice president: “I think our selection of Dusty is analogous to John Lucas (the new coach of the San Antonio Spurs). Lucas had never coached, but there were two things everyone knew about him. He related well to people and related well to his peers.

“Dusty is a motivator who has the respect and confidence of the players. He’s not that far removed from his own playing career, but he’s respected because of his integrity, not because he’s a buddy. We’re confident he’ll be able to keep his distance and be able to discipline, if necessary.”

Baer also cited Baker’s understanding of what the new owners can and can’t do, his ability to deal with the media and fans, his consistent involvement in the community and his respect for the Giants’ history and tradition.

“Dusty provides us with the absolute perfect image,” Baer said. “I’m sure some people may believe he’s not ready to manage on a technical level, that we should have played it safe by recycling someone, but we viewed that as an excuse to hold him back unfairly.”

Baker is only the sixth minority manager currently in the majors.

“That was absolutely not the central issue, but if Dusty is a symbol of the new ownership leading the way in that area, it’s a great byproduct,” Baer said. “We have 16 partners, and I’ve heard most of them say they want to be known as progressive.”

Baker and his longtime friend, Don Baylor, who is also making his major league managerial debut this year with the Colorado Rockies, say that Fay Vincent deserves some credit for their appointments.

The former commissioner consistently advocated minority hiring and appointed Baker and Jerry Royster to manage teams in the new Arizona Fall League.

“In my opinion, (Vincent) made a conscious effort to change things,” Baker said. “There are no aptitude tests, so it boils down to someone believing in you.”

Baker and Baylor have believed in one another since 1967, when they were rookies in the double-A Texas League. They played in the same triple-A league, were pictured on the same bubble gum card when they made their major league debuts and played with and against one another in the Puerto Rican and Venezuelan winter leagues.

“We’d pick each other up whenever the other came to town,” Baker said. “Most of the time as players, we talked about hitting. It was only in the last few years as coaches that we talked much about managing.”

Baker speaks Spanish and received a grass-roots education in ethnic and cultural diversity, which he believes broadened his insights.

He grew up in a Latin and black area of Riverside. Later he and brother Victor were the only blacks at Del Campo High in Carmichael, near Sacramento. He came up through many of the Southern cities in the Atlanta Braves’ farm system, often forced to live in neighborhoods overrun with pimps and prostitutes.

A managerial underdog? Wasn’t he always one, a 25th-round afterthought of the Braves, the son of Johnnie B. Baker Sr., who went to court to tie up his son’s minor league money because he wanted him to go to college instead?

“I had a lot of motivation for wanting to make it, but part of it was that I didn’t want my dad to be right and have to admit I made a mistake,” said Baker, who didn’t talk to his father for two years but has patched their relationship.

Baker shrugged. If he beat the odds to get this far, there was never much self-doubt, he said. He may have enjoyed the role of underdog but he was also “always out front”--the oldest of five children, captain of every street team, platoon leader in the Marine reserves.

“I’ve always given orders better than I’ve taken them,” he said, adding that he feels as if he has been “directed by God.”

He also suggested that he received help in his father’s common sense and the intellect of his mother, who has a master’s degree in black studies, which she taught for a time at Sacramento City College.

Baker said it was inevitable that he and Baylor “picked up a lot of the mind-set” of their mentors with the Braves and Baltimore Orioles.

“Frank Robinson undoubtedly contributed to Don’s hard-nosed toughness,” Baker said. “It was the way Robby played.

“With Hank Aaron and me, it was more of a mental thing, doing everything under control, not letting distractions get in the way.”

Some thought Baker would be the next Aaron. The Braves gave him four full seasons in which he hit at least 17 homers and drove in 69 or more runs, including 99 in 1973.

They traded him to the Dodgers along with Ed Goodson for Jimmy Wynn, Lee Lacy, Tom Paciorek and Royster after the 1975 season. Baker promptly injured a knee and hit only four homers in 112 games in ‘76, but he was back in left field in ‘77, a display of faith by Manager Tom Lasorda that Baker says he will never forget.

Baker showed his appreciation by hitting 30 homers that year, getting No. 30 on the final day of the season and joining Ron Cey, Reggie Smith and Garvey as the Dodgers became the first team to have four players with 30 or more.

Baker hit 29 with 97 RBIs in 1980 and 23 with 88 in both 1979 and ’82. The Dodgers called him “Dr. Scald” because of the way line drives rocketed off his bat and “Hard Bake” because he was a leader and enforcer.

“He kept people focused and communicating,” Garvey said. “He kept the little irritants from becoming big irritants, and he was an example to the young players with his work ethic and belief in fundamentals.”

Baker said he will always remember the five playoffs and three World Series he participated in with the Dodgers, but his strongest memory, perhaps, is “the feeling we had as a unit that we could win every game and that the closer the game, the better chance we had.”

“Consciously, I don’t know if I was thinking about managing then, but subconsciously I was probably thinking right along with Tommy.

“Of course, we had a whole team of potential managers, from Davey Lopes to Bill Russell to Reggie Smith to Manny Mota to Steve Yeager and Joe Ferguson. Many are still affiliated with the game, and we would often sit in back of the plane and quiz each other. We would often talk about things we expected to come up in the next game.”

All of those good thoughts, Baker said, overshadow the way it ended. Operating in 1983 virtually without spring training because of a knee injury, he hit a respectable 15 home runs with 73 RBIs but batted .260, down 40 points from 1982 and 60 from ’81.

Then the innuendoes were floating, and suddenly the clubhouse leader was a clubhouse lawyer. Suddenly the man who kept trying to keep Steve Howe’s career from collapsing was said to be on drugs himself. Suddenly his brother Victor, an accountant who handled the financial affairs of seven or eight Dodgers, was having too big an impact on the salary structure, just as Baker’s five-year contract was.

“L.A. is tough,” Baker said. “Anybody can call in. Who knows who said what or where it all came from?”

There were unconfirmed suspicions that it filtered out of the executive wing to rationalize the postseason attempt to trade Baker to the Oakland Athletics for minor leaguers, which was the typical Dodger trade as they broke up their powerhouse of the ‘70s.

The Dodgers traded Baker without his permission, violating his contract. He filed a grievance, seeking arbitration. The controversy lingered into spring, and he missed a second consecutive camp.

Frank Robinson, then managing the Giants, invited Baker to join the team if he could get his release from the Dodgers. The Dodgers agreed when Baker agreed to drop his grievance and not sue.

Baker spent a year with the Giants and two with the A’s, ending his 16-year major league career at 36, convinced that if the last few years had evolved more normally, he could have continued to be a designated hitter until he was 40, “earning a lot more money.”

“At that point, I was a little disgruntled,” Baker said. “I didn’t really know if I wanted to stay in baseball. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.”

Baker spent 1987 working with his brother in finance. Al Rosen, then the Giants’ president, invited him to join the organization, but he was going through a divorce and didn’t respond.

Then, the way Baker figures, God directed him and Victor to take their daughters on a weekend outing to Lake Arrowhead.

“There we were, waiting to check in at the hotel, and who’s behind us in the line but Bob and Connie Lurie,” Baker said of the then-Giants’ owner and his wife. “I mean, if that wasn’t a sign, I wouldn’t know one.”

Lurie reminded Baker of the club’s offer, and Baker agreed to become the hitting coach almost on the spot. He also told himself that he would be managing in five years, which is exactly the way things worked out.

In the meantime, the Giants almost moved to Florida. Baker shook his head and said: “If the team had moved, I don’t know if I would have been invited or if I would have gone. I doubt very much I’d be managing.”

The possible move distracted the Giants in 1992, but the resolution of that and the arrival of Bonds don’t change the hard reality of the job facing Baker.

The Giants lost 90 games last year. They were 11th in the National League in hitting, ninth in pitching and sixth in fielding. The NL West figures to be the toughest division in baseball.

Baker said toughness and parity can help the Giants. “I don’t think anybody is going to win 95 games,” he said.

Baker called many of his players after his selection, trying to set a positive tone. He hopes to “defuse the rap” on his suspect pitching staff and avoid the problem of undefined roles that plagued Craig last year. He sees the Giants as having good, but not great, talent.

Some predict a clash of egos between Bonds and Will Clark, but Baker disputed that.

“Barry wants to win,” he said. “He’s been close too many times not to want to get over the top, and what a perfect scenario it would be to do it here, home in the Bay Area, with his dad (Bobby Bonds is the Giants’ hitting coach) part of it.

“As for Will, he’s psyched. He’s always psyched, but maybe more now because it’s his option year. He wants to win and wants to have a big year.”

Baker is traveling by bike this spring, riding a 10-speed between his hotel and Scottsdale Stadium. He is geared up.

“Practice is practice, but I’m psyched about what’s coming,” said Baker, an underdog who made it.