WASHINGTON – Dusty Baker, now 75 and with nearly a half-century in professional baseball behind him, long ago realized that no matter age or experience, you never stop learning.
It’s just that now, it’s his own children imparting the lessons – that wounds can heal, that there are grander reasons why events unfold as they do.
And perhaps above all, that no dream is too big to realize.
Sunday at Nationals Park, Baker, wife Melissa and their son, Darren, reunited at Nationals Park after Washington called up the 25-year-old infielder to the major leagues. It marked the first time in seven years father and son were together at this ballpark, with the elder Baker departing with a feeling of unfinished business after the Nationals let him go despite National League East titles in his two years as manager.
In 2017, that meant a phone call from general manager Mike Rizzo that did not come for days, as Baker’s fate hung in the autumn chill after the Nationals were eliminated by the Chicago Cubs, the second consecutive year their season ended in a gutting NL Division Series Game 5 loss.
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The organization opted to move on from Baker, the Nationals becoming the fourth franchise that dismissed Baker after a playoff appearance, thinking it could do better.
In 2024, the call from Rizzo was entirely different.
Baker was now, finally, a World Series champion, having broke through in 2022 with the Houston Astros. He’s a Hall of Famer in waiting, his 2,183 victories ranking seventh all time, and enjoying semi-retirement as a consultant for the San Francisco Giants.
And Darren, who Rizzo drafted in 2019, two years after the elder Baker’s D.C. departure, was a candidate to be the Nationals’ position player call-up in September, when rosters expand from 26 to 28.
“I thought he was just calling to say hello,” says Baker Sunday. “He said, ‘Hey man, we’re calling up some kid who’s got like 38 stolen bases.’ I said really, that’s good. ‘And is hitting .290.’
“Sounds like Darren.”
Dusty and Melissa had just flown back to the Bay Area from Scranton, where they’d watched Darren play with the Nationals’ Class AAA team. So, they hurried back east, didn’t get into their hotel until around 3 a.m. Sunday morning and grabbed a little sleep.
It’s a tale that’s been told thousands of times – big leaguer summoned for debut, parents, friends and family scrambling to get to their debut. Yet this was like no other.
Darren Baker was famous while barely a preschooler, gaining notoriety for getting scooped out of harms’ way at homeplate by San Francisco Giant J.T. Snow during Game 5 of the 2002 World Series, when Baker’s club claimed a 3-2 lead only to lose in heart-wrenching fashion, in seven games (You sense a theme?).
Managerial stops in Chicago – perhaps you’ve heard of Steve Bartman, Game 6 and the Chicago Cubs’ NLCS collapse? – and Cincinnati followed. Darren got a little bit older along the way, too young to remember Snow’s heroic act in San Francisco, yet learning a little bit more with each stop.
By 2017, he was taking batting practice at Nationals Park, nearly fulfilling a dare from broadcaster F.P. Santangelo to hit one out of the yard. By 2021, he was a second-time Nationals draftee, out of Cal.
The next spring, he and Dusty were spring-training roommates, both going to work at the same complex but on opposite sides, Dusty with the Astros and Darren the Nationals in West Palm Beach, Fla.
And all the while, his impact on his father grew bigger. The kid who at 4 years old would switch the channel to ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ just as his dad’s NFL game was coming to a conclusion eventually became a confidante.
Come 2022, it was Darren texting Dusty words of wisdom, both on how to relate to players a half-century Dusty’s junior and also keeping him on the leading edge of how the game was rapidly changing.
“Sometimes, we don’t to admit it, but you gotta learn from your kids,” says Dusty. “He kept me hip on music. He’ll talk to me. Him and my daughter, they think they’re my mother and father. He’ll tuck me into bed. Make sure I eat right, make sure we drink right.
“He comes in and we say our prayers like we used to, before we go to bed. Both my kids, I’m really proud of. My son, for when you make it where you want to go.
“There are very few people who do what they want to do in life.”
Dad would know. Baker was blamed for no shortage of playoff shortcomings, only to see all his former teams fail to advance further the year after they let him go.
“This and San Francisco were my favorite stops. This really hurt not to come back here,” says Baker Sunday.
The Nationals, though, would win the World Series in 2019 with new manager Dave Martinez, who played for Baker in San Francisco in 1993-94.
And now, is managing his son.
Darren Baker said he didn’t need an alarm Sunday. Was still glowing from the clubhouse announcement from Class AAA manager Matthew Lecroy that he was going to the bigs. And in reaching the highest level, realized how his dad was, in essence, the perfect baseball dad.
“He’s the best, man,” says Baker, a second baseman and outfielder who singled on the first pitch he saw as a pinch hitter in the ninth inning of the Nationals’ loss to the Chicago Cubs on Sunday. “He never really forced me to play or put pressure on me or was overbearing. I kind of just found the love of the game myself and I think it really helped me in the long run. Especially some of those long days on busses in Triple-A.
“He’s the best at just letting me be me.”
Dusty says that “Bakers grow late,” and so he sees more projectability in his 5-10, 167-pound son who was 38 for 43 on stolen-base attempts at Rochester and has a career minor league OPS of .703.
“I see a guy that knows how to play,” says Dusty. “He’s been around it since he was like this (small). He doesn’t make many mistakes on the bases. He’d be sitting on the bench with me. He’d see a bonehead play and look at me and say, ‘Dad, that wasn’t a good play.’ He was 10, 12 years old and I’d say, no son, it wasn’t. I don’t want to see you make that play.
“I see a guy with a lot of desire and perseverance. Not just because he’s my son. And he’s smart.”
Baker exudes satisfaction, and not just in discussing his son’s professional rise. Getting over the World Series hump with Houston probably helped.
“A common theme: He tried to play it off really cool,” says Darren of the 2022 Series when the Astros beat the Philadelphia Phillies in six games. “I was going crazy for him. I’d been there for the playoff losses here and Cincinnati and other times.
“I know how hard it is, how much work goes into it.”
Baker said he wanted to be the one to end the Nationals’ streak of never advancing a round in the playoffs. And break the Cubs’ title streak that stretched to 108 years before ending the drought in 2016.
Yet his gaps in employment fatefully coincided with major life events: His daughter’s backyard wedding. His father’s death. His brother’s death.
“You’re upset about not having a job sometime, but sometimes you look back, and you weren’t supposed to. That’s part of life.
“Sometimes we think we’re in charge, but we’re not. We’re in charge a little bit. Most of it is out of our control.
“You have to accept that that was for the good.”
Sunday, he had all the time in the world to welcome his son to the big leagues, his own dreams safely realized, Darren’s just beginning.