Rob Issa, FISM News
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Dusty Baker won his only World Series as a player in his 14th season in the major leagues in 1981 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He’s now aiming for his first ring as a manager in his 25th season in the dugout.
Baker will get his third crack at winning the title when he leads the Houston Astros against the Philadelphia Phillies in this season’s Fall Classic. Both teams advanced, with the Phillies defeating San Diego to capture the National League pennant and the Astros completing a sweep of the New York Yankees for the American League pennant.
The 73-year-old Baker previously guided the 2002 San Francisco Giants and last year’s Astros to the World Series, but was unable to bring home a championship in either series. Game 1 is Friday night in Houston.
“I mean, victories drive me. And I’ll get it,” Baker said. “You can’t rush it before it gets here because it ain’t here yet. So you just got to put yourself in a position to do it.”
Throughout his successful career in baseball, Baker has leaned on his Christian faith throughout life’s ups and downs.
He considers Proverbs 24:15-16 his life scripture.
Do not lie in wait, O wicked man, against the dwelling of the righteous; Do not plunder his resting place;
For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.
“This verse applied in my life when I was up and down, up and down,” Baker said in “Baseball Faith.”
When you rise to the top, you have to keep the faith, especially when the Lord has delivered you more than once. I’ve been up and I’ve been down with seemingly no way out and then the Lord delivered me again. And then it happened a couple more times. It’s a hard way to go. I don’t think of myself as a righteous man as it says, but our Lord has delivered me many times in my life because of the faith I was raised. Sometimes I would wonder why He did so because I felt so undeserving, but that’s how God is.
Baker said his family started him in the Church at a young age. That carried over to the way he raised his two children.
“If you were too sick to go to Church that Sunday, you didn’t go out to play,” Baker said about his upbringing.
So I was the same way with my daughter and son. The Lord has delivered me through many trials and tribulations and given me a sense of calmness where I know things will always work out for me and that’s what keeps me going no matter what,” Baker recalled.
“People always see the successes, but they don’t see the failures in your life. They don’t see the times when you were going broke, losing money, getting divorced, and thought you hit rock bottom. The Lord gives you the sense of purpose that you have to have. There are many people out there who are faithless and feel a sense of hopelessness and despair, I’m here to tell them that if you persevere, the Lord will always come through and deliver you.”
As a player, Baker batted .278 with 242 home runs and 1,013 runs batted in during 19 seasons with the Atlanta Braves and the Dodgers. He was a two-time All-Star and won one Gold Glove award as an outfielder.
Baker broke in as a manager with the Giants in 1993, winning 103 games. He has a record of 2,093-1,790 with the Giants, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Washington Nationals, and Houston Astros.
Baker is the only manager in MLB history to lead five different teams to divisional titles and the ninth manager to win both an AL pennant and an NL pennant. He’s also the 12th manager and first black manager with 2,000 victories. Now, at 73, Baker becomes the oldest manager to reach the World Series.
“We love going out there every single day and competing for him,” Astros third baseman Alex Bregman said. “He loves this team. He loves winning. He loves the game of baseball. And a hundred percent we want to win for him.”