To be a teenager on June 19, 1967, and especially one of color, was to see America as a 20-quart iron stockpot approaching a hard boil. The heat intensified with every headline. In just the previous three months, Muhammad Ali refused military service, massive protests arose in San Francisco and New York against the Vietnam War, and a breakout star named Jimi Hendrix was among the many musicians to take the stage that weekend at the Monterey Pop Festival, the launching pad to “The Summer of Love,” a younger generation’s vocal counter to war and inequality.
The simmer loomed especially ominous in the South. Tampa was a tinderbox that day after three days of race riots related to the police shooting of a Black man, while in Montgomery, Ala., 300 Black people marched four blocks to the capitol to protest what they called police militarism.
“I prayed I would not be drafted by the Braves,” says Dusty Baker, who had turned 18 years old just four days earlier and, yes, was drafted by the Braves nine days before that.
Baker knew that the Braves not only played in Atlanta but also that their farm teams were in places below the Mason-Dixon line, such as Lexington, N.C., Kinston, N.C., Austin and Richmond. Baker was the only Black person at Del Campo High in Sacramento until his younger brother, Robie, followed him two years later.
What happened that day in Los Angeles is the switching of life’s train tracks, the sharp bend of the river of fate. It is why Baker, now 72, will be in the dugout of the Astros for Game 1 of the World Series Tuesday night—against the Braves, no less—trying to check the last box of what is one of the longest, most beguiling, most unbelievable bucket lists of any baseball life. It is the story of how two men who are no longer here to see it, Henry Aaron and Baker’s father, Johnnie B. Baker Sr., made this painfully long quest possible.
“Life experience,” says Astros bench coach Joe Espada. “That’s what sets Dusty apart as a manager. He is the best I have seen at taking this.”
Espada pulls from his back pocket his phone, the symbol of the connected world.
“And I can’t say ignore it, because that’s impossible, but he turns it down. He turns down the noise and has the self-confidence to rely on his wisdom and life experience without regard for the noise.”
Baker is the Forrest Gump of modern baseball. He has been there in uniform for Aaron’s 715th home run (he was on deck), the first high five (he and Glenn Burke), the first NLCS MVP (he won it), Reggie Jackson’s three-homer World Series game, Fernandomania, the 1989 World Series earthquake, Barry Bonds’s record-breaking 71st home run, the largest blown lead of a World Series potential clincher (2002 Game 6), The Bartman Game (2003 NLCS Game 6), the only time batters reached consecutively on each of the four ways to get on base without putting the ball in play (2017 NLCS Game 5) and the cleanup from the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal.
His professional baseball life experience traces to that June day in 1967, a Monday. The Braves were playing that night in Los Angeles against the Dodgers. They flew Baker and his mother, Christine, from Sacramento to Los Angeles.
“My dad didn’t know,” Dusty says.
The Braves had drafted Baker in the 26th round and were offering him second-round money. Johnnie B. Sr. did not want his son to take it. He wanted his son to take the basketball scholarship offer from Santa Clara. He might even play football, too, in the same backfield as quarterback Dan Pastorini. It wasn’t about the sports, though. It was about getting the college education he never did.
Johnnie B. Sr. worked on Air Force radar equipment by day and earned a few more bucks at night at Sears. He was so strict he was known around town as “Mr. Baker” and thought nothing of chastising townspeople if he deemed they did something wrong.
“Back then, negative motivation was more of a factor than it is now,” Dusty says. “With negative motivation you wanted to say, ‘I’ll show you.’ You can’t use negative motivation today because they’ll quit on you. Everything has to be positive.”
At the Braves’ hotel in Los Angeles, Christine and her son, who was known as “Dusty” because of the dirt he kicked up playing in the fruit fields behind the family home, were introduced to Aaron, the great Braves slugger. The 1967 Braves were a team studded with historical baseball figures in the making such as Joe Torre, Felipe Alou, Cito Gaston, Phil Niekro, Tito Francona, Charley Lau and Bob Uecker. But Aaron, then in his long prime at 33, was baseball royalty. His words were weighty.
“If you believe in yourself,” Aaron told Dusty, “you will be in the big leagues before your college class graduates.”
And then he turned to Christine.
“Mrs. Baker,” he said, “I will take care of him as if he’s my own son.”
Dusty Baker became a baseball lifer that day. When he returned home, he signed with the Braves. His father was so upset about it he sued to have the contract voided. Christine and Johnnie B. Sr. had recently separated.
“We didn’t speak for three years,” Dusty says. “But my mom was my legal guardian, too. They let me have an allotment to buy a car and a school budget, and they put my money [in a stock trust]. I was pissed off. I said, ‘I’m grown now.’
“So, I had to go to court. California was deeded as the trustee over my affairs. They invested my money in IBM and Standard Oil. My money tripled. I thought, .”
With the automobile allotment from his bonus, Baker bought himself an Oldsmobile 442 in saffron yellow, a V-8 muscle car with 350 horses.
“Got six tickets in six months and was on assigned risk for the next three years,” he says with that big smile that is as much of his signature as that toothpick.
