Once shunned, now a legend, Dusty Baker makes a triumphant Dodger return

Columnist

Aug. 9, 2024 3 AM PT

He is coming home to a place he never should have left.

He is a former Dodger who should have been a forever Dodger.

Now, finally, he will be.

Dusty Baker will at long last be properly and singularly honored at Dodger Stadium on Friday night, 41 years after he was unceremoniously booted from the organization amid a dark cloud of unsubstantiated rumors involving drugs.

He loved the Dodgers dearly. The Dodgers hurt him deeply. Ties were broken. Distance was created. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. It needed to be fixed.

And so it has been, Baker returning to become the eighth member of “Legends of Dodger Baseball,” the club’s unofficial Hall of Fame for those who have not been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The ceremony will be awash in relief and respect, as even the mere title of the honor fits him perfectly.

Dusty Baker is a legend. And Dusty Baker is Dodgers baseball.

“I loved the Dodgers, I loved the fans, it was home,” said the Riverside native this week in a phone interview from his Sacramento home. “I never wanted to leave.”

His premature departure from Chavez Ravine after the 1983 season was a blessing in disguise, eventually leading the outfielder into a future Hall of Fame managing career that spanned five teams, 2,183 wins and a World Series championship with the Houston Astros in 2022.

In a span of 26 years, he became known to the rest of the baseball world as an eccentric dugout presence with a toothpick dangling from his lips, heavy wristbands adorning his arms, and a quirky use of the bullpen.

But to Dodger fans, he was always just Dusty.

Dusty Baker makes his way through fans who greeted the Dodgers at LAX after they returned from New York on Oct. 29, 1981.

“Dusty was the perfect fuel for the start of the Tom Lasorda era,” said Mark Langill, Dodgers historian. “He was the kind of energetic veteran that a rookie manager really needed. He became a clubhouse leader as the Dodgers overcame the Big Red Machine and restored their place atop the National League West.”

The charismatic outfielder was traded here in a blockbuster deal with the Atlanta Braves after the 1975 season. He was the last of the four slugging Dodgers to hit 30 home runs in 1977, completing the historic feat in his final at-bat of the season.

He was the co-inventor of the high-five after he slapped hands with teammate Glenn Burke after that historic homer. He was the first National League Championship Series MVP later that fall when he had two homers and eight RBIs against the Philadelphia Phillies.

He was the heartbeat of the 1981 World Series championship team. The following season he hit .300 with 23 homers and 88 RBIs.

He was a local favorite with his awesome athleticism and easy smile. Folks would sit in the left field pavilion just to be near him. He was part swagger, part sweetness, all grace.

“He was the right player at the right time, a truly beloved Dodger,” Langill said.

Then, in the winter of 1983, after eight memorable summers, he was gone, shipped out by a franchise that thought he was involved in drugs.

There was no evidence. Baker was never formally accused. Even though his name was later mentioned by a caterer drug dealer in the infamous 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials, he was never part of that scandal, or any scandal.

He was shunned in silence. Nobody said anything. The Dodgers never admitted anything. It was all whisper-whisper. But the reality was deafening.

The Dodgers were weary of dealing with Steve Howe’s drug issues and believed Baker was somehow involved with Howe, and so they threw him under the bus.

They initially tried to trade him. But his contract contained a no-trade clause. So they simply cut him. It was strange, it was messy, and Baker was devastated.

Dusty Baker is greeted by, from left, Bill Russell, Rick Monday, Steve Garvey and Reggie Smith, after hitting a grand slam.

He played only three more major league seasons before retiring as a deeply wounded hero.

“I didn’t leave under real pleasant circumstances,” said Baker, 75. “The rumors were very harmful, they hurt bad, rumors always hurt, I’ll tell the story one day, I’m not ready to open up that wound quite yet.”

It was gaping at the time, the hole created by Baker’s surprising departure, his reputation endorsed by a former teammate who had left the team a year earlier.

“Transitions are always difficult, but what happened to Dusty was a complete injustice,” former Dodger Steve Garvey once told The Times’ Ross Newhan.

But Baker endured, moving forward while inspired by the basic lessons of life.

“At some point, you have to forgive and go on with your life,” Baker said. “I always believed you have to take a negative and turn it into a positive, and that’s what I tried to do.”

That’s exactly what he did, accepting a coaching position with the San Francisco Giants in 1988 before becoming their manager in 1993 and beginning an unusual odyssey for a former Dodgers star.

He managed teams that the Dodgers fans hated — most notably the Giants and the Houston Astros — but Dodgers fans rarely booed him personally.

Dusty Baker won a World Series as manager of the Houston Astros in 2022.

“People always said no matter what they thought about my team, they were rooting for me, and I’ll never forget that,” he said.

He will thank those fans Friday in what should be an emotional homecoming, particularly if it includes the best example of Baker’s community connection.

Their names are Charlie, Carlos, Rueben, Ernie and Leslie.

They were once teens who cheered Baker from the pavilion during games, then waited for him in the parking lot afterward. He adopted them as his unofficial fan club, a diverse mix of locals who eventually followed him throughout his later career, showing up all over the league to cheer him.

“There were three or four Mexican dudes, a couple of brothers, a couple of white dudes, they were all my sons, I’d give them tickets and balls and they all grew up to become parents of their own,” Baker remembered. “It was pretty cool.”

During the ceremony, Baker might also honor the memory of one of his closest teammates and friends, the late Burke, baseball’s first player to come out as gay who credited Baker with offering unconditional support.

Glenn Burke, left, goes to give a high-five to teammate Dusty Baker after Baker hit a home run in 1977.

It figured that, on the final day of the 1977 season, the two men combined on what was reportedly the first display of a joyful celebration that occurs around the world.

Yeah, they invented the high-five, even though Baker refuses to take any credit.

“Glenn Burke did it all, he swatted his hand out and I just reciprocated, I didn’t know it was a big deal,” Baker said. “I was happy, Glenn was happy, it was a nice moment.”

Burke was traded to Oakland in 1978, but the two men remained close. In 1994, Baker’s Giants teamed up with the Until There’s A Cure Foundation to become the first professional sports team to host an AIDS benefit game. Burke died of AIDS-related causes a year later, while Baker continued to minister to AIDS patients in the Bay Area, bringing meals and comfort.

”I’ve just always tried to have a positive impact on people,” Baker said. ”It says in the Bible, to be watered, you have to water others, and I believe that.”

Now that those waters have returned him to the Dodgers, Baker could easily ponder what might have been ...

… He ends his playing career with the Dodgers, he joins Lasorda’s staff, he replaces Lasorda upon retirement, and he is still a Dodger today …

Nah. Dusty Baker isn’t thinking about any of that. He says he wouldn’t have changed a thing. He’s happy where he sits as a Giants consultant. He’s just as happy to now plant his other foot back in Dodger Stadium.

You’ll eventually have to give him up, Giants, because Dusty is a Dodger.

“It was once my dream to come here, and I’m grateful to be coming back,” Baker said.

High-five to that.