The playoffs are about to start, and Dusty Baker’s team is in. If you believe Baker is pleasantly surprised, well, you don’t really know him.
“This,” he said Tuesday, “is where I am supposed to be.”
The postseason came and went without him the previous two years. So did baseball. He traveled. He started a couple of businesses. He saw his daughter married in the family backyard.
Baker, 67, was not done with baseball. He wondered why baseball seemed to be done with him.
He reached October with the San Francisco Giants, with the Chicago Cubs, and even with the Cincinnati Reds — three times with the small-market Reds, the only times they have made the postseason in the last 20 years.