The Washington Nationals held parallel negotiations with new manager Dusty Baker and Bud Black (who was a finalist along with Baker) but ultimately decided that Baker was the right choice as the sixth full-time skipper in D.C. since 2005.
There is a narrative thread out there that says veteran skipper Dusty Baker, who managed for twenty seasons from 1993-2013 in San Francisco, Chicago and Cincinnati before taking the job in D.C. this week, was the Washington Nationals' second choice as manager.
That narrative, voiced (in writing) by Boston Globe writer Nick Cafardo in his weekly Sunday Baseball Notes column, suggests that, "[t]he 66-year-old Baker didn’t mind being the second choice to Bud Black for the job.