While most other major league managers were golfing or watching football or just enjoying their down-time this past weekend, Dusty Baker was managing. But he wasn't managing a big league team; he was doing an interim gig as the manager for his son Darren's under-10 traveling team while their regular coach was out of town. Deadspin's Rick Chandler was on the scene.
"This is a lot of fun, and something I never thought I'd be able to do until Darren was older," said Baker, who may have disappointed many fans by not wearing wristbands for the gig. Instead he rocked the track suit and the Nike Air Maxs. "My dad coached me in Riverside when I was 15, so it's great to be able to do this with Darren. I'm enjoying it; being back in the San Francisco area and all that. The kids are great."
Look, I'm going to make a joke about pitch counts. It's going to happen. But before I do, I just want to note that it's incredibly cool that Dusty did this. If you read the Deadspin post, you can tell that the other kids on the team were pretty excited to have a real big league manager on the bench. It's something that none of them will forget any time soon. And best of all, it appears that he didn't make any 10-year-old throw 130 pitches in six innings. Somewhere, Mark Prior is incredibly jealous.
