Clear the field

Dusty Baker is the greatest manager in San Francisco Giants history. So why is team owner Peter Magowan on the verge of letting him go?

By Joan Walsh

Oct. 9, 2002 | "Clear the field!" a defiant San Francisco Giants wife told me Sunday night, after the Giants beat the Braves to tie the Division Series. She was gripping my hand so hard it hurt. I understood her ferocity: She was heading to Atlanta on a red-eye for the do-or-die game on Monday, and she was trying to give me, a fellow fan, last words of inspiration. But I had no idea what she was talking about.

So she explained: "You need to clear the field: Clear your mind of negative thoughts about the Giants! Do it before every pitch. Think only positive thoughts. That's your job! Get rid of all negativity! They can win this!"

We hugged, and I promised her I would clear the field, or try to. But I felt guilty: I've been thinking negative thoughts about the Giants most of this season. The poor lady didn't know who she was talking to (and that's why I won't use her name); I'm the queen of negativity. I've been convinced that the unhappy relationship between beloved Giants manager Dusty Baker and team owner Peter Magowan would result in Baker's departure after the season, a baseball tragedy so immense that if it happens, a standing-room-only crowd of 43,000 meditating Buddhist monks won't be able to clear Pacific Bell Park for the Giants. I even wrote about the Baker-Magowan troubles in San Francisco magazine, a piece that's been widely quoted, debated, hailed, reviled, though never refuted. It didn't exactly clear the field when it appeared in August.

Maybe even worse, I doubted Baker himself when he told me not to worry about his contract, or the Giants' fortunes this season, that his team -- my team -- would play well into October this time. The three-time National League Manager of the Year, the winningest skipper in San Francisco Giants history, was unwavering. "We're going to win this thing, because I've got to," he told me in June, as the Giants were falling further behind the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Los Angeles Dodgers with almost every series. I believed him for a while, but my faith failed me at several points during the summer, and again last Saturday, when the Giants dropped a second game to the Braves -- thanks in part to a Baker pitching choice that riled up all his critics all over again -- and stood on the verge of elimination.

But I woke up Sunday and read that Baker was still cool, calm and predicting a Giants series victory, and I reminded myself to trust him again. Of course that night they won a glorious game, when pitcher Livan Hernandez, another sports-talk goat, repaid Baker's loyalty and befuddled the Braves. So on Monday, I took the advice of my new friend. I cleared the field, and by God it worked. In the sports bar where I watched the game, fans were sweating with every pitch. (You can pick out Giants fans, like Cubs fans or Red Sox fans, because we have a natural cringe about us, a reflexive, defensive slope to the shoulders, a posture developed after decades of getting beaten about the face and head by our team.) When closer Robb Nen faced Chipper Jones in the ninth inning with one out and two men on base, not even two months after he blew a save in almost the same situation -- same score, 3-1, until Jones tied the August game with a single -- well, folks in the bar were holding their heads in their hands, afraid to look at the TV set, literally tearing their hair. But I was completely calm. "It's time for Nen to pick up his team," a voice told me, and it wasn't my voice, or any voice I recognized, but it told the truth. Jones grounded into a game-ending double play. Bye-bye, Braves.

I don't really believe that thinking positive thoughts is the reason the Giants won, but I'm not going to mess with a winning combination. I'll stay superstitious until it stops working.

So now I'm clearing the field for the League Championship Series, against the St. Louis Cardinals, the Giants' first LCS since 1989, and the first ever in Baker's 10 years as manager. Let me be very, very clear: I believe the Giants can win their first World Series since they moved from New York to San Francisco in 1958 (the year I was born); their first, in fact, since 1954. And I believe Peter Magowan can make up with Dusty Baker this October, whatever happens in the World Series, and bring Baker back next year. But I have a full day to clear the field this time, so let me revisit that mess, only to leave it behind, for good this time, when I'm done.

To some folks, my second statement -- that Baker could still return to the Giants -- will make me sound crazier than the first. On Sunday, the New York Times' sage baseball columnist Murray Chass reported that Baker is out of here, that he's already told "friends" he will leave the Giants "once the playoffs end," angry that Magowan refused to talk about a contract extension until after the season. For his part, Magowan believes Baker "had manipulated the news media and had not appreciated what the Giants had done for him," Chass reported, citing a "colleague" of Magowan's as his source.

That ain't the half of it. Chass didn't seem to talk to either man directly, but I did, and they each gave me an earful of their issues with the other. Yet both sides continue to insist Baker's not finished with the Giants -- and I believe them. Here's why I think that, and what I believe it would take to get Baker to stay.

Next page: Baker hasn't made up his mind. Really