Dusty Baker (Photo Credit: Getty Images, By: Jonathan Daniel)
Dusty Baker spent four seasons as the manager of the Chicago Cubs. In those four years he went from being honored with the slogan “In Dusty We Trusty,” to an ugly present left for him in the dugout.
“At the very end, somebody took a dump right where I stood in the dugout every day,” Baker told Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports. “That was the low point. The grounds crew guy cleaned it up. He said, ‘Oh, I think it’s dog crap.’ I said, ‘No it ain’t. That’s human crap.’”
Baker got the Cubs to within five outs of the World Series before one of the most notorious foul balls and a botched ground ball derailed the team.
Around the same time as the dugout incident, Baker said he began to receive attacking, and often racially charged, letters and telephone calls.
Baker failed to do what every Cubs manager has failed to do since 1908, and it’s what makes the job so stressful and yet appealing.
“They turn over their managers pretty quick,” Baker said. “They don’t stick with anybody for a period of time, because everybody’s counting — Year 100, Year 101, Year 102. There’s no such thing as a four- or five-year plan. It’s a one-year plan.”
Since Baker, the reigns of the Cubs have been passed to Lou Piniella and now into the hands of Mike Quade.
