It’s Dusty Baker’s 69th Birthday

The strongest memory I have of Dusty Baker is him jumping up and down behind the dugout railing after J.T. Snow hit the game-tying 3-run home run off of Armando Benitez in the 2000 NLDS (immortalized in the 2001 “Downtown” Giants ad campaign, which I cannot find online anywhere). He’s the most visceral and positively emotional baseball manager I’ve ever seen and he’s the only one who’s ever made me believe he feels with his players.

It’s a game of sticks, balls, and bases, so the idea that it can’t be outwardly fun while it’s being played is antithetical to the entire idea of a game. There’s so much misery in the world at large and around the game itself (nobody hates baseball more than the…