Joan Walsh, my boss and an admirer of Dusty Baker, has demanded a correction about Monday's column, in which I wrote that Baker had uttered the year's first managerial "We just need to make up a game a week" quote. I claimed that that quote is a white flag in the race for first place and is really code in today's game for "Stay interested, boys, we can still win the wild card." The Cubs are seven games back in the National League Central, but just one game back in the wild-card race.
Thanks to research conducted entirely during time she should have spent devising strategies to get Salon writers declared eligible for the Pulitzer Prize, Walsh, my outraged boss, found evidence that Baker "had said the same thing before -- and been right! ... Please make clear in tomorrow's column that Dusty's team made the World Series the last time he made the 'game a week' claim."
Sure enough, on July 1, 2002, Baker was managing the Giants, who were four and a half games behind the Dodgers in the N.L. West and three games behind the Diamondbacks for the wild card. The San Francisco Chronicle published a story that day by David Steele in which Baker "pointed out that gaining a game on the leaders every week would be an admirable pace. 'And with a game a week now, we'll be in first place in August,' he said."
Well, OK, if you're going to go all the way back to 2002!
At the risk of my job, or at least of not being invited out for a beer on the company dime next time I'm at headquarters, I stand by Monday's column. The '02 Giants did go to the World Series, but they went as the wild card.
Baker was right that the Giants would have been in first place by August if they'd made up a game a week, but they didn't even make up a game a month, finishing two and a half games behind the Diamondbacks, who, remember, were three games ahead of the Giants on July 1.
The Giants, four and a half behind the Dodgers on July 1, finished three and a half ahead of them in what became a two-team wild-card race. So they made up eight games in about 13 weeks -- roughly what the current Cubs need to do to win the N.L. Central, I admit.
But the '02 Giants didn't get there by gaining a game a week, as Baker surely knew they wouldn't. They made up five games, passing the Dodgers, in the week and a half following the All-Star break as the Dodgers lost nine of 11. The teams traded the wild-card lead back and forth for the next two months, each gaining and losing leads of a few games, and arrived at Dodger Stadium for the start of a four-game series on Sept. 16 with the Giants up by a game.
The Dodgers won the opener and the race was tied with 12 games to go. The Giants won the next two and lost the finale to leave town up by a game with nine to go. The Giants won the rest of their games while the Dodgers went 6-3, and that was that.
Game a week my foot. Sorry, boss.
Previous column: Dusty Baker, Futures Game
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About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive.
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