Dusty Baker won his first World Series as manager last year by leading the Astros to the title against the Phillies. Also, he ranks seventh in terms of career victories with a total of 2,183, which is no small feat.
His opponent in the 2023 American League Championship Series, Bruce Bochy, is installed in tenth place on this same list, having won 2,093 games as manager. Bochy, for his part, won three World Series with the Giants, in 2010, 2012 and 2014 and is in his first season at the helm of the Rangers.
However, what is talking at the moment is rather the venerable age of the two strategists. Baker is 74 years old, while Bochy celebrated his 68th birthday last April, they are the oldest to face each other in a championship series.
If you make too much of it, it ends up looking like ageism and all this diverts the conversation towards a subject that is completely different from the confrontation that the two men are about to experience.
A great philosopher, Baker is aware that he is no longer twenty years old, but is of the opinion that he cannot do much about it and that his priority remains his team and its way of winning victories.
At the heart of a sport in full modernization, the two men look like dinosaurs, but it is the results that count and as far as I know, both are doing quite well in the game.
I don’t think either Baker or Bochy have gotten attention for the wrong reasons this season for making decisions that were controversial or considered archaic.
Both managers are in the right seats and one of them will take part in another World Series at the conclusion of their all-Texan confrontation.
This season, six managers in the Majors were over 60 years old, while only one was over 70 (Baker).
Why return to questions about the number of decades behind the ties of individuals when there are so many questions about the forces present at the dawn of such an important series?
Some will say that this becomes a matter of making Internet users click or even boosting television ratings, but in the end there are two good baseball teams facing each other and the focus must be put on that.
Hearing about his age doesn’t bother Dusty Baker too much although he would like to hear about his sport, because he must have heard about the color of his skin more often than not and this is more worrying. Baker was able to break more than one barrier because as a manager representing a visible community, he had to work harder to reap success.
On to baseball and may the best win!
