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Like many of you, I’ve been watching Dusty Baker for years; as an All-Star outfielder and first baseman for the Atlanta Braves, the LA Dodgers, the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s, as well as the three-time Manager of the Year for the San Francisco Giants. Dusty has been an especially visible guy this past year as the Giants came within one game of winning the World Series. But the first time that I met Dusty in person I could hardly see him – he was dressed in camouflage to look like a swamp. You see aside from baseball, hunting is Dusty’s passion. As he has for the last several years, this past December Dusty Baker volunteered to take one young member of California Waterfowl Association for a day’s waterfowl hunt at the 17,500 acre Conway Ranch next to the Yolo Bypass just a few miles west, as the goose flies, from Sacramento, CA. I caught up with Dusty as he emerged from the blind with this year’s youth winner, 14 year-old Kyle Crowson of Durham, CA, and his father Steve, who is a physician. There were eight mallards and pintails on their duck strap on this blustery day, and all were smiling as we headed for the ranch for some hot lunch.

Dusty Baker the Hunter

Dusty told me that his love for hunting goes back to his childhood when he would accompany his father on hunting trips when they lived in Riverside, CA. “I was raised on hunting. We hunted for food in those days – rabbits, quail, ducks, geese and pheasants. Before I was old enough to use a gun, I would carry what my father shot, and sometimes he had me retrieve for him,” Dusty said with a chuckle. In those days Dusty’s dad shot with a single shot 12-gauge, “but he would hold two more shells in his right hand, and would eject the empty shells and pop in a fresh one so quick that he could shoot almost as fast people with a pump,” Dusty claims. As with many kids, Dusty’s dad started him out on a BB gun, then an air rifle, a .22, a .410, and finally he got the .12 gauge single shot. Dusty still has that .410 he learned with. “My nephew is using right now, and I can hardly wait until I can pass it along to my son, Darren,” Dusty said with fatherly pride. (You may remember that Darren was one of the junior batboys in the Giants dugout this past year.) “The family moved to Sacramento when I was 15, and I thought I was in heaven,” Dusty said. “We lived not far from the American River, and I could go hunting and fishing not far from the front door. In fact, when the salmon were running, I would get up early in the morning before school and go fishing. I’d come home, shower, and still make it to class.” During his school years he had to squeeze in a lot of his hunting and fishing in the mornings because his afternoons were full. Dusty starred in four sports in high school. He signed with the Atlanta Braves out of junior college, and the rest is history. Baseball has made it hard for Dusty to get in much spring turkey hunting, but as soon as the baseball season is over in the fall, his hunting clothes replace the uniform of the diamond. “The usual routine after the season is that I can go hunting for seven straight week-ends. Then my wife says that she would like to have me around the house for awhile. She’s a city girl, and when we got married I made it clear that hunting was my recreation. She understands, and she likes quail and dove, but after a couple a week-ends at home, I was back out in the field. I love marshes,” Dusty said with a sheepish smile.” Dusty says, “I love wingshooting – ducks, geese, pheasants, and quail. Chukar partridge have come to be one of my favorites A couple years ago I went hunting chukars in the snow in Nevada. It was cold and we walked a lot, but man that was memorable! I would like to hunt fall turkeys but haven’t done it yet.” The love of hunting is strong in the Baker family. One of the regular annual events of the Baker clan is a bird hunt the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The hunters include his father, Johnny, who is 77 and still hits a lot of pheasants, according to Dusty. I asked Dusty if he ever gets challenged about being a hunter. “You bet I do,” he replied. His response, “You eat chicken don’t you? I kill mine. I take responsibility for killing what I eat.”

Hunting and Baseball

Like Dusty, Kyle Crowson, the CWA Youth Hunt winner, is a four-sport athlete in high school. I asked Kyle if Dusty had given him any tips. Kyle replied, “Yes, he told me that hunting was one of the best ways to develop my ability as a hitter in baseball.” That comment resulted in Dusty explaining his theory that hunting is one of the best ways to become a better hitter. Dusty broke into the major leagues batting .321 with Atlanta in 1972. He posted a lifetime batting average of .278 in his 16-year career in the majors, with 242 home runs. His first coaching job was as the Giant’s batting coach. He is credited with Kevin Mitchell’s selection as Most Valuable Player in 1989 when Dusty was the batting coach of a pennant-winner. In short, Dusty is a “yoda” of hitters. You can purchase his books, videos and CD-ROMS, Dusty Baker On Hitting and You Can Teach Hitting (BITTINGER BOOKS, P.O. Box 55742, Indianapolis, IN 46220) at his website www.dustybaker.com or by calling 1-800-521-8500. There is no better simulation for baseball than wingshooting, especially duck hunting,” Dusty asserts. “You have to learn to judge the speed of the incoming bird and develop the ability to anticipate what the bird will do, just like an incoming baseball. The marksmanship required to hit a fast-moving duck develop your hand-eye coordination, and identifying the bird and tracking it helps your eye with concentration. Hitting a teal is like trying to hit a Nolan Ryan fastball. I believe that Wil Clark was such a good hitter because he is a hunter.”

Kids and Hunting

The San Francisco Giants dugout had a number of kids as mascots and batboys and girls. This reflects Dusty’s fondness for young people and his firm belief in the importance of having role models to guide kid’s development. “I was lucky,” Dusty says. “My father spent a lot of time with me when I was young, and supported me. I will always carry those memories, many of them having to do with the times we spent outdoors.” He worries that kids today may not have that kind of close parental contact, with both parents working. Worse yet, too many of them end up spending their free time at the mall, when they could be hunting or fishing. Baker laments declining access to hunting and fishing places and the rising costs to participate, which makes it harder for kids to get out into the outdoors. Volunteering his time to the CWA Youth Hunt is one way he can give something back to the sport he loves so much, as well as helping kids. He supports the youth hunts “because they make a positive statement about how safe kids can be with firearms, and to show there is big difference between using a gun in a sport, like hunting, and using one for committing a crime. Guns were here a long time for any of us were here. They aren’t going away. We need to learn how to use them safely, as in hunting.” One of Baker’s requests in doing the kids hunt for CWA is to have the dads come along. He feels that “hunting with your kids is all about bonding,” and he believes that we could do a lot more things like the CWA Youth Hunt to get kids and their parents out in nature learning and enjoying outdoor sports. Another one of Dusty’s projects for kids is the Dusty Baker International Baseball Academy, which is located in the Sacramento area. “The idea for the camp was inspired by a personal experience. My parents sent me to a Warriors basketball camp at Squaw Valley when I was 16. It made a big difference in my attitude as well as playing skills,” Dusty says. The staff of the Academy includes Dusty’s dad, Johnnie, Sr. For more information about the Dusty Baker International Baseball Academy see: www.dustybaker.com. Dusty’s tip for all you aspiring athletes – “Play every sport you can.”

Hunting As Healer

Hunting is a source of pleasure and recreation for me. No aggression, no tension, just being mellow in nature. Hunting is healing and good for your relationships, especially after a stressful season. Every year after the season, when I go hunting, my tension level drops, and my weight goes down. I get to spend more time with my ‘second wife,’ my hunting dog (German shorthair),” Dusty says with a smile. After a touch game, Dusty says often his “second wife” is the person who best helps him get over things, “except that she always wants to know when we will go hunting next.” Last year, Ken O’Brien, former quarterback for the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles had to fill in for Dusty in the CWA Youth Hunt. In late fall Dusty was diagnosed with prostrate cancer and had to have surgery. “As soon as I could, I got back outside walking, and doing what hunting that I could. That helped. But when I looked ahead and saw that spring training was only seven weeks away, I knew that I had to do something special to get myself healthy and ready for the challenge. So, I decided on a special diet. I ate nothing but wild game – venison, duck soup, pheasants, elk and fish -- and tofu for those seven weeks. By the time spring training came, I was ready. I had energy, my cholesterol dropped, and I felt great.” (And he went on to win the pennant and almost the World Series.) Dusty said that he opted for that diet because he realized that people did not have so much cancer before they stopped eating wild foods. The health value of Dusty’s wild game diet is backed by science. When physicians Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner and nutritionist Marjorie Shostak looked at the human diet over the last 10,000 years, they report in their widely-acclaimed health and fitness book, The Paleolithic Prescription (Harper and Row, 1989), that when people have eaten a diet that includes a lot of wild game, which is high in protein and low in fats, the “chronic and deadly ‘diseases of civilization’ : the heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes, emphysema, hypertension, cirrhosis and similar illnesses that cause 75% of the mortality in the United States and other industrialized nations . . . simply did not exist, or were very rare.”

The Future

In 2003 Dusty will be managing the Chicago Cubs. I said that I was sorry that the Bay Area would be losing him to the Midwest. Dusty quickly replied, “Just for the baseball season.” Dusty says that he plans to make his permanent home in the Sacramento area “because all the family lives in the area, and there is so much good hunting and fishing nearby.” He said that he was currently scouting property for a new homestead. One of his criteria for that new home: “I’m looking for a place with a lot of turkeys,” he said with chuckle.

Sidebar - Player and Manager stats for Dusty Baker

• Born Riverside, CA, 1949
• Star in four sports in high school and community college
• 19 seasons in the majors
• .278 lifetime batting average
• All-Star team 1981, 1982
• Golden Glove winner 1982
• Batting coach of San Francisco Giants, 1988-1992 Manager, San Francisco Giants, 1993-2002 – most wins of any Giantmanage
• Giants win national league pennant in 1997,2000, 2002
• Three-time Manager of the Year – 1993,1997,2000
• Trademark – chews toothpicks

Sidebar - Annual California Waterfowl Association Celebrity Youth Hunt

In order to qualify for the drawing for a chance to hunt with Dusty Baker in next year’s California Waterfowl Association Celebrity Youth Hunt, you need to be a junior member (17 or younger) of CWA. To increase your chances to winning, youth hunters get one additional chance for each “Steps To Conservation” that they perform during the year. Steps to Conservation include building and installing a wood duck box, taking and passing a hunter education course, participating in a clean-up day at a public refuge, attending a sports expo, or helping out with one of the many other CWA projects. For information about the youth hunt and CWA, contact: California Waterfowl Association, 4630 Northgate Blvd. Suite 150, Sacramento, CA 95834 http://calwaterfowl.org.