Dusty Baker’s new memoir ‘Crossroads’ shares unique life, Sacramento friendships
Dusty Baker is retired, ostensibly, but there’s always something he’s doing. And on a hot day last week, what he was doing was picking plums.
A Del Campo High School graduate, Baker moved to Sacramento as a teenager and now lives on roughly four acres in Granite Bay. He has the eighth-most wins of any manager in Major League Baseball history, is a likely Hall of Fame selection this fall and has a new memoir out Tuesday, “Crossroads,” co-written with Steve Kettmann.
In back of his almost 9,000-square-foot home that he shares with his wife Melissa Baker, there’s a private vineyard, a batting cage with seats from different MLB ballparks and a tree that his daughter got married under. Then there are three types of plum trees.
The plums, like so much in Baker’s life, have come in abundantly. He tries to keep up on picking them so they don’t fall to the ground and get eaten by his German shorthaired pointers, Gracie and Riley. The fruit upsets their digestive systems. Baker, who is unfailingly kind, also enjoys giving the plums away.
Although Baker could pay someone to pick the plums, he uses a fruit picker on a pole to do it himself, even if it makes his wife worry. “She brings me water and tells me, ‘Oh, honey, you’re doing too much,’” Baker said. “But that’s part of my youth.”
Baker, 76, last managed in the big leagues in 2023 and still looks fit enough to keep doing it if he wished. Instead, he’s turned his energy to other pursuits, including sharing his unique life story that includes old friends from the Sacramento area who he’s never forgotten.
‘Looking for a friend’
It was the first day of school in 1965 when Baker spotted someone looking at him.
The Baker family had moved recently from Riverside in Southern California to Carmichael so that Baker’s father could work at McClellan Air Force Base. At Del Campo, Baker and his siblings would be among the only African American students. Baker spotted Dennis Kludt, who had just transferred from Grant High School in Del Paso Heights, where he’d been one of the few white students.
“I’m like, ‘Hey man, you looking for trouble?’” Baker said. “He goes, ‘No man, I’m looking for a friend.’ I said, ‘Man, me too.’”
Kludt, who went to six high schools altogether, was in the midst of turbulence. His mom had died and, after clashing with his stepmother, he was living with his sister. Kludt spent a lot of time with the Baker family, who treated him like a son. And he got to know Baker and his trademark geniality that was evident even during his boyhood.
“He was good to everybody,” Kludt said. “He had that personality back then where can get along with pretty much anybody.”
Kludt, now a Roseville resident, has been a long-term friend of Baker, serving as contractor when Baker built his Granite Bay home around 20 years ago.
There were other people, too, who came into Baker’s life in those years and have never left. These include Gary Woodrell, who went with Baker to the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival where Jimi Hendrix famously lit his guitar on fire. In high school, Woodrell said he always saw Baker be gracious and open with people, which he credited to the influence of Baker’s parents.
“He’s a genuine person,” Woodrell said. “I can’t think of too many people quite as wholesome as he is.”
At Del Campo, Baker played on the baseball, basketball, football and track teams. Basketball might have been his favorite sport. In a questionnaire he filled out after being drafted by the Atlanta Braves, Baker noted that a favorite sports memory was scoring 37 points in a victory over Bella Vista. In a room at his house, Baker keeps a framed team photo of the 1967 Del Campo boy’s varsity basketball team.
All the same, Baker’s baseball abilities were evident even in his early years. Jerry Royster, who is three years younger than Baker and eventually played 16 seasons in the majors himself, used to see Baker play when he had a game close to his family’s home in Sacramento. “I just remember Dusty always being the best,” Royster said. “A lot of us, we tried to pattern ourselves after Dusty.”
Baker was part of a significant number of future major-leaguers who played prep baseball in the Sacramento area in the 1960s or ’70s.
These included men who Baker got to know later such as 1964 Johnson High graduate Ken Forsch, who went on to pitch for the Houston Astros. Others were Baker’s friends as teens, such as Leron Lee, who starred at Grant and was a first-round draft pick of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1966.
At the center of everything has been Baker.
“Dusty knows every single guy from Sacramento and he remembers them and he knows where they’re from, where they went to school,” Lee said.
Not spoiled by fame
Baker debuted with the Braves in September 1968 and had a 19-year playing career before retiring in 1986. He was a consistently good player who made two All-Star teams, won a Gold Glove and finished fourth in National League MVP voting in 1980.
He also had proximity to baseball legends and great moments from the game’s history. Baker was on-deck for the Braves when teammate Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run in 1974, passing Babe Ruth’s career record. Another Sacramento prep product, Rowland Office, replaced Aaron in the lineup later that night, said Royster, who was in the opposing dugout for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Royster and Baker were part of a trade in 1975 that sent Baker to the Dodgers. In Los Angeles, Baker is credited with his Dodgers teammate Glenn Burke for inventing the high-five. “For us at the time, it was just about living that moment,” Baker writes in “Crossroads.”
Early in his career, Baker also got to know Negro Leagues legend Satchel Paige, who the Braves signed as a special adviser in 1968 so he could fulfill his requirements for a major league pension. Paige, known for his tall tales, would crack up other members of the organization.
“Hank used to just laugh at him,” Baker said. “He said, ‘Satch, quit lying.’”
Baker added about Paige, “Lying or not, he was fun. He made it fun.”
In Los Angeles, Baker got to know Michael Zagaris, a longtime music and sports photographer who, in more recent times, traveled to Granite Bay to take the cover photo for Baker’s memoir. Like Baker, Zagaris has had an unusual closeness to major historical events. He worked on Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign and was present the night of his assassination.
Baker and Zagaris quickly found common ground.
“With us it wasn’t just music, it wasn’t just sports, it was also people,” Zagaris said. “He’s a people person. John Madden was like that.”
Those close to Baker tell stories of times he quietly made a difference in their lives.
At Kyles Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in Oak Park, which was the church Royster’s mother attended, Baker donated a significant sum to build the church a kitchen named in her honor.
Faith is a driving factor for Baker, who reads devotional scripture each morning. He is Southern Baptist and also attended the AME church with his mother.
Baker was motivated to help Royster’s mom’s church because she had been kind to Baker’s mother. Royster, for his part, was surprised by what Baker did for the church. “I didn’t know that he was even doing it until the church told me,” Royster said.
Baker has come through for Kludt when life has been at its worst. In 1982 his first wife became ill and died at age 32.
Yvonne Kludt’s funeral was set for Sept. 23. The Dodgers, who were in a tight race for the National League West Division title, had an off-day, having played in San Diego on Sept. 22 and with a game scheduled in Los Angeles for Sept. 24. Baker made it to Stockton in time for Yvonne’s funeral. He played the next day, going 1 for 4 with a double.
In the early 1990s, Kludt’s 15-year-old son and Baker’s godson, Jon Kludt, was diagnosed with leukemia. He soon went into remission. In March 1994, Baker, in his first managerial gig with the San Francisco Giants, arranged for Jon to come for a week to spring training in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he met then-Giants catcher Kirt Manwaring. Jon had played catcher for his high school baseball team.
Months later, just past Jon’s 18th birthday, his leukemia returned. He died two months later. Many years later, Dennis Kludt remembered how good Baker was to his son and the experience he gave him at spring training.
“It was a week that he’d never forget,” Kludt said.
The stories of what Baker did for Royster’s mom and Kludt’s family don’t appear to be in “Crossroads.” That wouldn’t be a surprise to a former player of his like Manwaring, who regularly saw him do nice things quietly.
“He never wanted attention for any of that stuff,” said Manwaring, who is now 60 and lives in Florida. “That’s just the type of man he was.”
Dusty’s life now
On June 15, Baker’s 77th birthday, he will take part in an event with former Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson at Underground Books in Oak Park. It’s a chance for Baker to promote his book, and a continuation of Baker’s emerging role as elder statesman and goodwill ambassador for baseball.
He managed Team Nicaragua in the recent World Baseball Classic in March, after agreeing to a request initially made in jest. In recent weeks, Baker appeared at a news conference where local officials announced a Major League Baseball expansion bid for the Sacramento area.
Royster plans to attend the Underground Books event. He also noted what can happen when Baker walks around at baseball’s winter meetings and how he’d react seeing him there. “I’m going up to Dusty, and we’re getting hugs because of what he’s done … for so many people,” Royster said.
As a player, Baker used to talk about how when he hung up his spikes, he wanted to just fish and hunt, favorite pastimes of his over the years, though he no longer hunts. Kludt remembered scoffing at his friend, thinking he was destined for management. He’s pleased that Baker hasn’t slowed down.
“Retirement is a funny thing,” Kludt said. “Sometimes a man will have his whole life wrapped up in his career and when he retires, he doesn’t usually live too long, because it’s all about the career and that activity and not about other things.”
In the Sacramento area, Baker has both a solar business, Baker Energy Team, and his winemaking company, Baker Family Wines, which has a tasting room in West Sacramento. “He’s got businesses, he’s got his family, he’s got his friends,” Kludt said. “I think he’s really enjoying life right now.”
Baker said he’s hopeful his memoir might help someone who is going through challenges he’s experienced in life.
“The Lord, he could have taken me like a dozen times,” Baker said. “Maybe I was supposed to tell my story.”
