– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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BALTIMORE — Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker won’t manage baseball forever, but the mark that that the trail blazer continues to leave on the game is indelible. Wednesday evening saw another win for the baseball lifer, and with it, another piece of history.
Houston scored a combined three runs in the first two innings, enough to lift the Astros to an 8-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles inside Oriole Park at Camden Yards on Wednesday. The win was the 2,159th victory as a manager for Baker, moving him past Hall of Fame manager Bucky Harris into sole possession of seventh place on the all-time wins list amongst managers in Major League history.
Baker, whose last managerial job before his stop in Houston ended after the 2017 season with the Washington Nationals, probably would have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame at this point in time if he had not decided to take the Astros job in 2020, soon after the fallout of the sign-staling scandal that tarnished the Astros’ World Series win of 2017 and Fall Classic appearance two years later. Three years and three playoff appearances later, Baker’s sterling coaching résumé was complete after he became the third Black manager to win a World Series after the Astros defeated the Philadelphia Phillies last October.
Instead of choosing the career highlight to hang up his cleats for good, Baker came back for at least one more go-round in 2023, and his 66 wins this season has seen him go from 10th on the all-time coaching wins list into seventh, passing both Joe McCarthy and Harris. Former Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers manager Sparky Anderson is next on the list, 34 wins ahead of the manager who’s looking to lead the Astros to another American League West Division title and a repeat World Series title.
“Numbers are cool to achieve … Whenever I get pretty close, I use it as motivation,” Baker said. “But my motivation is, if you perform and do well and your team does well, that will take care of anything you are worried about.”
His Astros are doing well at the moment, winning seven of their last 10 games and, with the Texas Rangers’ loss earlier in the day in Oakland, are now just two games behind in the American League West. Kyle Tucker, who hit a game-winning grand slam in the ninth inning last night, picked up where he left off in his first at-bat tonight, launching a two-run home run in the first inning off Baltimore starter Jack Flaherty, making his first Orioles’ start in Camden Yards after being traded from St. Louis before the deadline.
Jose Altuve went 3-for-5, and his two-run single with the bases loaded in the top of the eighth inning gave the Astros a 5-2 lead. Alex Bregman immediately followed with a two-run single of his own, and the four-run inning gave Houston more than enough insurance to close the game out.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Wednesday evening’s contest, with all photos taken by DC-area photographer Phillip Peters. After clicking on the first photo to enlarge the picture, make sure to press the left and right arrow buttons to scroll through the rest of the pictures. There are 27 pictures in total.
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