when dusty baker was hired murph hosted a special show with him at maggianos? he was happy to have baker then. how times change.

that was before we found out dusty sucks. but it is the players that ultimately matter. girardi wouldn't be able to do much with these scrubs.

When or why was Dusty a great manager? I don't pay much attention to baseball but I always found it odd that San Francisco fired him the year they went to the world series. It seemed like a big red flag to me.

Thank you Nas. At the time I always thought there has to be something wrong if a team he coached to the world series didn't want him. What were his reasons for not wanting to return?

most fans and local media applauded the decision to bring in dusty as the cubs manager and he had a good year in 2003. in 2004 the expectations were high as they should have been. dusty managed his team poorly in 2004. the whole stone/caray flap was a joke. dusty should have told his players not to worry about commentary and worry about their play on the field, but instead dusty used it as an excuse to poor play down the stretch. sticking with hawkins as the closer, patterson as leadoff man, whining about injuries, just a couple reasons why dusty needs to GO.
if girardi or just about anybody else managed this team this year, i think the cubs would be better than 25 games under .500. plus we wouldn't have to hear dusty whine about pretty much everthing under the sun.

dusty does not hold anyone accountable, himself included. that is his problem. how can you defend a manager who blames the team's announcers for losing ? dusty's attitude is what has changed. in 2003 he said why not us. 2006 he basically says it's not my fault because i don't have the players. if he had some balls and held players accountable and didn't whine and bitch the past 2 seasons, more people would be behind him.

nas,

when merker and alou started bitching about stone/caray, dusty agreed with them instead of telling them to focus on baseball. what other manager would have done this ? the cubs have gotten worse each year that dusty has been manager. look at the fundamentals of this team. isn't that part of dusty's job ? i'm not a big fan of ozzie's, but at least he admits when he does a wrong move and also gets in a players face when they don't hustle. remember ramirez getting thrown out at third because he was standing at home watching his ball and then realized it wasn't a homer and tried to get to third ? instead of ripping him, dusty just said he hustled at the wrong time. PLEASE defend this comment. which is only one of many stupid statements dusty has thrust upon us over 4 yrs

Nas, did Dusty hold Perez accountable for his bunt with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning?
At least he didn't to the media.
He's a walking excuse machine, and I'm tired of his act.
The reason people are whining so much this year is because the NL is so mediocre. All this team had to do was stay around .500 and playoff talk would be in the air.
I don't blame Dusty for all of the problems this season, but he really hasn't managed. He hasn't adapted -- he's just made excuses.

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President of Blake Shetlon fan club

Nas, I think you're on an island with this one.

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"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." ~ H.L. Mencken

He just hasn't shown the ability to adapt in critical situations.
Remember his Giants blew a 3-2 lead to the Angels in the World Series, and they had the lead in Game 6.
We all know what happened in Game 6 of the NLCS in 2003.
Their maddening slide at the end of 2004 was almost like that of the 1964 Phillies.
How about this year when D Lee went down. No one took charge of that team. He just whined about injuries.
I think he was a good manager, now he's just become an excuse machine.

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President of Blake Shetlon fan club

too writey.

dusty was forced out of sanfran! the fans couldnt stand him there, they even told bernsie when dusty was hired that he was horrible, but we had to ride it out and see.

he turned out to be just that, actually he is a horrible man, not just manager.

What makes him a horrible man Ike?

The talent and performance of the teams changed and he is too stuck in his ways to do anything about it. The laid-back approach may have worked with the 2003 team and his SF teams, but this team is different. It's not working, so he needs to use a different approach with this team. Good managers are flexible in their methods and adapt to the situations as they change. He either is too slow to realize it or just too stuck to his style to change. Dusty appears to not have the interest or fire necessary to motivate bad players. He's always appeared to prefer veterans over young guys and now that he's stuck with a low-talent team, he doesn't know how to handle it. He talks like a guy who is resigned to his fate and doesn't seem to care much about anything. He speaks in such a blase fashion to the media, like a roboton going through the motions. His players hear it, see it and read it. How could Dusty's approach be anything but uninspiring with a losing team? When you're winning it's cool. When you're losing, it's uninspiring and out of place. That's his style and he isn't changing, even though it isn't working with this team. It's his failure to adapt that makes him a bad manager.

Yes, but I have a hard time believing that a decent manager couldn't have kept the 2004 team from imploding and at least a playoff appearance out of that Cub team

As for the last two seasons, I see the Cubs growing more reliant on guys who don't believe in the idea of the baseclogging walk... well, outside of Todd Walker, who Dusty had to be dragged kicking and screaming to give him regular playing time. Let alone playing Todd Hollandsworth over Matt Murton last season among other questionable decisions.

I don't think it's a matter of winning everything (which Dusty has never done either btw)... but it's a matter of being in the thick of it until the end... which the Cubs are 1 for 4 in the Dusty Baker years.

You have identified a major Dusty failure yourself. Rothschild's failure is Dusty's responsbility. Part of a manager's most important responsibilities is making sure his coaches are doing their job. If for no other reason, Dusty has failed because he should have recognized this and canned his pitching coach long ago. Not only are his pitchers failing, but they are getting injured repeatedly because of bad mechanics. I recognize Wood's mechanics were bad pre-Rothschild, but he should have fixed them. Prior's mechanics were good; now they're not and he has recurring shoulder problems. So many fans have given up on Prior, thinking he's somehow a weak person, when perhaps the real problem is the coaching staff that has gotten him into bad mechanics that screw up his arm and shoulder. Watch the Cubs give up on him and trade him to a team with a sound pitching coach and voila, his arm and shoulder will be sound again. Wouldn't it make more sense to bring that kind of coach to the Cubs? Rather than give up on Prior, they should give up on Dusty and Rothschild. We've seen their act and it's not working.