MLB WORLD SERIES: GIANTS v ANGELS

October 22, 2002

Dusty Baker

DUSTY BAKER: Yes, our line-up is Lofton, Aurilia, Kent, Bonds, Santiago, Snow, Reggie Sanders, David Bell and Livan.

DUSTY BAKER: Well, not that much. I mean, these are sort of standard conditions for us. It's a little colder and damper than usual. It could affect the grass, I think, especially if it's wet. Balls will probably be a little faster in the infield, skip a little more in the outfield. I haven't seen a difference in how the ball carries from other days. So I anticipate -- I don't anticipate it will affect it that much. The one thing that's affected with the overcast, I think, is there won't be any glare off the centerfield backdrop out there, so the visibility should be much better than normal at this time of day.

DUSTY BAKER: Well, I don't anticipate him having trouble, number one. How long I stick with him depends on the scoreboard, depends on the score of the game, depends on the inning. So the game and his performance and his pitch count, which isn't as important to Livan as other players, other pitchers, but it will be like on a performance account.

DUSTY BAKER: They're pitching him tougher. Looks like they have an idea on how to exploit his weaknesses, which everybody else -- everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. He's not swinging as well as he's capable of swinging right now. That goes from day-to-day. Any day now, Jeff could just explode; who knows what he can do. He's a former MVP. He's very productive RBI-wise, hits .300 every year. I'm not that worried about Jeff, because Jeff is going to hit.

DUSTY BAKER: I don't think about changing until that actually happens. If it happens, depends on where we are, whatever. It could possibly change it. But right now, we're going to stay with what we have and where we are.

DUSTY BAKER: We expect Kirk to be the same Steady-Eddie self. He's the Steady-Eddie guy we have on our staff. His personality is very consistent. He's, perhaps if not the, one of the most competitive people we have on the team. He fields his position wonderfully, he's a good bunter, a good base runner. He's highly competitive. So we expect Kirk to be the same Kirk that we always know.

DUSTY BAKER: Well, he's going to continue to do that, but they have a mandate from the league that you're not supposed to have anything on your hat or this or that. So the league talked to him, they talked to me. He's going to continue to wear it on his hat, but his hat is going to be -- that particular hat will be off his head and in the dugout. He's been forced to wear a hat without the "DK" on it.

DUSTY BAKER: There are only a couple other players here that played with Darryl Kile, actually. I think he and Shawon Dunston, I don't think there are any other guys. But, no. League tells you to do something, you got to do it, especially when he's on the DL. It's a privilege and honor when you're on the DL to be allowed to sit in the dugout. Like I said, they told him he could still have it, but not wear it. He has to have it in the dugout somewhere.

DUSTY BAKER: I can't tell you what our approach is going to be, but once you see a guy a couple times, you're more familiar with him. You know what his fastball does, you know what his slider does, if he has two or three different sliders, you know his speed, you know his movement. The kid has outstanding stuff. Very, very good stuff. It's definitely to his advantage, the first time around if you haven't seen him. There's a good chance he has seen our guys more than we've seen him. Whether it's on TV, scouting reports or whatever. Until you see a pitcher live, yourself, the scouting reports don't help you as much as the scouting report helps him. He knows where he's trying to throw the ball, his sequence of pitches, of when he's going to throw certain pitches. But until you've seen a guy, I've always said that's why I'm not crazy about September callups, even though I was one coming up. Because as a manager or former player, September callups, you're at the mercy of sight unseen and hitting what you haven't seen before.

DUSTY BAKER: Well, when I was a player, it was cold and damp here all the time. We were in Candlestick Park, which is a lot colder and damper than Pac Bell. I didn't mind coming here as a player because my mom and dad, brothers and sisters and relatives and homeboys, was everybody here. I could come here three days and leave from here. It was a little bit different when I came here to play in 1984. That was a lot different on an everyday basis versus just coming in for a two- or three -, four-game series. This is probably an uncharacteristically cold day and damp day for Pac Bell. Usually the weather is pretty nice here.

DUSTY BAKER: Well, there are people that told him not to sign me, too. So both of us have proven a lot of people wrong. You can't really -- at that time, Barry was ten years younger than he is now. This is his 10th year here. Over a 10-year period, people mature, change. Life changes over a decade. So whatever people said that Barry would never be a winner, those people are definitely wrong.

DUSTY BAKER: Yeah, he's not going to be here because he got sick in Anaheim, missed that game, he'll miss the game tonight too. He'll probably be here tomorrow. He told me Reggie Sanders and David Bell were going to hit home runs again today.

DUSTY BAKER: Yes, we feel we had a great chance of going through the experience ten years ago. We know the Phillies really didn't want any part of us. We know the Braves weren't crazy about coming here to play us, had we had a one-game playoff. We were going to have a one-game playoff at our park. In the back of our minds, we could have been going through this ten years ago because we had an excellent team. Speed, defense, power, good pitching. We had it all. You win 103 games, most of the time you're going to go somewhere other than home, which we went home in '93. '94, we had basically the same team but we had a strike and had injuries. Then in '95 and '96, start breaking up, a lot of our team. From that '93 team, there were still guys, a lot of guys that were still playing up to a couple years ago. So we feel at that time we had an excellent core of players and it doesn't seem like ten years, but, yeah, I would have loved to enjoy that ten years ago.