by Jane Leavy
Today, the prodigy is gone. Only the adult remains. Dusty Baker is 61 years old and the hell of aging conflicts with his boyish fire for baseball. His dad, Johnnie B. Baker Sr., always a signature presence in the dugouts pregame where his son managed, died in 2009 at the age of 84 from, as Dusty says, "diabetes, high blood pressure, dementia, everything."
To be the adult means looking ahead and seeing no one ahead of him, no one leading the way. It means walking to the mound to remove a pitcher while talking to your father, who is gone physically, as Baker has done this season.
In November 2001, after a routine checkup, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The doctors were aggressive, immediately removing the prostate—no radiation treatments, no chemotherapy.
"They told me I had to have a PSA [prostate-specific antigen]. They had been charting me, told me it was 1.0, 2.1, and then they told me I spiked to 4.0 [PSA levels under four nanograms per milliliter generally indicate the absence of cancer]. It wasn't a huge surprise because all the Baker-Russell men died early," Baker said. "They took out the entire prostate."
The 242 home runs he hit as a player, the three World Series appearances, all the years he walked into a bar and the place—the women, especially—went wild, all those years in the clubhouse as a member of the world-class athlete fraternity, all disappeared in the face of his mortality. Baker was the leader of a group of men whose identities are forged on the physical, and accepting the withering effects of cancer—being unable to maintain an erection, for one—was a difficult reality to confront.
"It changes your idea of your own manhood. You think you're this macho cat, but you're not," he said. "With some patients, the nerves never come back and you lose your erection permanently. With others, it can come back on its own. I was lucky, some of the nerves returned. Luckily, they have those blue pills these days, knock on wood. People may laugh, but these things mess with your head, make you rethink how you see yourself. You question your whole sense of being.
"Some of the guys used to make fun of me back then—I'm not ashamed to say it—because one of the side effects is incontinence. I was walking around wearing a diaper because I couldn't stop peeing all the time. The guys would see those things in my office, look at me and say, 'Are these your diapers?'"
Still, don't forget the slights because they are unimportant. Forget them because they are today, in the face of disease attacking his body and age taking his family from him, unimportant gnats to be brushed aside. Still, Baker remembers them all, and at times in his office, hours before the Reds will clinch a division title, it requires enormous concentration for him not to think about the member of the Giants ownership team who once sat him down and told him he needed to learn to be "more of a company man." To not think about the fact that he has taken three different teams to the postseason, could win a fourth Manager of the Year Award, and yet finds himself constantly hounded by the criticisms of what he supposedly cannot do, that he cannot win with young players or handle pitching staffs.
More painfully, Baker still believes Magowan and the Giants showed a complete lack of compassion regarding his cancer.
"I was diagnosed in November 2001 and cleared in February 2002. I thought that was pretty fast, and yet there were people who were saying that I was asleep, incapable," Baker said. "And I made some choices. Everybody remembers my son Darren being on the field during the World Series and everyone saying that having him on the field was proof that I had gotten too big, that I was a 'celebrity manager.' They said I wore wristbands because I wanted to keep playing. I wear wristbands because I've always worn wristbands. They said I kept a toothpick in my mouth so I could be noticed. I chew on a toothpick to try and quit tobacco. My daughter dumps it out. My son wants me around. He wants me alive until I'm 130.
"But during that year, when every night I wasn't sure if I was going to wake up the next day, I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to see his face. I didn't know how much time I really had left. He was going to be with me at every opportunity, for every day that I had left."
A Surprise for Everyone
July 8, Philadelphia: the Reds are ranked 21st with a $68 million payroll and before this season hadn't enjoyed a winning season since 2000, when they won 85 games. With most winning clubs living on the margin, seasons are made and broken at critical junctures. The Reds enter Philadelphia for the final four games before the All-Star break with 11 more wins than losses, and the two-time defending National League champion Phillies represent a great test.
"When you're a manager, you have a pretty good idea if you have a shot, and a pretty good idea if you have too many holes," Baker said. "That weekend was the low point."
When it was over, the Phillies—whom the Reds will play in the National League Division Series, beginning on Wednesday—had swept the Reds, each game more excruciating than the last. In the opener, the Reds led and lost in 12. In the next game, the Reds led 7—1, gave up six runs in the ninth inning, and then Ryan Howard ended it with a two-run homer in the 10th.
The next night, rookie Travis Wood pitched a perfect game into the ninth against Roy Halladay. The Reds lost 1–0 in 11 innings. And in the finale, the Reds lost 1–0 again, swept into the All-Star break.
It appeared to be a nice story, the Reds hanging in contention until the season wore them out. But then Cincinnati won 15 of 22 games after the break.
"It wasn't one moment. It was a series of moments when people thought we were going to crack and we didn't," said Reds outfielder Jonny Gomes. "We went on the road in Seattle, [and] got swept. Those games in Philly were rough. Getting beat by the Cardinals at home was embarrassing, but then we won seven straight. Every time there was a fork in the road, we took the right turn."
Even in September, the Reds closed unimpressively. Against rivals and contenders (St. Louis, Philadelphia, San Diego, Colorado, San Francisco, and Atlanta), the Reds were 17–33 on the season. Outside of Cuban phenom Aroldis Chapman, the Reds don't expect to scare anyone—and yet Cincinnati won more series than any team in baseball.
"I think we did sneak up on a lot of people, especially after St. Louis," Reds general manager Walt Jocketty said, referring to the August 9–11 disaster, when the Cardinals swept the Reds at home. "This is a resilient team. The more we were tested, the more we came back and won. I kind of believed in July, after the All-Star break."
The Reds finished September 12–15, adding suspense to a division race that watched the defending division champion Cardinals finish August and September with a 25–30 record. Still, on the day Baker prayed for his team, Jay Bruce won the division with a first-pitch home run in the bottom of the ninth later that night.
"Now that's how you make the playoffs!" Baker cried during the clubhouse celebration.
That night, awash in victory, the manager drove to a local restaurant, where he was feted as the savior of what had been a moribund franchise. In stopped traffic, revelers noticed the manager and Baker bathed in the evening with the fans—hugs, handshakes, drinks, and pictures with one caveat: that none ever showed up on Facebook.
"A Heck of a Life"
Away from the champagne spray, the kaleidoscope of influences is apparent on the walls of Baker's office: a commissioned painting of the Native American warrior Tecumseh, photographs of Miles Davis, Henry Aaron, Junior Gilliam, and two of Jackie Robinson. On the far wall is a misty and dreamy drawing of guitar legends Duane Allmann, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Jimi Hendrix. Closer to his desk is a photograph from the film Easy Rider.
The prodigy is long gone and the adult is left. One of his larger paintings is of a healing center in Kauai, Hawaii, from his cancer recovery. The photograph resembles a Mayan temple with beams of rainbows darting through the windows of the shelter.
"That one," he says, "told me everything was going to be all right."
"It changes your outlook. And I want to win the World Series. I hate the question of 'how much longer do I want to do this?' Why would I sell myself short? Joe Torre managed much
longer than I. So has Bobby Cox. This is a heck of a life. I've never stopped aspiring, never stopped learning to do this job better. I take pride in being prepared. I take pride in having faith, in myself and in my players. I'm happy.
"Since cancer and my dad, all that other stuff, I try to leave it. This is a life much more fulfilling," Dusty Baker says. "The stars are brighter. And the birds sing louder. I hear them more now than ever."
Icarus 2010
Craig Vetter
FROM PLAYBOY
LIKE ICARUS, the brave and foolish bird-boy of Greek mythology, Dean Potter lives to fly. He has already set the world record for height, distance, and duration in a wingsuit, a nylon outfit that allows BASE jumpers to soar like flying squirrels over great distances and to land by deploying a parachute. Potter's record flight was from a 9,000-foot drop off the Eiger, a 13,000-foot-high Swiss alp. Reaching a speed of roughly 120 miles an hour, he landed nearly four miles away and was in the air over fields and towns almost three minutes before he glided in safely under his chute. It was an astounding flight, but it was just a first step in Potter's audacious ambition, the dream he is working toward, which suggests that, had he been Icarus with his feathered wings melted away by the sun, he could have survived a landing. Potter intends to fly his body in jeans and a shirt—without a wingsuit, without a parachute—and walk away from the landing.
"Part of me says it's kind of crazy to think you can fly your human body," he has said. "Another part of me thinks all of us have had the dream that we can fly. Why not chase after it?"
Nothing about Potter seems crazy on sight. He's a wire-taut six-five with brown eyes on an open and friendly face under shaggy brown hair, and he speaks in a way that is somehow intense and laid-back at the same time. He weighed 190 pounds when we met last spring but works himself down to 175 for his flying projects. "One hundred ninety is fine for climbing," he said, "but the difference between that and 175 is like carrying two gallon jugs of water on your back."
We met on the deck of a Yosemite Valley cabin with a view of El Capitan, more than 3,000 hulking feet of sheer granite shoulder, and beyond that the dish-flat face of Half Dome—two of the valley's emblematic cliffs, both of which he has climbed, one after the other, in a single day. Before Potter began flying he was one of the most accomplished rock climbers in the world.
He climbed into his red-and-purple wingsuit and spread his arms. The suit was sewn of parapac, a strong waterproof fabric, and had flaps to catch the air under the arms and between the legs. "There's elegance to it," he said, standing in the wings-out position. In fact, it had the look of ecclesiastic robes, as if he ought to have been the bishop of something, His Insane Excellency, perhaps.
As he began to describe his record-setting flight, he arched his shoulders and held his arms in a parenthesis to demonstrate the wing shape he has to achieve and hold as he soars. While he spoke I remembered the Internet video I'd seen of the amazing event.
He is standing in his flying-squirrel suit on a finger-shape outcrop on the craggy face of the Eiger. The shot is from an overhead helicopter. By the time he stands at the edge he has meditated and is thinking about contorting his body in the perfect flight shape, which he describes in "Embracing Insanity," an article he wrote for Alpinist magazine:
When I step off the edge dozens of thoughts come together for the perfect wing shape. Eyes on the horizon, arms to the side, chin down, head poking forward, angle of attack, concave the chest, arch the back, feel the air, listen for the wind speed, point the toes, concentrate on the suction lifting off my back and reach for the pilot chute before impact.
As he leaves the rock he seems to hesitate in an almost upright position, leaning slightly forward.
"The moment you take off there is this hyper-alert awareness that takes hold," he said. "Your first feeling is to stay in control, not tumble and not hit the walls, which at the beginning are close on both sides."
As his body pitches forward his arms extend into a full wingspan; he hunches his shoulders and becomes what looks like a big red bird but is really a flying human seen from above, sailing over jade-green fields and farmhouses.
Once you start flytng you loosen your body and take this wing shape, which is okay for a while, but when you get up to about 150 miles an hour it becomes an endurance and power game because it's hard to hold your body in that unnatural way, scooping your underside and bulging your back. Then your arms get pushed back, which is not too bad at one minute but after two minutes starts to burn and you begin to question your ability to reach back and pull the pilot chute. Then it's a big head game. At the end you're trying to match the slope of the ground, and you want to be at least 300 feet up when you pull because the chute could snivel or be slow on deployment. A lot of people die in those last critical seconds.
Then, after almost four miles and two minutes and 50 seconds in the air on his record-setting flight, his parachute blossoms and he touches down—safely this time, but in the hundreds of flights he has made developing his technique, he has crashed and hung himself from trees more than a few times.
"I've had a lot of close calls," he said, "usually when desire was stronger than reason. One time off the Eiger I was pushing to reach farther down this seven-kilometer gully than I ever had. I was about three minutes into the flight, going 150 miles an hour, really tired, and I saw the ground about 300 feet below me—which isn't that much—and trees right there. I said 'Fuck!' then opened the chute, and I was having these super-slow-motion thoughts. My body turned exactly as I didn't want it to, and a second later I was boom —50 feet up in the trees. But I wasn't hurt and got down okay. So lucky."
Potter tells his stories without the whooping bravado that seems to be in the DNA of most edge athletes, though his history on the edge was long and full even before he began flying.
He grew up an Army brat. His father was a colonel in the paratroops, his mother a yoga teacher, and they lived around the world until settling in New Hampshire, where Potter went to high school. In what he calls "magic days," he ran cross-country, played basketball, baseball, and soccer, and began climbing a small nearby cliff with a friend. After hanging on academically for three semesters at the University of New Hampshire, he dropped out to become a dedicated climbing bum and eventually fell in with the lost-boy climbers in Yosemite.
"My first time here," he remembered, "these cliffs scared me. I climbed pretty well by then, but these climbs with their off-width cracks were just kicking my ass." He stayed four months that first trip, sleeping in Camp Four, the climbers' camp, then staying among the boulders that border the camp. He has lived in Yosemite off and on ever since.
I've gone into the valley many times over the years, writing stories about the legendary rock climbers, learning to climb, learning to fall all over this cathedral of stone. I was here this time hoping to watch Potter climb into his wingsuit and soar like a falcon from the top of El Capitan. The weather was looking chancy: rain was forecast for all but one of the days I would be there. And that wasn't the only problem.
"I'm not sure this is a good idea," said Potter, who had suggested that although BASE jumping was illegal in Yosemite, he might make a clandestine flight. He seemed to be changing his mind. "I'm already on the edge with the rangers, and the penalties if I get caught are serious."
BASE jumping (BASE stands for the takeoff points: buildings, antennas, spans, and earth) has a deadly history.
The sport came to wide attention after the 1977 James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, in which Roger Moore's stunt double, Rick Sylvester, skied off a high cliff, took several seconds of free fall, then opened a parachute with a Union Jack on it. There are no official figures, but it's estimated that since the early 1980s about 150 people have died BASE jumping.
The history of the sport in Yosemite is typically bloody. The first jump off El Capitan, an ideal BASE-jumping cliff because of its sheer face, was in 1978, and the Park Service quickly banned the sport. It did, however, allow limited hang gli
ding off the cliff under certain conditions and at certain times of day and in 1980 relented and allowed BASE jumping under similar restrictions. But because BASE jumpers tend to be an ornery, free-iwinging bunch, they flouted the regulations, and the sport was banned again later that year. To date, as if to validate the rangers' concerns, at least five BASE jumpers have died in Yosemite.
I knew one of the dead. His name was Frank "the Gambler" Gambalie and he was one of the most experienced BASE jumpers in the world, with 600 jumps, including New York's Chrysler Building. He'd been part of a story I'd written years earlier about a different kind of jumping death in Yosemite. Dan "Dano" Osman, another Yosemite climber, had begun jumping from great heights tethered only to climbing ropes that he rigged to catch his falls just before he hit the ground. In November 1998 he called Gambalie on his cell phone as he jumped from the top of Yosemite's 1,100-foot Leaning Tower. His rope broke, the phone went blank, and Osman died on impact with the forest floor. Potter, a friend of Osman's, was working with search and rescue that day and was called to sit alone with the body through a rainy night so bears and coyotes wouldn't get to it before rangers retrieved it in the morning. While covering that story I talked with both Potter and Gambalie, who by then were good friends. In fact, years earlier Gambalie had introduced Potter to BASE jumping.
"I was kicking hacky sack in Camp Four," said Potter, "when Frank and a guy known as Randy Ride approached me, saying they were photographers and wanted to take an early morning picture from the Rostrum, a pillar with an overhang and about an 800-foot drop straight down. You can walk down to the top from the road, but there's about a 50-foot climb to get to the overhang. They wanted me to guide them up there at first light. I was broke, so I said sure. When we got to the top they said, 'We're not photographers. We're BASE jumpers, and we want to huck this thing.' It was amazing to watch. They landed on a sandbar in the Merced River and made a getaway in a white pickup truck that was waiting for them."
