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Reds' Dusty Baker suspended for 2 games
Manager angry he doesn't get an appeal
Friday, May 23, 2008
SAN DIEGO — Dusty Baker was angry enough about being suspended for something he believes he didn't do, but the fact there is no appeal process turns up the dial on his anger button.
The Cincinnati Reds manager was suspended two days and fined $1,500 by Bob Watson, baseball's vice president for on-field operations, for allegedly bumping umpire Eric Cooper on Thursday night.
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What rankles Baker is that the two-day suspension was determined before Watson called Baker on Friday, "And ruined my lunch. I'm P.O.'d now, I'll be more P.O.'d later and I'll really be P.O.'d when the game begins."
Bench coach Chris Speier will serve as interim manager Friday night, May 23, and will do so again Saturday, but Baker was permitted to watch the game on TV from his clubhouse office.
"Isn't this America? What kind of judicial system do we have when we don't have an appeal?" Baker asked. "Players get appeals (because of a strong union), but coaches and managers don't get an appeal. You shouldn't have to have a union to get an appeal. Everybody gets to go to court, right? That's the part I don't understand."
Baker smiled and said, "I've only been suspended twice in my whole life, 58 years, and never in school or anywhere else — just twice in 58 years by the same man (Watson)."
Baker said he was suspended when he managed the Cubs for inciting the Wrigley Field crowd, and when somebody said the Wrigley fans came to the park already incited, he said, "That's what I told him."
This suspension was touched off when Cooper ejected third baseman Edwin Encarnacion between the top and bottom of the seventh inning after Encarnacion disputed Cooper's calls.
Baker ran out to defend Encarnacion and appeared to do no more than remove his Reds hat, throw it to the ground and kick it.
"He (Cooper) told me I bumped him, but I didn't see it and I didn't feel it," Baker said. "And he told me I sprayed him with dip and tobacco and that I grazed him, made contact. I was trying everything I could not to make contact."
After Cooper said, "You bumped me," Baker did the moon walk to stay out of Cooper's way.
Baker said he didn't watch a replay and told his wife to watch it on ESPN. And he is surprised he hasn't heard from his father "for cussing on TV."
Baker's son, Darren, was in the room and said, "I saw it on TV."
Did your dad bump the ump?
"No," said Darren.
Baker said he told Watson, "Edwin never says anything to anybody, and when he does he is so quiet that you can't understand what he's saying, plus he mumbles."
He asked Cooper why he ejected Encarnacion and Cooper said he made a gesture (the peace sign, signifying he thought Cooper missed two calls on him).
"I talked to Edwin and he said Cooper looked at him from the time he left the dugout all the way to his position and kept looking at him and that's when Edwin made the sign that got him kicked out," Baker added.
"I have to go defend Edwin, and I don't go out to argue unless I think I'm right, and now they have me to the point where they are about to make a good man bad."
Baker did inject a bit of humor when he said, "And I got fined $1,500."
Told it usually was $500 a day, he said, "Inflation. Everything else is going up."
