Moving on, but not up

Dusty Baker leaves San Francisco for ... the Cubs!??

Here's a lingering image of Dusty Baker at this year's World Series:

It's an hour or two before Game 5. The Giants' batting practice is ending and Baker, the team's longtime manager, is being whisked via golf cart down the left field line at gorgeous Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco, heading for another pre-game press conference with the jillions of reporters who cover the Series.

The few thousand fans in the stands rise as the cart zips by. They turn toward the field. They begin to chant his name. "Dusty, Dusty, Dusty," they scream. They wave. They snap pictures. Baker waves back.

He is the homecoming king, the conquering hero, the grand marshal of the parade. Baker is on top of the baseball world, or as close to it as you can get. He is well respected and well paid. He is liked by almost everyone. He is loved by the players who play for him.

And now he's going to the Chicago Cubs.

How do you figure this whole falling-out thing with Baker and the Giants? How can a man who seemingly has it all seemingly chuck it all? How can a California guy making a good bit of coin doing what he wants with a winner like San Francisco -- a winner he built -- forget all that and take a good bit of coin to head to the Midwest to deal with the sorry Cubs?

There are a lot of funky folds to this whole Baker saga, a lot of he-said, they-said stuff -- a lot of stuff that wasn't said, too -- but in the end it all comes down to one thing. Ego.

Baker has a good-sized one, and it got hurt. Peter Magowan, the Giants' owner, has a major league-sized ego, too, and he couldn't hide it well enough to get Baker back in the fold.

A little bending here, a nice word there, and this thing probably could have been fixed. But that didn't happen and now the Giants, a wild-card team that ended up a game away from this year's World Series title, take a big step backward. And Baker gets the Cubs.

Baker has the credentials to go anywhere he wants. He's a three-time manager of the year. Over the past six years, his Giants averaged better than 91 wins a season. Last month he brought the Giants to the cusp of their first Series title since they moved to San Francisco, had them eight outs away in Game 6 before the Anaheim Angels snatched away that game then won it all a night later.

Sure, he gets questioned like every other manager -- why did he wait to bring in Kirk Rueter in Game 7, and what about some of those DH decisions? -- but Baker's record shows that he deserves the awards, the cheering and the millions that the Giants paid him.

He'll be welcomed in Chicago and probably get paid somewhere between $3 million and $4 million a year over a four-year period, if all goes as planned and a meeting next week with general manager Jim Hendry leads to the job.

But … well, Chicago is not San Francisco. The Cubs are coming off a 95-loss season. They haven't had back-to-back winning seasons sine 1971 and '72. They haven't been to a World Series since 1945. They haven't won one since '08.

Baker will get his honeymoon. But the Cubs eat up and spit out managers, even good ones. Don Baylor had a four-year deal with the Cubs. He won 65 games in his first season in Chicago, 88 the next. When the Cubs dropped to 33-49 in July, the Cubs canned him. They canned his replacement, Bruce Kimm, too, after the season (he went 34-46).

In the past 30 years, the Cubs have had 19 managers. Two had winning records.

It won't be all waves and cheers in Wrigley Field.

Nobody knows everything that went on between Baker and the Giants. Nobody but Baker. There probably was a lot more to this than meets the eye. There almost always is. In a 10-year marriage, there are a lot of bumps to smooth over, a lot of feelings that can get hurt. Things happen. Sides grow apart.

At least this way, everyone gets a new start. The Giants, who face plenty of problems of their own, will get a new manager that can maybe take them those final eight outs. The Cubs, who have been looking for a fresh start for the past century, get another one with the 53-year-old Baker.

"Sometimes change is good," Baker told a TV station earlier this week. "Sometimes change is good for everybody involved."

It's true. Sometimes change is good.

Sometimes, of course, it's not.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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