Dusty thriving in renewed managerial career

DENVER — It was 1 a.m., on Wednesday and Nationals manager Dusty Baker was heading to the hotel. The frustrations of a 6-2 loss to the Rockies, which included a two-hour, in-game rain delay, had been put aside. He was going to grab a few hours of sleep, but already his mind was focusing on the series finale vs. Colorado that was going to begin in 12 hours.

He was tired.

He was frustrated.

He felt great.

He is, after all, back in uniform, after an unwanted two-year exile from the game that has been his life, and the team he is managing is sitting atop the NL East, seemingly in control of a postseason spot.

“Perseverance is the key,” said Baker. “You’ve got to persevere.”

Baker has.

It wasn’t easy. Two years ago he began to feel that his baseball days had come to an end.

He had the desire and he had the resume.

He just had no options.

He was in his mid-60s, and suddenly the game that had been his life — as a player, coach or manager — since he turned 18, had left him on the outside looking in.

After parting ways with the Reds at the end of the 2013 season, he made inquiries, but nobody was interested. The Nationals were already set to hire Matt Williams, which he knew, but “I put my name in to let people know I wasn’t retiring.” The Tigers and Padres never called back. The Dodgers, where he spent eight years of his playing career, “said I wasn’t their kind of guy.”

He smiled.

“It’s like going back to an old girlfriend,” he said. “Once you go back, you stay a couple of nights and see why you left in the first place.”

And then there was the Mariners, whose ownership, he was told, had been through a strong-willed manager earlier in Lou Piniella and felt Baker might be too similar.

“I thought it would have been a perfect fit,” he said. “I love the northwest. They train in Arizona. I could go fishing every day. That is one of my favorite parts of the country.”

He was puzzled.

“The one question I kept getting was, …

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