Nationals' skipper Dusty Baker earns win No. 1700 in his 21st season as a manager

Washington's 2-1 win over St. Louis last night was the 29th win of the season for the Nationals and win No. 1700 of Dusty Baker's second career in the game.

Now in his 21st season on a major league bench, Baker, 66, was asked what it meant to him to hit that benchmark?

"It just means I've been around a long time, number one," he said. "and number two, it's sort of ironic that my first victory in 1993 was against the same Cardinals. That's pretty ironic."

More coincidence than irony, but whatever, it's a big accomplishment.

In Baker's mind he would have more wins if he hadn't been forced into exile for a few seasons after he was relieved of his duties in Cincinnati in 2013 and before he was hired by Washington this winter.

"I think about a couple years that I couldn't get a job," Baker said, "so in my mind I'm really around 1,850."

Baker played 19 seasons in the majors between 1968 and 1986, then became a coach in 1988 and eventually a manager for the first time in 1993 in San Francisco.

"I didn't want to manage in the first place," Baker explained last night.

"Al Rosen is the one who wanted me to manage and he said he saw something on the other side field when he was with the Astros and the Yankees and thought that I'd be a good field manager and God bless his soul, it's really had an impact on my life and the one thing that I wish he'd been wrong about he told me that, 'Managers are made to be fired,' and I said, 'Not me,' so..."

Baker's first managing gig with the Giants lasted ten years, then he spent four years with the Cubs in Chicago and six with the Reds before he came to the nation's capital.

Not a bad run for someone who says he never really wanted to manage in the first place.

"I really liked playing better, because I'm judged on my own performance where managing you're judged on others' performance," Baker said.

Nationals 2-1 over Cardinals: Harper and Espi homer in win

Photo © Tommy Gilligan/USA TODAY Sports

"What I like about managing I guess, the same thing in my family structure where I was able to survive, I give orders better than I take them and I was, I guess, I was being tutored from the time I came into this game by Hank Aaron and Tom Lasorda and Preston Gomez and Jim Gilliam and some of the great people that I've been around and so I'm just happy that my daughter was here to see and my best friend that you read about in my book that came to see me in Florida years ago, was here to see me, so I just want to thank my team, my teams that I've been on for making it all possible, because I couldn't have done any of this without them."