It’s hard to believe, and it’s bound to make you feel old if you remember watching it.
In the fifth game of the 2002 World Series, San Francisco Giants’ bat boy Darren Baker ran onto the field to collect a bat while a ball was in play, and first baseman J.T. Snow reached back as he crossed the plate and pulled the then-3-year-old kid out of harm’s way.
Darren, the son of former Giants’ and current Washington Nationals’ manager Dusty Baker is 18 years old now, and like his father before him, he’s a baseball player with a shot at playing pro ball. He’s committed to Cal, but he could end up getting selected over the course of the three-day Draft this coming Monday through Wednesday.
So is his father, who waited for three days and 26 rounds before he was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in 1967, nervous for his son as the Draft draws near?
“No, not really,” Baker said today. “It’s going to get here.
“He’s gone, he’s had a bunch of pre-draft workouts. I’m sure he’s anxious, a lot like I was.
“I was anxious, both anxious and disappointed, when my name wasn’t called till the third day, you know what I mean, but either way his future is bright.
“Either you go to Cal, or if he’s drafted real, real, real high there’s a possibility and if he’s not then he’ll go to Cal. We’ll see.”
Baker recalled his own experience waiting to receive word that he’d been selected, though it wasn’t as closely covered back in ‘67 as it is today.
So how did he hear he was drafted?
“You get a phone call,” Baker said. “Then they didn’t have a production in New York.
“You get a phone call and then every day I asked my mom if the phone rang or if anybody called, and on that third day, it was like 20-something rounds, and I prayed that I wouldn’t get drafted by the Braves because I didn’t want to go to the South, but that was the best thing that happened to me, so a lot of times what you want and what life wants are two different things.”
His son will find out what life has planned for him in the coming days, but as Baker said, either way he has a bright future ahead of him. What are the chances that he ends up getting selected by the Washington Nationals?