Dusty Baker’s ‘Crossroads’ lands today: 5 takeaways for Sacramento baseball fans

Dusty Baker’s memoir “Crossroads” hits bookshelves Tuesday — and for Sacramento baseball boosters tracking the region’s Major League ambitions, the book arrives at a pivotal moment.

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The Del Campo High School graduate, whose 2,183 managerial victories rank eighth in MLB history, recently joined local officials in unveiling a Sacramento-area expansion bid. A likely Hall of Fame selection this fall, Baker has become one of the region’s most recognizable ambassadors in baseball.

The memoir, co-written with Steve Kettmann, traces Baker’s journey from Sacramento baseball prospect to World Series-winning manager. It also underscores the deep ties that continue to connect him to the capital region.

For Sacramento baseball fans, the memoir is more than a personal story. It arrives as the region pursues a Major League franchise and one of its most famous baseball products prepares for what could be a Hall of Fame induction.

Here are five takeaways from The Bee’s reporting on Baker’s memoir and his deep Sacramento roots that help explain why his voice carries weight in Sacramento’s baseball future.

Baker is Sacramento’s best ambassador

Baker, 76, last managed in the major leagues in 2023, but he hasn’t slowed down. He managed Team Nicaragua in the recent World Baseball Classic qualifiers after agreeing to a request initially made in jest. In recent weeks, he appeared at the news conference where local officials announced the Sacramento-area MLB expansion bid.

That role — elder statesman and goodwill ambassador for the sport — gives the region a powerful voice as it pursues big-league legitimacy. Few figures in baseball carry Baker’s combination of credibility, warmth and Sacramento bona fides. He moved to Carmichael as a teenager in 1965, graduated from Del Campo and now lives on roughly four acres in Granite Bay with his wife, Melissa.

On June 15, his 77th birthday, Baker will appear with former Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson at Underground Books in Oak Park to promote “Crossroads” — an event that doubles as a celebration of one of Sacramento’s most accomplished baseball figures.

The region’s baseball pipeline

Baker’s memoir reinforces something local boosters have long understood: the Sacramento area produced a remarkable cluster of major leaguers in the 1960s and ’70s, and Baker knew most of them.

Jerry Royster, three years younger than Baker, watched him as a kid and went on to play 16 seasons in the majors himself. “I just remember Dusty always being the best,” Royster said. “A lot of us, we tried to pattern ourselves after Dusty.”

The list also includes Leron Lee, a Grant High star and 1966 first-round pick of the St. Louis Cardinals; Rowland Office, another Sacramento prep product who replaced Hank Aaron in the Atlanta Braves’ lineup the night Aaron hit his 715th home run in 1974; and 1964 Johnson High graduate Ken Forsch, who pitched for the Houston Astros.

“Dusty knows every single guy from Sacramento and he remembers them and he knows where they’re from, where they went to school,” Lee said.

That history matters for a region pitching itself as MLB-ready. Sacramento isn’t a baseball newcomer — it’s a baseball town with a deep talent pipeline.

More than a hometown hero

For boosters tracking Baker’s stake in the area’s future, the memoir era also spotlights his local ventures. Baker runs a solar business, Baker Energy Team, and a winemaking company, Baker Family Wines, which has a tasting room in West Sacramento. Behind his Granite Bay home, he keeps a private vineyard, a batting cage with seats salvaged from different MLB ballparks and a tree his daughter got married under.

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“He’s got businesses, he’s got his family, he’s got his friends,” said Dennis Kludt, Baker’s longtime friend who served as contractor when Baker built his Granite Bay home around 20 years ago. “I think he’s really enjoying life right now.”

Those ventures plant Baker as a fixture in the regional economy — not just a returning native son, but a working businessman whose name carries weight in West Sacramento and beyond.

Hall of Fame moment looms

Baker has the eighth-most wins of any manager in Major League Baseball history and is a likely Hall of Fame selection this fall, according to The Bee. His managerial résumé spans 26 seasons with the San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, where he won the 2022 World Series — the championship that had been the lone missing piece of his managerial resume.

A Hall of Fame plaque would elevate Sacramento’s profile at exactly the moment the region is making its MLB pitch. Baker’s playing career alone — 19 years, two All-Star appearances, a Gold Glove, fourth in National League MVP voting in 1980, on-deck for Aaron’s 715th, co-inventor of the high-five with Dodgers teammate Glenn Burke — is the stuff of baseball lore. Cooperstown would make the Sacramento connection unmistakable.

The quiet legacy of generosity

“Crossroads” reportedly leaves out some of the most striking stories about Baker — and that’s by design. Those close to him describe a pattern of quiet generosity that he has never sought credit for.

At Kyles Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in Oak Park, Baker donated a significant sum to build a kitchen named in honor of Royster’s mother, who had been kind to Baker’s own mother. “I didn’t know that he was even doing it until the church told me,” Royster said.

When Kludt’s first wife, Yvonne, died in 1982 at age 32, Baker made it to Stockton for her funeral on a Dodgers off-day, then played the next day, going 1 for 4 with a double. When Kludt’s son and Baker’s godson, Jon Kludt, was diagnosed with leukemia in the early 1990s, Baker — then in his first managerial gig with the Giants — arranged for Jon to come to spring training in Scottsdale in March 1994, where he met then-Giants catcher Kirt Manwaring. Jon died months later, just past his 18th birthday.

“It was a week that he’d never forget,” Kludt said.

Baker has also done extensive charitable work with homeless populations in both Sacramento and Houston, motivated in part by his late brother Victor, who experienced homelessness. He takes “all my clothes” to Loaves & Fishes, he told The Bee in 2022, and has partnered with the Astros Foundation on outreach in Houston.

“He never wanted attention for any of that stuff,” said Manwaring, who is now 60 and lives in Florida. “That’s just the type of man he was.”

What to watch for next

For Sacramento baseball boosters, the next few months matter. Baker’s appearance next week with Johnson at Underground Books is the local launch moment for “Crossroads.” A Hall of Fame announcement could come this fall. And the MLB expansion bid Baker helped publicly endorse will continue to develop in the months ahead.

Royster plans to attend the Underground Books event. “I’m going up to Dusty, and we’re getting hugs because of what he’s done … for so many people,” he said.

As Baker himself put it, reflecting on why he wrote the memoir: “The Lord, he could have taken me like a dozen times. Maybe I was supposed to tell my story.”

This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 8:00 AM.