Russ Ortiz joins celebration as Astros Dusty Baker escapes shadow of 2002 collapse

May 23, 2024

Russ Ortiz watched the final out of Game 6 with a profound understanding of what it meant to Astros manager Dusty Baker when the ball at last settled snugly into Kyle Tucker’s glove.

All those years of playoff frustration? All that angst over Baker’s inability to win the big one? Well, Ortiz has served as a symbol of that for the past 20 years.

So, as Baker celebrated the Astros’ World Series triumph Saturday night, one of the first things he said during the trophy ceremony is he didn’t have to talk about the torment anymore.

Ortiz, watching from his in-laws’ house in Norman, Okla., nodded right along.

“Because I’ve kind of been connected to that,” Ortiz, 48, said by phone Sunday morning. “Hopefully, this will be something that Dusty has off his back and no one wants to talk about.

“And it might mean no one cares anymore to ask me about it, either. Which is fine. I’ve been doing it for 20 years.”

Ortiz was the Giants’ starting pitcher against the Angels in Game 6 of the 2002 World Series, which until this weekend was the closest Baker had come to winning it all in his 25 seasons as manager.

Ortiz ushered a 5-0 lead into the seventh inning but, with one out, gave up consecutive singles to Troy Glaus and Brad Fullmer.

That’s when Baker stepped out of the dugout for the Mound Visit Heard ’Round the World. Because as Ortiz tried departing the field, Baker made a showy display of holding him up and handing him the ball as a souvenir. For much of the audience, notably the Angels dugout, it looked very much like a premature celebration — a game ball handed out with the late innings still in full swing.

The Angels hitters, suddenly inflamed, roared back toward victory starting with the next batter. Scott Spiezio blasted a three-run homer to ignite the rally and the Angels kept rampaging into Game 7, too, Baker was blistered for handing out party favors while work was still in progress, and the exchange seemed to anger the baseball gods at least until the happy hours of Saturday night.

Ortiz doesn’t see it that way. Not then, not now.

In fact, he said Baker’s gesture of support that night goes a long way toward explaining the warmth and love that engulfed the Astros manager after a much more joyous Game 6 this year. Ortiz, watching on TV, noticed the way all of Baker’s coaches surrounded the manager in the dugout immediately after finishing off the Phillies. The coaches bounced around Baker, mobbed him and even patted him on the head while chanting, “Dus-ty! Dus-ty! Dus-ty.”

“To me, that just gives you a clearer view of what a lot of people have always said about Dusty,” Ortiz said. “He’s just a great guy to have as a manager and to have on your side. Those are the relationships that he builds with people.

“I thought that was a great moment. I would dare to say, for all of us that have played under him, for all of us that loved Dusty — all of our friends in the Giants organization — we have been cheering for him to get one.

“And I have to believe that if all of us were in the dugout, that’s exactly the same thing we’d do with him. I thought that was really cool.”

For what it’s worth, Ortiz still has the ball Baker handed him that fateful night of Oct. 26, 2002. He treasures it.

And Giants fans still coping with that defeat (despite three titles since under Bruce Bochy) might be surprised to hear that souvenir indeed brings the pitcher only the happiest of memories, just as Baker intended.

Russ Ortiz during the 2002 season. (Julie Jacobson / Associated Press)

Ortiz, on Sunday morning, said the whole scene back in 2002 was misconstrued at the time — including by Ortiz himself. For one thing, when he saw Baker climb out of the dugout that night, he mistakenly thought the manager had already signaled for the bullpen.

It wasn’t until years later, upon seeing a replay, that Ortiz noticed there was no signal until Baker got to the hill. Had Ortiz known that he might have lobbied harder to stay in the game.

“Because I would have loved to try to talk him into, ‘Hey, I have this guy. Scott Spiezio. I have this guy. Like, I know exactly what I need to do to get a ground ball.’”

As for getting that infamous ball thrust into his glove, Ortiz said that was misinterpreted, too.

“I was kind of still in that zone, you know? Just totally zoned out,” Ortiz recalled. “So, I handed him the ball once he made the call (to the bullpen) and started to step off, and he grabbed me and said, ‘Here, this is yours, I want you to have this.’”

There were no words of celebration, no sense that the mission was accomplished, Ortiz said. The pitcher said the handoff was simply the kind personal gesture of appreciation Baker did for his players all the time behind the scenes.

“This is what Dusty is all about,” Ortiz said. “He thinks of stuff like that. He thinks of stuff like that even while probably making the biggest decision in the playoffs that he’s ever had to make.”

The Angels, of course, weren’t so keen about the gift exchange while the World Series title was on the line. In a separate interview this summer with Sam Blum of The Athletic, Spiezio recalled just how much the gesture stoked his fires.

“Two things really pissed me off,” Spiezio told Blum. “The first thing was into the seventh inning, in the top of the seventh, Jeff Kent got a jam-shot base hit that scored a run. That gave them five runs and it was 5-0. When (Kent) got to first, he pointed to the dugout. I was like, these guys think it’s done. It’s over. It just rubbed me the wrong way.”

The second thing that ticked him off, of course, was the Ortiz exchange on the mound.

“Russ starts walking off. Then (Baker) says, ‘Hey,’ then brings him back. And gives him the game ball. I’m like, ‘Oh man.’ I couldn’t believe that these guys thought it was over,” Spiezio said. “The rest is history. … My whole thing is, like, you would never do that in a regular game.”

Ortiz was immune to the firestorm that ensued. It wasn’t until the team got back to San Francisco and were clearing out their lockers that Baker sought to clear the air.

“Dusty pulled me into his office,” Ortiz recalled, “obviously, he’s getting a lot of flack for what happened. And he said, ‘I just wanted you to have a memento from the World Series.’ And what better to have than a ball that you actually pitched in a World Series with?

“He said, ‘That was all I was doing. Because it’s hard. It’s hard to get to a World Series. You may never get to another one again, and I just wanted to make sure that you had something that you used.”

Twenty years later, Ortiz said that when he looks at his Game 6 game ball, he thinks of the night he allowed just two runs 6 1/3 innings in a Fall Classic against one of the best lineups in baseball at the time. He pitched for nine more seasons and never made another World Series.

“It’s one of those things where it’s a reminder of, man, we were really close,” Ortiz says now. “But also, I got to pitch in a game-deciding game for the World Series and this is a ball that I did it with …

“And after I retired, I was like, ‘Man, I never got that opportunity again. Like, it is hard.’ Just like Dusty said, it’s hard to get to the World Series.”

To share his good vibes after Baker’s long-awaited victory, Ortiz took to Instagram. He recorded a clip of that celebration in the dugout with the coaches and posted it with the caption: “So happy for Dusty. I always root for that man. He is now a World Champion manager. Congrats to the Astros as well.”

One of the first replies was from an angry Giants fan still clinging to the heartbreak of 2002.

“I’m just kind of thinking like, man, like, that’s, that’s 20 years ago,” he said. “That part still amazes me, that it lasts so long.

“Honestly, now he has a World Series championship under his belt. That’s something that doesn’t need to be brought up anymore.”

— The Athletic’s Sam Blum contributed to this story.

(Top photo: Troy Taormina / USA Today)

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