COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Dusty Baker could sense a portion of his life as he entered the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Plaque Gallery on Saturday night. He couldn’t help but notice that some of his contemporaries from when he played with the Braves and Dodgers were walking slower, in some cases with the help of a cane or an assistant.
“I’m glad to see everybody,” said Baker, 77. “But you know, we’re getting old. I see guys in walkers who used to run fast, (and) their kids that are grown. You kind of see your life flash before your eyes.”
A record 60 Baseball Hall of Famers were in Cooperstown as Jeff Kent, Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones were inducted Sunday. Baker traveled with the San Francisco Giants’ contingent to celebrate Kent, who credits Baker with helping transform him into the National League MVP, All-Star and eventually a Hall of Famer.
As much as Baker tried to keep his focus on Kent, however, many kept telling him that this visit was a prelude to his induction next summer. They reminded him that he’s expected to be on the Hall’s Era Committee ballot in December.
If Baker receives at least 12 votes from the 16-member committee, he’ll become the first Black manager elected into the Hall.
“I know the history,” Baker said. “I was fortunate enough to be around Hank (Aaron) in the beginning.”
Baker grew up idolizing Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947, 26 months before Johnnie B. “Dusty” Baker was born in Riverside.
Through 1953 National League Rookie of the Year Jim Gilliam, who spent three seasons with the Baltimore Elite Giants of the Negro Leagues before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers, Baker met several Negro League greats.
Gilliam once took Baker to eat lunch at Negro League legend Cool Papa Bell’s home in St. Louis. He also spent time with Satchel Paige and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe. Because of his friendship with Aaron, his Braves mentor, and his time with the Dodgers, he met Hall of Famer Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, who spent time in the Negro Leagues before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Bell, Paige and Campanella were all inducted into the Hall. Paige was the first Negro Leaguer inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971, five years after Ted Williams used his induction speech to advocate for Negro Leaguers.
“Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else, but to be better than someone else,” Williams said on July 25, 1966. “This is the nature of man and the name of the game, and I’ve always been a very lucky guy to have worn a baseball uniform, to have struck out or hit a tape-measure home run.
“And I hope that someday the names of Satchell Page and Josh Gibson in some way can be added as a symbol of the great Negro players that are not here, only because they were not given a chance.”
Robinson became the first Black player elected into the Hall by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in 1962. Negro Leaguers weren’t considered for the Hall until Paige was elected into the 1971 class. A year later, Gibson was inducted.
Baker first visited the Hall of Fame to play an exhibition in 1974. He made his third trip to Cooperstown this weekend, which marked his first visit for an induction weekend.
Exactly 60 years after Williams induction speech on the steps of the Hall of Fame, Baker walked into the Hall and was greeted by the loud roars of another Boston Red Sox legend, David Ortiz. Baker smiled widely, nodded his head, greeted Ortiz in Spanish, chuckled and walked over to Ortiz and Vladimir Guerrero, giving each of them hugs and pats on the back.
A few seconds later, Dave Winfield joined the trio for a picture before Baker and his wife began to mingle with other Hall of Famers and guests.
Later that night at a party the Giants held in Kent’s honor, Kent paid tribute to his family, Baker and a few teammates during a short speech.
Then Kent predicted that Baker will return next year to take his place among baseball’s immortals. Baker won a World Series title and three pennants as a manager while leading a record five teams to the playoffs over 26 seasons as a manager.
He’s eighth on baseball’s all-time managerial wins list with 2,183 as the only Black manager in baseball history with 2,000 victories.
While sipping on his coffee and munching on extra crispy bacon and blueberry pancakes Sunday morning, Baker sat at the Otesaga Resort where the Hall of Famers stay during induction weekend. He looked out at Otsego Lake while several Hall of Famer stopped to say hello.
Chipper Jones stopped by and said, “You dusting off that chair for next year, Dusty?”
Baker laughed and shook his head before calling Chipper by his first name, Larry.
“There ain’t no guarantees, so why am I going to look forward if there ain’t no guarantees?” Baker said. “I’m serious. People think I’m kidding when I’m saying that. When Bill Belichick did not get in the (Pro Football) Hall of Fame anybody has a chance to not get in the Hall of Fame.
“Am I right? That’s how I look at it. I was shocked. They can talk about Deflategate, they can talk about the media. What about the other six (Super Bowls) he won?”
Nonetheless, Baker appreciates what it would mean for a Black manager to finally be elected to the Hall.
“But most of my life had been full of ‘First Black Guy stories, Black man stories’ from the time I was in high school,” he said. “The two blacks at my high school were me and my brother in my last year of high school.
“That’s some of the reasons I went into the wine business. There’s not many Blacks in the wine business. One reason why I started but stopped in the energy business was because there’s not many Blacks in the energy business.”
There have been 354 inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame, 23 of them as managers.
Baker will likely be the first Black manager next summer.
“I was taught pride from my mom and dad in culture about being Black,” he said. “My mom was really big (on Black history) because she was a Black Studies teacher, so we had books that I read. …
“I’m hoping I can motivate other young brothers and sisters to achieve some things that don’t seem achievable. It’s a little bit disheartening when I see regression of Black coaches, Black players, Blacks in baseball.”
As the conversation turned to Matt’s TV series and Nicola’s book, host Lorraine Kelly quizzed the couple on how they first met.
With a cheeky grin, she asked: “Now, you two met when you were babies, right? Teenagers. Nicola, were you into farming? Were you a farm girl?”
“No, I wasn’t a farm girl,” Nicola replied warmly. “I loved being outdoors. I loved just the outdoor life. But farming was something that came to me when we met.”
Lorraine then turned her attention to how the couple copes with prolonged time apart, particularly when Matt heads off to film Countryfile and other projects. She probed: “Obviously, you know, you go off and do your own thing writing the books, and you go off and do your own thing around Britain,” reports the Express.
She continued thoughtfully: “So there are times when you’re apart, but you don’t think sometimes that works. It just does. You know, you’ve always got something to talk about.”
“We are such do-ers, really,” Matt chipped in, adding: “We are so supportive of what each other wants to do.”
He concluded: “But yeah, we’ve just sort of found our way through because we sort of focus on what we’re passionate about.” Nicola offered her take on their situation: “And then we make the most of the time when we have together, you sort of prioritise that and make the most of that.”
When Matt isn’t busy filming, he often keeps his Instagram followers updated with his day-to-day life. In one of his most recent posts, the Countryfile presenter shared the heartbreaking news that his dog had died.
He wrote alongside the post: “It’s with a very heavy heart that I’m letting you know our wonderful Bob is no longer with us.
“He’s been gone a while, but I haven’t been able to talk about it as I’ve been finding it so incredibly sad. Bob was a brilliant dog. He was there for me with his gentle soul as the ultimate companion through some of the greatest chapters of my life, from raising our kids to all the changes we made on our family farm.”
He continued, “It’s broken my heart, but I feel hugely grateful to have had him in our lives, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart for everything he’s taught me and brought to our family.
“I’m sure all you dog lovers will agree the reason we love our dogs so much is because the only time they break our hearts is when they leave us. RIP Bob X.”
Lorraine airs weekdays at 9.30am on ITV and Countryfile airs on Sunday on BBC One.
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater was about to debut its first new production in 45 years, and it was uncertain whether one of the show’s signature new puppets would even work. A pelican, with an oversized bucket-like beak, was in need of last-minute maintenance.
This gangly bird, designed to hop, skip, soar and sing to Clarence Henry’s mid-’50s rhythm and blues hit “Ain’t Got No Home,” was supposed to surprise the audience, as its elongated bill is actually hiding a frog. Getting the pelican-frog duo to perform in unison was a feat of mechanical artistry for the team, not to mention the choreography needed by the puppeteer.
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And in the minutes before showtime, director Alex Evans was trying to stay calm. In such moments, he would say later, he only need remind himself of an old adage in the puppet arts.
“Puppets,” he says, “break all the time.”
With that, he was ready to embrace the unknown.
“I always say I love the chaos of live theater,” Evans says. “We got to believe in this thing.”
“Choo Choo Revue,” the latest in a long line of song-and-dance productions, is arriving at a momentous time for the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. Just last month the troupe announced its intent to purchase its venue on Highland Park’s York Boulevard for $5 million, doing so as it was gearing up for performances at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The latter went viral, a fact Evans attributes to many of the first week shows of “Choo Choo Revue” selling out.
An organist plays while people file into the premiere of “Choo Choo Revue” at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater.
In many ways, “Choo Choo Revue” is a statement piece. Evans, who also serves as co-executive director with Mary Fagot, wants to place the spotlight on the theater’s current crop of artists, fabricators and collaborators. While the show pays tribute in many ways to the theater’s legendary namesake founder, perhaps most notably in its use of his vintage record collection, it’s time, Evans says, for the Bob Baker Marionette Theater’s next generation to shine.
Evans was instrumental in the decision to shift the team away from the previously announced production of “Arabian Nights,” a project once spearheaded by Baker, who died in 2014. Just ahead of the arrival of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the theater had gone so far as to print an “Arabian Nights” program, and had finished sets and puppets ready to go.
“Choo Choo Revue” is the first new Bob Baker Marionette show since 1981’s “Hooray LA!”
During the forced closure, however, the team began to rethink its future. “It was a deep-breath time to do some internal thinking about who we are and what we want to prioritize,” says Evans, who joined the company in 2007 as a volunteer and became a staffer in 2009.
“The first new show in 40 years — us finishing one of Bob’s shows would have been deeply personal and meaningful, but it would have kept the narrative, internally and externally, that this was one person’s vision,” Evans says. “‘Choo Choo’ is the culmination of so many different ideas and people. It was purposefully about opening the floodgates, that Bob Baker could be more than just the person of Bob Baker.”
It wasn’t a sure thing the Bob Baker Marionette Theater would even reach this milestone. For much of the past decade — since about the death of the theater’s patriarch — the narrative surrounding the theater was one of survival.
In 2019, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater needed a lifeline. Forced out of its edge-of-downtown home of more than 55 years, the beloved troupe with its thousands of handcrafted puppets — a saucy black cat in heels, a fish out of water that can’t help but wiggle — ultimately found a new location in a Highland Park theater, where it signed a 10-year lease.
Then came the pandemic, when the theater relied heavily on community fundraising to cover its rent. California, and Hollywood in particular, has a rich puppetry tradition. Bob Baker Marionette Theater likes to refer to itself as the largest ongoing puppet theater in the U.S. The oldest puppet space in the country resides up north in Oakland at amusement park Children’s Fairyland. And in 2020, Bob Baker found it had many fans, asking at one point to raise $365,000 over the course of a year. It did so in four weeks.
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1.L Castro twirls a marionette.2.The audience gives a round of applause after the premiere of “Choo Choo Revue.”3.People stand in line for the premiere of “Choo Choo Revue” at the Bob Baker Marionette Theatre.(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
Old favorites, including the theater’s famed black cat marionette, make appearances in “Choo Choo Revue.”
But it was the long process of buying its home, namely the belief that it would be in Highland Park to stay, that gave the company the confidence that it could go forward with a new show. The obvious question, of course, is why it took 40 years for a completely fresh Bob Baker experience. Evans gives a long answer, pointing to numerous hurdles, be it the shift in locations, the cost of preserving its historic puppets and collection, as well as just managing priorities.
“It’s not necessarily a financial hurdle,” Evans says, noting “Choo Choo Revue” cost $300,000, with about half of that sum dedicated to the creation of new puppets and scenery.
“I think it was more about priorities,” Evans says. “Like, do we get the staff healthcare first, or do we do a new show first? So we got the staff healthcare. Or do we give the stage better lighting.”
As for how and why the team settled on “Choo Choo Revue” as its first production since 1981’s “Hooray LA!,” Evans says not to overthink it.
“It made me giggle,” he says. “It was a jumping off point to imagination. ‘Choo Choo Revue,’ by name itself, I thought to giggle.”
The show is a fantastical representation of a cross-country train trip, filled with adorable puppet trains.
A meticulously detailed log with windows, for instance, or a car that seems to balance natural, mountainous wonders on its back. They’re colorful playthings, at least until the background scenery starts depicting various locomotive styles. Puppeteers will whisk train cars out into the open, each often housing a fantastical creature — a moose, for instance, who takes a break from knitting to prance around to a rendition of the on-theme traditional blues ditty “Midnight Special.”
Behind it all are tens of thousands of hours of handcrafted proficiency. Each new puppet is a work of art. Take, for instance, a swarm of bats that seemed to glow in the dark (the creatures, created for “Choo Choo Revue,” made their debut during last year’s Halloween season).
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater created more than 100 new puppets for “Choo Choo Revue,” including a pelican hiding a frog in its beak.
Or an intricately detailed cicada band. They’re each playing tiny instruments — one a half-open sardine can, another a stringed matchbook. Their wings deserve a close inspection, as the translucent curved fixtures are inspired by stained glass windows. There are trees that ski, and train whistles with big lips and high heels, modeled after harmony group the Andrews Sisters. Wait till the latter toot off their tops, as each of the 100 new puppets is full of surprises.
“We get a bunch of different artists together, and we all brainstorm,” Evans says of the creation process. “Like, ‘Let’s all think for a second about anthropomorphizing trains.’ We did a series of sketches and showed them to each other. I honestly probably have a thousand different fascinating ideas for train movement.”
On opening night, the crowd claps along to the numbers, cheering with delight at each new piece of whimsy that rolls or soars onto the floor-level stage. And as for the showstopping pelican, the frog erupts out of its beak right on cue, a moment that indeed inspires a round of laughter and childlike awe.
As the imaginary train whisks the puppets around the country, the show manages to build anticipation just by making the crowd wonder what comes next. Say, for instance, a fluffy Sasquatch, or a crooner of a moon in pajamas singing an old-timey lullaby to all the little ones seated cross-legged on the floor.
Puppeteer Ginger Duncan twirls a marionette named Comedy.
Much of “Choo Choo Revue,” like the yawning, serenading moon, is rooted in the music of the past. That was a decision made to ensure the show feels in line with earlier Bob Baker works. Yet Evans says the team is emboldend after Coachella to start tackling more contemporary songs at its Highland Park headquarters. The crowd at the Indio festival, for instance, went wild for the puppets swooning to Ben Platt’s cover of Addison Rae’s hit tune “Diet Pepsi.”
“Honestly, if we had done Coachella last year, it would have pushed ‘Choo Choo’ further,” he says, noting he initially feared pop music could distract. “I didn’t think it could work in a way that wouldn’t throw you out of the show.”
And yet Evans doesn’t want to get ahead of himself. He nearly teared up at the end of the “Choo Choo Revue” premiere, saying the following afternoon that seeing this show come together after multiple years was second only to his 2025 wedding in terms of creating an “overwhelming feeling of pride, love and care.”
“Choo Choo Revue” culminates in a look toward the future. That’s when a sleek, silver, oversized high-speed bullet train arrives on the scene.
It can be read as a metaphor.
While the nonprofit is still seeking donor help — at the premiere, Fagot said the company now has secured $4.7 million toward its $5 million goal of buying the theater and it also hopes to raise an additional $2 million for building upgrades — its future is more secure than it has been at any time over the past decade.
At long last, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater can relax and look toward new horizons.
Evans, for instance, can’t help himself excitedly tease a potential next Bob Baker show. He says twice in the interview that the Olympics are on the troupe’s mind.
“We’ve got two years,” he says. And now the permanent home to house it.
