Heaven can wait for Dusty Baker

ST LOUIS - The mind sometimes wanders during my work. Locker room talk can be tedious and repetitive, kind of like a political rally. I often think about other things while a player or coach is droning on.

Dusty Baker made a couple of comments Monday in the Reds locker room that shifted my focus in another direction. Dusty was holding his first press gathering since he went to the hospital two weeks ago.

He said he wasn't scared during the experience.

"I didn't feel like it was my time to go," said the Reds skipper.

It reminded me instantly of a great movie from the late 70s, "Heaven Can Wait" with Warren Beatty, James Mason and the truly dazzling Julie Christie. Beatty played the star quarterback for the LA Rams, Joe Pendleton, who was involved in a car crash on the way home from practice one day. St. Peter's over-zealous toady, played by Buck Henry, pulls his body before he's actually dead.

"It's not my time," Pendleton argued to the spiritual higher-ups.

He was right. The rest of the movie involved finding a suitable body for Pendleton's soul. But it also allowed Pendleton to find perspective and appreciation for his life, the people he loved and how he could make a difference.

This saga was real, starring Dusty Baker.

"When you go in the hospital and you're leaving the hospital, it ain't your time to go," concluded Dusty eloquently.

And indeed it wasn't. 

Perhaps he was the luckiest sports figure on the face of the earth since Lou Gehrig.

Dusty was taken to a Chicago hospital to be checked out for pneumonia. It was discovered he had an irregular heartbeat, which he already knew about. But then the plot thickened. As Dusty was preparing to get out of the hospital, he was having some difficulty shaving. A nurse noticed. She then asked Dusty his name. He couldn't say his name. She figured it out in a hurry. She called a doctor and soon it was discovered that Dusty had a mini-stroke.

"I feel truly blessed to be in the hospital when you have a mini-stroke," Dusty told reporters Monday. "You can't get any more blessed that that." 

He has seen the good fortune that followed his bad fortune.

"How many people have been in the hospital when they have a stroke?" he asked us.

We didn't have an answer, and I'm not sure even the Elias Sports Bureau, the dispenser of all trivial and meaningless baseball stats would have that figure.

But he knew he was blessed. He was truly in the right place at the right time. Let's admit it, he was just damn lucky.

You could tell he gave it a lot of thought. His plan on leaving the hospital that day was to travel back to Cincinnati. He wondered aloud what would have happened if he suffered the stroke in the car on a highway, or on the plane trip out of Chicago. He might be asking  that "what if" question the rest of his life, which hopefully will be long and prosperous.

Now he can look forward to the future again. Trying to get his team ready for the playoffs. Trying to bring a World Series title to Cincinnati. That's important and he was glad to be back in the dugout Monday.

But the near-miss made him look around and see what he has and what he could have lost.

"This makes me feel more appreciative of what I'm doing, and makes me feel more appreciative about my family," Baker said.

Just like Joe Pendleton. Just without Julie Christie.