Dusty Baker Explains Why Bloggers And 30-Year-Olds Helped Him Decide To Retire

Major League Baseball legend Dusty Baker decided to call it a career after spending the last 4 seasons with the Astros.

While Father Time was probably the biggest factor in the 74-year-old riding off into the sunset, in a new interview he talked about another factor: those damn bloggers and 30-year-olds.

Baker was a guest on the Steam Room podcast, which is hosted by Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley.

“We had a lot of success here, Ernie and Charles, and then the last couple of months here weren’t very pleasant, because we weren’t 10 games ahead,” Baker told Johnson and Barkley, according to The Houston Chornicle's Matt Young of the Houston Chronicle.

“You spoil people. They think you’re supposed to win this every year running away and it’s not like that. Every year’s different. There was a whole bunch of criticism from 30-year-olds and bloggers and tweeters that I’m not doing this and I don’t know that and I told my wife, ‘You know, I’m kind of tired of this and tired of the scrutiny and if I could go manage and show up at say 6:30 for a 7 o’clock game and leave 30 minutes after the game, don’t do the (pregame and postgame interviews), I could manage for another four or five years.’ You know what I mean? After a while, you just get tired of answering questions.”

Why Would Dusty Baker Want To Deal With That At This Point In His Career

You could interpret that as some serious "Old Man Yelling At Clouds" talk, but I think that makes a ton of sense.

Think about when Baker started his playing and coaching careers. He started playing in the late 1960s and coaching in the early 1990s. Back then, there were a few writers and most of them worked for newspapers. Now, there's an unending typhoon of criticism.

It makes sense why a legend like Baker would be like, "Y'know what? I'm done with all the extra stuff." He doesn't need to deal with the scrutiny at this point in his career. Not with everything he has accomplished in his illustrious career.

And who cares what 30-year-olds and bloggers have to say anyway? Not me (but only because I'm not quite thirty yet. In two years, the only people whose opinions will matter to me will be 30-year-olds and bloggers).

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