You Gotta Have Heart to Play for Dusty Baker

When I hired Mr. McKeon in May 2003, the Marlins were losing. He was presented to me as a manager who could handle “a real fixer-upper” of a team, exactly what we needed. Mr. Baker had an even tougher task. He was hired by the Astros after they lost the 2019 World Series to the Washington Nationals. His new team was also about to be punished by Major League Baseball for a 2017 sign-stealing scandal.

It’s a lesson for baseball, and beyond baseball, that when you need morale, morals and management, it helps to look at people like Messrs. Baker and McKeon who aren’t “spotlight seekers” but have quietly given their lives to the game.

When Mr. McKeon appeared for the first time in the Marlins’ clubhouse, many players thought he was my father. I responded, don’t let his “full head of gray hair mislead you.” When he got up to speak, he told the team bluntly that playing for him meant leaving “their egos at the door.” As he described his baseball philosophy, every single player in the room wanted to play for him.

Mr. McKeon was tough. He wouldn’t hesitate to take players off the field in the middle of an inning if they weren’t giving their full effort. He thought nothing of removing a pitcher during an at-bat. He wanted players to give it their all.

Mr. Baker is an equally powerful motivator; his players talk about their “love” of playing for him. “I’m a very goal-oriented person,” Mr. Baker says. And as Saturday night proved, he gets results.

But Messrs. McKeon and Baker don’t simply motivate and inspire. They show us why the human element is the most important part of competition. Like much of the rest of our lives, where algorithms do everything from stock trading to controlling what information we see, baseball in the 2000s has indulged in a love affair with analytics. Game matchups are run through simulators to calculate probability-based outcomes, with a belief that computers increase a team’s chances of winning. Technology frequently determines who goes in the lineup and what positions they play. Some managers don’t even pick the batting order. Players watch replays of their at-bats on iPads in the dugout rather than talking things over with their coaches.

Messrs. Baker and McKeon, by contrast, are paper-and-pencil guys. They believe in the power of instinct and intuition.

Science can tell you some things, but it can never tell you what is in a person’s heart. In 2003, when Mr. McKeon started our 23-year-old pitching phenom

Josh Beckett

on only three days’ rest in Game 6 of the World Series, he was managing with his gut. Modern analytics wouldn’t let a manager do that. That night the Marlins clinched the series against the New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium. Mr. Beckett struck out two of the last three Yankee hitters in the bottom of the ninth. Baseball’s data nerds would never let him pitch a complete game today.

Maybe Mr. Baker’s triumph will be a turning point and baseball will return the human element to its rightful place at the center of the game. What Messrs. Baker and McKeon recognized is that success depends on every player who takes the field and stars only shine when they are supported by an entire team. Winning depends on heart, and no computer can tell you which team has more of it.

Mr. McKeon, now 91, could still manage a Major League team if called upon. And though his record fell, it couldn’t have been to a better guy.

Mr. Loria was owner of the Marlins, 2002-17.