John Baker

The Chicago Cubs have a long history of famous games. There was “Merkle’s boner,” which helped the Cubs eventually win the 1908 NL pennant. There was also Babe Ruth’s called shot, which helped the Cubs eventually lose the 1932 World Series. “The Homer in the Gloamin’” is one of the most famous home runs in baseball history. The “Ryne Sandberg Game” helped put the 1984 Cubs in the national spotlight. Unfortunately, the “Bartman Game” helped put the 2003 Cubs in the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Then, of course, there is the “John Baker Game” – the game where the backup catcher got the win.

John David Baker was born on January 20, 1981, in Alameda, California, to David and Stephanie Baker. Both parents have master’s degrees from Stanford, his mother in philosophy and his father in business. He is the oldest of three children. 

John’s father, David, played baseball growing up and was drafted out of high school in the 36th round of the 1972 free-agent draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Electing to go to Stanford University instead, he was then drafted in the sixth round of the 1975 draft by the Philadelphia Phillies. He was a catcher in their minor-league system for the 1975 and 1976 seasons, playing as high as Double A before settling in to a career as a CPA.

Because of his father’s history with playing baseball, the game played a prominent role in John’s childhood. “It was a sport that I grew up playing as a kid,” he once said. “My dad played baseball and some of my earliest memories are of my dad playing softball as a kid in Walnut Creek, California. It was always a game I enjoyed.”1 His father would hang a Wiffle Ball from a tree in their backyard, and right after John could walk, he was hitting that ball with a Wiffle Ball bat. His father coached his T-ball team when John was 4 years old and continued coaching his teams all the way up to and including his high-school team.2

The Oakland Athletics were John’s favorite team growing up. After his grandfather retired from the Pacific Bell phone company, he worked in concessions at the Oakland Coliseum. His family would go to the ballpark often and he could name every member of the 1980s Athletics teams.3 As a left-handed hitter, John’s favorite player was Will Clark.4 He loved watching Clark swing the bat left-handed. But Clark, a six-time All-Star, played in San Francisco. Though he collected all of Clark’s baseball cards, he was the only San Francisco Giants player that John liked.5

Baker graduated from De La Salle High School in Concord, California, in 1999 as the class salutatorian with a 4.0 grade-point average. On the baseball field, he was a pitcher and played a lot of first base. He had a .433 batting average and earned All-Bay Valley Athletic League honors as a junior and a senior.

After high school, Baker signed up to go to UCLA for political science. He wanted to go to law school. Baseball was “always something I did on the side. I always focused on school,” he said.6 He felt he was never the best player on any of his baseball teams.7 But a phone call from Dave Esquer, the new baseball coach at the University of California, Berkeley, convinced him otherwise. 

“He called me and said I think you have a good enough swing to play college baseball and how would you like to go to Cal and play? That was fantastic, as I lived 20 to 25 minutes away from Berkeley. I walked into his office and he said have you played catcher before? I said not really and he said, well, here’s the gear. We’ll teach you how to play catcher.”8 Baker practiced every chance he had, and once caught both games of a doubleheader.9

Baker majored in American Studies. “I definitely enjoyed my classes,” he said. “I did not feel like baseball got in the way.”10 Based on his statistics, it doesn’t seem that his classes got in the way of baseball either. It also helped that he could now see properly. During his senior year in high school, his baseball coach, thinking Baker had a vision problem, recommended that he go to an ophthalmologist. It turned out that his vision was so bad that he wasn’t legally supposed to be driving. The first at-bat he had with glasses on, he hit a home run over the center-field fence.11

As a junior in 2002, Baker led the Pac-10 with a .383 batting average and was selected to the All-Pac-10 team. He spent his summers playing for the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox of the Cape Cod Baseball League.

While playing on Cape Cod, Baker realized he had a chance to play professional baseball. He was surrounded by the best prospects in the country and he was playing great. He wasn’t supposed to catch there, but Yarmouth-Dennis’s top catching prospect broke his ankle and the other catcher on the team had a sore arm, so Baker ended up catching 40 games in a row.12

On June 4, 2002, Baker was drafted by the Oakland A’s in the fourth round of the amateur draft. This draft was immortalized in the book Moneyball.13 Baker is mentioned several times in the book; he was one of the players targeted by the Oakland A’s to draft.

Since he grew up as an A’s fan, being drafted by them was one of the biggest thrills of Baker’s life. He was also really enjoying his time at college, so he wasn’t sure if he should finish his senior year or go play professional baseball. After going through a workout with the A’s, though, he knew he was going to choose baseball over college.14 He officially signed with the team on June 28.

Later that year, Baker made his professional debut at Vancouver in the short-season Class-A Northwest League. He hit .235 with one home run and 13 RBIs while playing in 39 games. The biggest adjustment for him there was that he was now surrounded by international players. Seated near a player from the Dominican Republic, Baker tried his hardest to speak with him, with what little Spanish he knew at the time. For two days he struggled to communicate, but still tried his hardest. On the third day, the other player said, “Hey, I speak English.” He had tested Baker to see what he was really like. That other player was Nelson Cruz, and they became good friends.15

In 2003 Baker split his first full professional season between Class-A Kane County (Midwest League) and Double-A Midland (Texas League). In all, he hit .286 with 7 home runs and 70 RBIs in 125 games. That batting average was good enough to rank 11th among all minor-league catchers.

Baker spent most of 2004 in Double-A Midland, but was promoted to Triple-A Sacramento (Pacific Coast League) on August 13. He combined at both stops to hit .287 with 15 home runs and 88 RBIs in 131 games. That batting average was once again ranked 11th among all minor-league catchers. He appeared in three playoff games for Sacramento. He went hitless in five at-bats, but walked twice and scored three runs.

Baker learned a lot at his time in Sacramento. Webster Garrison and Brian McArn were two coaches who went out of their way to make sure the players felt supported, no matter what happened on the field. They were two of the first people Baker reached out to when he was eventually called up to the major leagues.16

After the 2004 minor-league season, Baker played for the Arizona Fall League champion Phoenix Desert Dogs. He hit .318 in 18 games.

Baker’s entire 2005 season was spent at Triple-A Sacramento. He hit .234 with 5 home runs and 41 RBIs in 103 games. He threw out 28 of 96 attempted basestealers and made only four errors, good for a .995 fielding percentage.

After that 2005 performance, Baker had an eventful offseason. On December 15 he was selected off waivers by the Florida Marlins. Less than a month later, on January 5, 2006, he was back in the Oakland A’s organization, as they selected him off waivers from the Marlins. This experience taught Baker that baseball was a business. He was actually designated the day before his wedding and was claimed by the Marlins while on his honeymoon. He had met his wife, Meghan, while they both attended De La Salle High School.17

In 2006 Baker was invited to the A’s spring training. He wasn’t sent down to the minor leagues until the very end of camp. He spent the entire season at Triple-A Sacramento. He batted .273 with 4 home runs and 38 RBIs in 83 games, and tossed out 25 of 90 attempted basestealers. 

On March 30, 2007, Baker was traded to the Marlins for Jason Stokes. Stokes was a first baseman who battled wrist problems and other injuries throughout his career. This trade ended up helping Baker greatly because he was able to be coached by Tim Cossins. Cossins changed his approach to catching. “Without Tim, I would have never played a day in the major leagues,” Baker said.

Baker played at Triple-A Albuquerque for the 2007 season. He hit .285 with 8 home runs and 41 RBIs in 89 games. After the season, Baker worked at St. Isidore School in Danville and volunteered with youth baseball programs in Lafayette and the Livermore-Castro Valley area.18

Baker began the 2008 campaign with Triple-A Albuquerque. He was named to the PCL all-star team after batting .321 with 6 home runs and 31 RBIs in 59 games. He was called up to the Marlins on July 9, 2008, after Florida catcher Matt Treanor went on the disabled list.

In his second major-league game, on July 10, Baker became the 10th Marlins player to hit a home run for his first major-league hit. He did this in Los Angeles against the Dodgers’ Chan-Ho Park.  He also doubled in the game, finishing with two runs and an RBI.

That day is a day that Baker will never forget. He had to remind himself to move his legs as he rounded the bases on his home run. After he got to the dugout, Luis Gonzalez said to Baker, “Hey, 499 more of those and you’ll have a good career.”19

Baker was kept on the Marlins’ roster for the rest of the 2008 season and ended up hitting .299 with 5 home runs and 32 RBIs in 61 games (54 starts.) He drew 30 walks while striking out 48 times, and finished with a .392 OBP.

Baker platooned with Ronny Paulino for the 2009 season. Baker played against right-handed pitchers while Paulino generally played against left-handed pitchers. Baker started 99 games behind the plate and posted a .271 average with 9 home runs and 50 RBIs. His five home runs in May tied for the most home runs that month by an NL catcher. He batted .319 with runners in scoring position, which ranked second among NL catchers.

On May 3 the Marlins played the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Baker’s grandfather, Arthur, flew out from California to Chicago to see him play. Baker hit a home run off Carlos Mármol. As he rounded second base, he saw the fan who caught the home-run ball throw it back onto the field. This was a highlight for him. After the game, he was able to hug his grandfather, who had seen him play at every level of baseball. To have him see this home run at Wrigley Field was special.20

In January of 2010, Baker went on an eight-day trip to Kuwait and Iraq with other Marlins personnel. The group visited US troops, saw the Iran border, and met Kuwaiti Little Leaguers. He wanted to go see for himself what it was like for these soldiers.21

After returning, Baker wrote in a letter to the Miami Herald, “I made a commitment … to do the best I could to support veterans in our community.”22 During spring training, he spent time with residents of the Stand Down House in Palm Beach County.  He provided tickets for veterans to come out to games and he spent time with them at the ballpark.

Baker saw very limited playing time in the 2010 season. On May 13 he was placed on the 15-day disabled list with a strained flexor tendon in his right arm. It ended up being a season-ending injury, and Baker had Tommy John surgery on his right elbow in September.

While on the disabled list, Baker was part of a Marlins contingent that traveled to Haiti in July to visit families affected by an earthquake that struck earlier in the year. He then served as the spokesman for the Marlins Homes for Haiti campaign, which helped raise funds to build a 25-home village just outside of Port-au-Prince.

In September of 2010, Baker was named the Marlins’ nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award, given annually to the major leaguer who combines a dedication to giving back to the community with outstanding skills on the baseball field. He said, “I am incredibly honored to be mentioned in the same sentence as the great Roberto Clemente. I wear the number 21 proudly in his honor.”23 As of 2021, Baker was on the board of a charity called Lost Boyz, Inc., which seeks “to decrease violence, improve the social and emotional conditions, and provide financial opportunities among the youth in Chicago’s South Shore community.”24

Most of Baker’s 2011 season was spent rehabbing. After the Tommy John surgery, his arm hurt for a few more years and he would never feel the same way when swinging a bat.25 He rejoined the Marlins in September, and made 16 appearances as a pinch-hitter.

On November 22, 2011, Baker was traded to the Padres for Wade LeBlanc. “We believe John fits well into our catching situation,” Padres GM Josh Byrnes said.26 “As a left-handed hitter with a good history of getting on base, he will provide us with depth and will help balance the roster from a left-right perspective.”27 Baker was also happy about the trade. His friends on the Marlins were all the leaving the team, and he felt the organization was in disarray, going through a lot of coaches and managers.28

For the 2012 season, Baker mainly served as a backup to Padres catchers Nick Hundley and Yasmani Grandal. He played in 63 games, hitting .238 with no home runs and 14 RBIs. He enjoyed his time in San Diego. He loved living in the city and playing at Petco Park.29

At San Diego, Baker started to catch with one knee down. He realized that it gave the umpire a tougher look at the bottom of the strike zone, and the pitchers were getting more called strikes. It started when Huston Street told Baker to put his knee on the ground and hold his glove out with two strikes.30 This style of catching is becoming more popular today.

Baker made the Padres team coming out of spring training of 2013 mainly because Grandal was serving a 50-game suspension for testing positive for a high testosterone level. On May 28, the day Grandal returned to the Padres, Baker was optioned to the Triple-A Tucson Padres. After he played just four games there, the Padres designated him for assignment. 

Needing catching depth, the Los Angeles Dodgers claimed Baker off waivers on June 15 and optioned him to Triple A Albuquerque. Baker struggled there, hitting just .203 in 40 games. On August 5, the Dodgers cut Baker from their 40-man roster and he became a free agent on October 1.

On December 18, 2013, Baker signed a minor-league deal with the Chicago Cubs, with an invitation to spring training. At spring training, Baker won a roster spot as a backup catcher to Welington Castillo. He batted only .192 with no home runs and 15 RBIs in 68 games. But one game stood out for him – the game that has become known in Cubs’ history as “The John Baker Game.”

The Cubs played the Colorado Rockies on July 29. The game lasted 16 innings and ended up taking 6 hours and 27 minutes to complete; through the 2021 season it remained the Cubs’ longest game by time. Notably, after the Cubs used all of their available relief pitchers, Baker was called upon in the 16th inning to pitch. According to him, he pitched the world’s worst batting practice.31 But not only did he get out of the top half of the inning allowing no runs (he retired the Rockies on a pop foul, a walk, and a double play), he himself walked to start the bottom of the 16th and came around to score the winning run on a sacrifice fly. 

In his only major-league pitching appearance, John Baker, a backup catcher, was credited with the win and became the first position player to earn a win for the Cubs since Fred Pfeffer in 1885. His career pitching stats are 1-0, 0.00 ERA. 

Every July 29 is now known as John Baker Day to Cubs fans. There is always an organized event he attends which includes raffles and live music. The proceeds go to charity. Past charities have included the Hazleton Integration Project and the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network.

Even with those unblemished pitching stats, the Cubs did not re-sign Baker after the 2014 season. He was released on December 2, 2014. Theo Epstein, then president of baseball operations with the Cubs, told Baker that whenever he was done playing, there would be a home for him with the Cubs.32

Baker then signed a minor-league deal with the Seattle Mariners on January 29, 2015, and started the season playing for the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers. After playing just 17 games and hitting .161 with no home runs and five RBIs, the organization tried to put him on the disabled list even though he was not injured. After explaining to the team that he wanted to play baseball and not just watch, he was released on May 20. After receiving a few minor-league offers that he felt would go nowhere, Baker decided that he was done playing professional baseball.33

Once Baker stopped playing baseball, he needed something to pursue physically. He started competing in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. As of 2021, he had achieved a purple belt, with hopes of achieving a black belt.34

At the end of 2015, Baker rejoined the Cubs organization as a baseball operations assistant. True to his word, Theo Epstein hired him once Baker’s playing career ended. He rose through the organization, serving as a mental skills coordinator from 2017 to 2019, and becoming head mental skills coach in 2020. He also went back to school, receiving his bachelor’s degree in liberal science from Arizona State University and his master’s degree in performance psychology from National University.

On November 10, 2020, Baker was hired to be the Pittsburgh Pirates director of coaching and player development. Going from the big-budget Cubs to a smaller-market Pirates team had its challenges. But Baker was up for the task. “I like to chase challenges, and this seemed like the appropriate challenge with the appropriate people,” he said. “I really feel like we can do some cool things.”35 Baker uses his degree in performance psychology to help guide the players in the Pirates organization. He likes to always think what is best for the person. “We don’t like to say these are baseball players, we like to say these are people who play baseball.”36

After the 2021 season, Baker began to prepare for the 2022 season. According to MLB Pipeline, the Pirates’ minor-league system ranked in baseball’s top five.37 The expectations for 2022 were to do better than in 2021. But Baker said he doesn’t want to be trapped into having the same mindset: “We can’t let success get in the way of improvement.”

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted baseball-reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

Notes

1 TwistNHook,“CGB Interviews Former Golden Bear and Current Florida Marlin, John Baker,” California Golden Blogs, CGB Interviews Former Golden Bear And Current Florida Marlin, John Baker Part I – California Golden Blogs, June 14, 2010, accessed May 11, 2021.

2 John Baker, Zoom interview with author, October 24, 2021. Unless otherwise attributed, all direct quotations are from this interview.

3 Author interview with John Baker.

4 “CGB Interviews Former Golden Bear and Current Florida Marlin, John Baker.”

5 Author interview with John Baker.

6 “CGB Interviews Former Golden Bear and Current Florida Marlin, John Baker.”

7 Author interview with John Baker.

8 “CGB Interviews Former Golden Bear and Current Florida Marlin, John Baker.”

9 Author interview with John Baker.

10 “CGB Interviews Former Golden Bear and Current Florida Marlin, John Baker.”

11 Author interview with John Baker.

12 Author interview with John Baker.

13 Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003).

14 Author interview with John Baker.

15 Author interview with John Baker.

16 Author interview with John Baker.

17 Author interview with John Baker.

18 Laurence Miedema, “For Cal and De La Salle Star Baker Has Huge Homecoming,” East Bay Times, August 20, 2008. For Cal and De La Salle star Baker has huge homecoming – East Bay Times. Accessed May 11, 2021.

19 Author interview with John Baker.

20 Author interview with John Baker.

21 Author interview with John Baker.

22 “Open Letter from Marlins Catcher John Baker,” Miami Herald, September 23, 2010. Open Letter from Marlins Catcher John Baker | Fish Bytes (typepad.com). Accessed May 11, 2021.

23 “Open Letter from Marlins Catcher John Baker.”

24 Lost Boyz Inc.

25 Author interview with John Baker.

26 “San Diego Padres Acquire Catcher John Baker from Miami,” MLB.com, San Diego Padres acquire catcher John Baker from Miami | MLB.com. Accessed May 11, 2021.

27 “San Diego Padres Acquire Catcher John Baker from Miami.”

28 Author interview with John Baker.

29 Author interview with John Baker.

30 Author interview with John Baker.

31 Author interview with John Baker.

32 Author interview with John Baker.

33 Author interview with John Baker.

34 Author interview with John Baker.

35 Jason Mackey, “Why John Baker Left the Cubs to Help the Pirates,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 12, 2020. Why John Baker left the Cubs to help the Pirates | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Accessed May 11, 2021.

36 Author interview with John Baker.

37 Jim Callis, Sam Dysktra, and Jonathan Mayo, “Here’s Where All 30 Farm Systems Rank,” MLB.com, Pipeline Farm System Rankings (mlb.com). Accessed October 26, 2021.