Dusty Baker is one person who is widely loved, including by the acting world.
During an appearance this week on the popular web series “Hot Ones,” Zac Efron, the actor of “High School Musical” fame, told a great story about the Houston Astros manager. Efron, who has a large collection of autographed baseballs, talked about how he got one signed by Baker, then the manager of the Giants, as a kid growing up in the San Francisco area.
You’re gonna want to hear @ZacEfron’s Dusty Baker story
— Cut4 (@Cut4) April 3, 2020
“He drove by and he was on a motorcycle so he didn’t have a window he could roll up,” said Efron. “There was a couple people waiting for him, and I ran up with a baseball. I had a blue pen and a sweet spot of a brand-new ball and I showed it to him and Dusty was like, ‘I can’t right now, I gotta go to church.’ And that just means usually ‘don’t have time’ right? He’s like ‘I’ll be back in 30 minutes.’ He left and I thought I was never gonna see him again.
“45 minutes later, the motorcycle came roaring in, and I was like, ‘No way,'” Efron went on. “And he literally pointed right at me and was like, ‘Come over here.” And I walked over and he was like, “You still got that ball?” and I was like, “Yeah, thank you sir.” And I handed it to him and he signed it. So that one meant a lot to me just because Dusty Baker, like, doubled back from church. Who knows what he did? But it was pretty awesome. It was just really cool. Like, I had bleached hair. I was a little kid. Just awesome.”
Efron was born in 1987, and his childhood coincided with Baker’s tenure in San Francisco from 1993 to 2002. The three-time Manager of the Year has had four skipper jobs since then, including his hiring by Houston in January.
The awesome story is a nice change of pace because it is usually Efron who is the one doing cool things for sportspeople.
