MESA, Ariz. (AP) – Tacked up on the bulletin board in Dusty Baker’s new office is a baseball card with pictures of highlights from last year’s World Series.

Memories of the Series might be as close as Baker gets now that he’s in charge of the Chicago Cubs. Baker left a pennant-winning team in San Francisco to take over a club that hasn’t been to the Series since 1945 and hasn’t won it since 1908.

“There’s nowhere to go but up,” the always optimistic Baker said. “I’m not really looking as to why they haven’t won. I’m trying to figure out how to win.”

Baker isn’t the only new manager who moved into a situation completely different from his previous one.

Felipe Alou, who took over for Baker in San Francisco, has a championship team after years of overseeing fire sales in Montreal.

New Tampa Bay manager Lou Piniella has never lost 90 games in a season and leads a team that has lost more than 90 games every season and at least 100 in the past two.

Buck Showalter goes from managing Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling three years ago in Arizona to a pitching staff in Texas that has been one of baseball’s worst.

“I don’t have a lot of time to dwell on it,” said Showalter, who worked the past two years in television. “I want to establish a certain credibility here. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

All 10 new managers are trying to establish themselves in unfamiliar territory. Art Howe moved from Oakland to the New York Mets, and five managers got their first big league job: Ken Macha (Oakland), Bob Melvin (Seattle), Alan Trammell (Detroit), Eric Wedge (Cleveland) and Ned Yost (Milwaukee).

Job security is tenuous these days – only seven of 30 managers are in the same place they ended the 2000 season.

Not even winning can guarantee stability. Just look at Baker.

Days after losing Game 7 of the World Series, Baker departed San Francisco. He became the first pennant-winning manager not to return to his team since Dick Williams left Oakland following the 1973 season.

Long-standing differences with Giants owner Peter Magowan led to the split, and the Cubs were the beneficiaries. Chicago hopes Baker can be the one to finally turn baseball’s lovable losers into winners.

They’ve lost 90-plus games in four of the last six seasons and have posted a winning record just six times in the past 30 seasons – never in consecutive years.

“My job is to lead the guys in the direction toward the pennant,” Baker said. “I’m not playing anymore, but I do know the direction. I know the road map on how to get there from being in that situation before. And that’s my job. To help direct them, to help show them the way to the finish line.”

Baker didn’t take long to win over the Cubs’ players, many of whom grew tired of Don Baylor before he was fired last year.

Baker’s success dealing with Barry Bonds makes it easier to handle a superstar like Sammy Sosa. And even the lesser players are enjoying a skipper who has won as both a player and a manager.

“It’s a dream of every player to play for Dusty Baker,” catcher Damian Miller said. “He’s a player’s manager, yet there’s so much more to it. He’s just special.”

That’s how the Giants immediately felt about Alou, the only person the team interviewed to replace Baker.

Once one of the most well-regarded managers in the game, Alou was criticized in his final years in Montreal for losing the drive that made him so successful.

He was worn down from watching stars such as Pedro Martinez and Larry Walker leave town and leading a team that had almost no following.

From the minute he first put on the Giants’ black and orange uniform this spring, Alou has been revitalized.

“He said he didn’t want to go back to baseball. He’d had enough,” said Giants Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, Alou’s teammate in San Francisco

for six years. “When they said they wanted him, he said, ‘Yes,’ because that’s where he started.”

Alou noticed the difference in his new job each time he was whisked away to news conferences announcing the addition of players instead of their departures.

He’s been overwhelmed this spring by boxes of baseball cards to sign and piles of fan mail to answer – something he didn’t have to deal with to this extent in Montreal.

“I know Dusty led the Giants to the World Series, but I have tremendous confidence in myself,” Alou said. “I believe I can replace anybody.

“I feel this is the ideal situation for me. This is a veteran club that’s expected to win. The fans and the front office want to get back in the World Series. If we’re good enough to be there, we’ll be there.”

The 67-year-old Alou is the oldest manager in the majors and the oldest to be hired since 1962 when the expansion Mets brought on 71-year-old Casey Stengel.

But Alou insists he has the energy to manage a long season – all the way until the end of October.

Alou has never made it that far as a manager. He came close to winning it all as a player with the Giants in 1962, but his failure to get down a bunt in the ninth inning of Game 7 contributed to a 1-0 loss to the New York Yankees.

Alou’s best chance at the postseason as a manager ended with the 1994 strike, which cost the first-place Expos a shot at a title.

Now with Bonds on his team, Alou once again has a team worthy of making the playoffs.

“If our manager has to make major decisions for us, then we’re not doing a good enough job,” Bonds said. “He’s the eyes behind our head, basically. He’s supposed to see things we don’t see. That’s what makes a great manager. Dusty’s been able to do that. Jim Leyland and Bobby Cox have done that, and Felipe’s been able to do that, too, over in Montreal.”

Piniella has the opposite task of Alou. He leaves a perennial contender in Seattle for a team that has finished last all six years it has played.

Piniella jokes that when he asked the Mariners to let him manage closer to his home in Tampa, Fla., he didn’t realize they would take him so literally. Piniella never had a chance to talk to the Mets about their opening.

But the fiery Piniella – already caught on tape ripping one of his players during a spring game – remains optimistic that he can produce a winner at home the way he did in Seattle.

“When I went to Seattle 10 years ago, I was told it was a dead-end street, and I couldn’t succeed there,” he said. “I feel very confident in saying within three years, we’re going to be competitive with anybody in this division.”

If not, Piniella could be looking for work again. The way the game is going these days, he’ll probably have plenty of company.