Seasoned and Prepared as Ever, Buck Showalter Drives as Orioles Look to Fly

Buck Showalter still comes packaged with infield dirt underneath his fingernails and a fungo bat in his hands.   

"My wife tells me, 'You can remember pitch sequences from 1980, but you can't remember where your car keys are'," he says.   

Yeah, that sounds about right. The man who will turn the ignition for the Baltimore Orioles in Game 1 of the AL Division Series against Detroit is older now, wiser, still stubborn enough to insist on doing the driving but now reasoned enough to concede that sometimes, yeah, maybe someone else has an idea or two about the keys.

Wearing his ever-present sweatshirt, he is sitting on a leather couch in the visiting manager's office sounding like the same ol' Buck but looking very much, at 58, like a man at his pinnacle.

That this particular visiting manager's office is in Yankee Stadium adds to the layers as Showalter steers the first Orioles' club to win the AL East since 1997 toward what could be its first World Series title since 1983.

It was across the street, at the old place in the Bronx, where Showalter got his big major league break, hired as the Yankees' skipper in 1992 and maneuvering the 1995 Yanks to their first postseason appearance in more than a decade. It also was here that Showalter picked up and vanished seemingly just as quickly as he had arrived.

Joe Torre, of course, replaced him in 1996, and the rest is Bronx history, the stuff of fairy tales and Yankeeographies.

Except, of course, to one man.

You can't help but ask him, on this couch, in this stadium, whether he sometimes catches himself wondering when he is back in New York whether it all could have been his. The four World Series rings in five seasons that Torre helped orchestrate. Torre's legend. His glory. His reverence.

LYNNE SLADKY/Associated Press

"I don't dwell in that world," Showalter says. "Joe was the right guy at the right time for the job."

Same, he says, with Bob Brenly, who replaced him in Arizona in 2001 and led the Diamondbacks to their sole World Series win. Same, he says, with Ron Washington, who replaced him in Texas in 2007 and led the Rangers to back-to-back World Series appearances in 2010 and 2011.

From the outside, it appears like it could all be the stuff of agony. Three times, in three cities, Showalter has helped create masterpieces. Three times, in three cities, someone else was in the manager's office when World Series champagne sprayed.

"It doesn't mean you couldn't have done it," Showalter continues. "It worked out great. I'm happy for all of them. There's room for everybody. Are you kidding me?

Year	Team	W	L	Pct.
1992	New York Yankees	76	86	.469
1993	New York Yankees	88	74	.543
1994	New York Yankees	70	43	.619
1995	New York Yankees	79	65	.549
1998	Arizona Diamondbacks	65	97	.401
1999	Arizona Diamondbacks	100	62	.617
2000	Arizona Diamondbacks	85	77	.525
2003	Texas Rangers	71	91	.438
2004	Texas Rangers	89	73	.549
2005	Texas Rangers	79	83	.488
2006	Texas Rangers	80	82	.494
2010	Baltimore Orioles	34	23	.596
2011	Baltimore Orioles	69	93	.426
2012	Baltimore Orioles	93	69	.574
2013	Baltimore Orioles	85	77	.525
2014	Baltimore Orioles	96	66	.593

"I was in left field on an ESPN television set with the Diamondbacks when they won. I remember walking back through the streets that night when they were celebrating.

"Things move on, you know? Whether it's Chris Davis being suspended or Manny Machado getting hurt or Matt Wieters getting hurt, I think it kind of helps that there's not, I wouldn't say panic, but things move on. You don't dwell on them."

Showalter's contract with the Yankees was up after the 1995 season, and as midnight approached on the expiration date, owner George Steinbrenner was playing hardball. The Boss, less than two years back from his three-year suspension from the game for paying a seedy gambler to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield, allowed the contract to expire without committing.

So Showalter wasn't exactly feeling wanted in New York when Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo phoned moments after the midnight contract deadline offering him full control of an Arizona expansion team that wasn't even scheduled to start playing until 1998.

Jeff Carlick/Getty Images

"I don't think you can fault him," says Andy MacPhail, Orioles' president from 2007-11 preceding current executive vice-president of baseball operations Dan Duquette and the man who hired Showalter in Baltimore. "It wasn't like the Yankees were begging him to stay. It was George being George."

What MacPhail remembered in particular when he interviewed Showalter was that in the winter of 2006-07, when he was running the Cubs, then-Chicago general manager Jim Hendry interviewed Showalter for the job that eventually was given to Lou Piniella.

Knowing what you know now, Hendry asked Showalter during the Cubs' interview process, what would you have done differently in the past? Always known as somewhat of a control freak, Showalter was a man who came advertised as obsessing over even the smallest of details, demanding glass ketchup bottles—not plastic—in the Arizona clubhouse.

"Timing is everything in life," MacPhail says. "By the time I'm interviewing him in 2010 in Baltimore, I remembered that story. So half an hour into my interview, I said, 'Buck, you've been away from it a few years, you've been at ESPN, you've had success, is there anything you would do differently?

"And he said, 'Yeah, there's a lot I'd do differently.' I think the three years at ESPN gave him some perspective."

Says Showalter: "I'll tell you what you do learn through the years is what not to do. We all step on our tails and make mistakes."

CHRIS CARLSON/Associated Press

One of the most intellectually curious men you will ever meet, Showalter still involves himself internally in areas that normally are outside of the realm of the field manager. Whether it involves uniforms or facilities, Showalter likes input. One key thing the O's did around the time they were courting Showalter was move their spring training operations from outdated Fort Lauderdale to upgraded facilities in Sarasota, Florida, a move that was in the works before he was hired. But he now is described as being collaborative with the process, instead of dictatorial.

Men preparing for managerial interviews have phoned him over the years for advice. Don Wakamatsu, who was hired in Seattle in 2009. Matt Williams, who has done an excellent job of guiding the Nationals in his rookie season as skipper this summer.

"One thing I tell them all is don't be afraid to let them see you smile," Showalter says. "Because you're going to be working with [the players] every day. Let them see how good your personality is. How you don't take things as seriously as you're perceived.

"I have a belly laugh here every day."

This is the man whose face eventually, at some point, contorts into a scowl each night in the dugout. Can you imagine? A belly laugh? Him?

"He comes up to you and jokes with you in the outfield during batting practice," the Orioles' Steve Pearce says. "Every day. He makes the rounds. It could be baseball-related or something off the wall.

"He comes around, and I'm like, ‘I wonder what he has up his sleeve today?' Half the time, it's not even baseball. He'll come up with that fungo bat and, boom, he'll start talking about college football."

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

The Orioles have heard that term, "control freak," associated with their manager.

"I don't know if that's the word I would use," shortstop J.J. Hardy says. "He's aware of everything going on all the time. That's the way he likes it. 'Prepared' is probably the word I would use.

"He's the most prepared man I've ever met. I feel like he knows how every conversation is going to go. But that's his way of getting to know you."

The Orioles hired Showalter in August 2010 in the midst of yet another losing season.

"It was a tough job," MacPhail says. "And there were 12 managerial changes that year.

"He was going to get picked by somebody. And we weren't the prettiest girl at the dance by far."

Showalter took over an Orioles team that was 32-73 on Aug. 2. The move immediately paid dividends: The Orioles went 34-23 the rest of the way, the second-best record in the AL during that stretch.

"There was some debate when we hired him as to when his first official date should be," MacPhail says. "Whether he'd just come in during spring training the next year, or whether to have him start right away.

"I felt strongly that he needed to start right away, on Aug. 2, to get an understanding of what we had, get a feel for the clubhouse, the player personnel system.

"The impact was immediate. One thing I was impressed with was the level of preparation. It's really outstanding. The level of preparation to help players' performance is the best I've been around at that level. He works extremely hard. I think the players understand he wants them to be the best they can be. They took to it right away."

While Showalter would wear out his welcome in Texas after four seasons and in Arizona after three, with players complaining about everything from lineups to clubhouse clocks displaying the time down to the second, his tenure with the Orioles has stretched to his longest run yet.

High-maintenance, more than overly controlling, probably is a better description of Showalter. People who have worked with him say he needs a lot of attention. But more often than not, there are results.

Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press

"When people say guys are hard or tough as a manager, I think that person is weak," Orioles star center fielder Adam Jones says. "He's a manager. He's here to win. All that crap people said, he's got one job: to win.

"He's not our father. Some people think a manager is supposed to be caring and sensitive to emotion. No. He's here to win. You want emotion, call your parents."

There is a courteousness to the man, Jones says: "He's a civil human being. You look on the field and see that scowl in the clubhouse or in the dugout. He's a normal human being. At the end of the day, he loves to win."

To that end, Showalter, making only his third postseason appearance as a manager (in 1999, his Diamondbacks were beaten in the Division Series by the Mets; in 2012, his Orioles were beaten in the Division Series by the Yankees) would love to ride this thing all the way to his first World Series title. Whatever happens, though, he refuses to let this "define" him. He's been at this too long, seen too much, to allow that.

Yes, the Yankees won after he left, won big. The Diamondbacks? Rangers? Won and won. When he met the Orioles players after taking this job, he acknowledged his past in that first clubhouse meeting and came right out and told them that, yes, this is probably my last chance. He knows how this works, what he can do on his own and, more important, how much help he needs to do it.

"Every situation's gotten better," he says. "I guarantee you that you can go back and everyone took some bullets along the way to get it right. Andy, and Dave Trembley [the Orioles manager fired earlier in '10 before Showalter was hired]. I've been that guy, too.

"Someone's got to make the tough decisions and take some bullets to get things right. There were things going better when I got here. One mistake you make when you go to a place is saying everything here is bad. That's wrong.

"It was the same thing when I took over with the Yankees. Someone had to clean house. I had a one-year contract. What house am I cleaning? You try to get a little bit better each day. There's no magic. Everybody's looking for a shortcut. You cheat the process, you're going to have problems."

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

Never has Buck Showalter cheated the process. Sometimes it's gotten a little messy along the way, sometimes he's received too much blame and sometimes too little credit. But hey, the big leagues are for big boys.

"People don't care about your problems," he says. "Most of them are glad you've got 'em. The competition. It's like I told players, there's not a lot of lip service. Your actions speak so loudly I can't hear a word you're saying."

All summer long under Showalter, these Orioles have walked the walk.

"I know what it means to our city," he says. "There's a real identification with our team. There seems to be a real connection. I don't think there's a city in America that has more of a connection to their baseball team than Baltimore. We've got some statues out there, too.

"I was telling Adam Jones, the five or six statues out there, all of those guys won world championships. That's why they're out there. We win a couple here, and you'll have your mug up there."

Those statues—featuring Hall of Famers Frank and Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken Jr. and manager Earl Weaver—surely will seem even more polished when the Division Series opens against the Tigers in Camden Yards.

As for himself, Showalter long ago learned that managers are as disposable as yesterday's losing lineup card. And yes, Steinbrenner was among the first to hammer that point home.

"I'm a ship passing in the night," Showalter says. "I understand the shelf life of a manager. Especially as it's decreased over the years.

"You don't take it as personal."

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. He has over two decades of experience covering MLB, including 14 years as a national baseball columnist at CBSSports.com.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball @ScottMillerBbl.