Buck Showalter has built winning culture with Orioles, now looks to winning ...
BALTIMORE _ On the day after he lost slugger Chris Davis to a 25-game amphetamine suspension, Buck Showalter sat and chatted rather informally with reporters for some 45 minutes about everything from the day's college football matchups to what the Orioles' 2015 roster might look like.
Suffice to say that having a huge lead in the AL East helps cushion such a blow. Friday's doubleheader sweep of his once-beloved Yankees didn't hurt either.
'Life goes on,' Showalter said. 'Everybody thinks players are going to be affected in some big way. But players play. It sounds cold but it's like Billy Martin told me once, 'when you're gone they'll mourn you for five minutes until the next (guy) walks in the door.''
'Personally,' he deadpanned, 'I'm hoping I'll get 10 minutes.'
Spoken like a manager who knows the only place he's going anytime soon is to the postseason, with a team that seems to have one of those destiny seasons going these days.
After all, the O's have lost two of their stars, Manny Machado and Matt Wieters to season-ending injuries, and now Davis as well, yet no-name players up and down the roster deliver game-winning hits night after night as the O's roll toward their first division title since 1997.
Their offense, which leads the majors in home runs, is still anchored by Adam Jones and Nelson Cruz, but lately the Orioles have been getting game-winning heroics from the likes of Jimmy Paredes, Caleb Joseph, Alejandro De Aza, and Steve Pearce.
Meanwhile, the pitching has been better than expected. Scouts point to the lack of an ace, however, and wonder how the O's pitching will fare in October.
Such talk only fuels an underdog mentality that largely defines this team and its manager. Showalter's exhaustive preparation and attention to detail, acclaimed since his days as Yankee manager, pays dividends with a team like this, when he has little choice but to juggle playing time according to matchups and the like.
Indeed, everyone you talk to around the Orioles is quick to point to Showalter, the likely AL Manager of the Year, as being crucial to making the parts mesh. As one local writer said Saturday, 'Buck is the undisputed king of manipulating a roster. But he's a people person too. I don't know if he was always that way, but they love him here.'
Yes, the atmosphere is considerably looser in the Orioles' clubhouse, which features a putting green, and ping-pong and pool tables, than it was when he managed the Yankees. Some of that was the George Steinbrenner factor, of course, but some of it was Showalter's controlling nature, as well as the need to prove himself.
'I remember asking him why he'd get to the ballpark at 11 in the morning for a night game,' recalls Yankee announcer Michael Kay, 'and he'd say, 'it's because I didn't play in the big leagues.' He was always fighting for that validation.'
Twenty-some years and successful managerial stints in New York, Arizona, Texas, and now Baltimore have long since validated Showalter as one of baseball's best managers, but to know him at all is to know he burns for the championship that has eluded him.
In each of his previous stops Showalter helped change losing cultures or, in the case of the expansion Diamondbacks, build a winning culture by instilling a certain discipline in the clubhouse while winning the chess game in the dugout with the opposing manager on most nights.
Yet at each stop those franchises went on to postseason success after he was replaced, most famously with the Yankees. Would Showalter have won as many championships as Joe Torre?
He would never address such a question, but it surely haunts Showalter that he never got the chance to find out. 'I think it hurts him,' said Kay, who is about as close to Showalter as anyone in baseball. 'He won't tell me, but I just know what it meant to him at Old-Timers Day this year when we introduced him (because the Orioles were in town) and the crowd really gave him a great ovation.
'I would guess, talking to people who know him, that was one of the best moments of his life. Because at least it told him that the New York fans realized he had a lot to do with the success of those teams.'
Perhaps now, in a season of parity in baseball, Showalter may get a chance to win his own championship, and with a payroll about half the size of the Yankees.
Ever the underdog, he is quick to reference that difference too, including Saturday when asked about the way the Orioles continue to win while acquiring players on the cheap and plugging them in for injured stars.
'We know who we are and who we're not,' was the way he put it. 'We may not be able to match up with other people financially but we can match up by presenting an opportunity to play.'
However they're doing it, the O's are gearing up for October. So is this Showalter's year, finally? He wasn't about to go there on Saturday, but it's clear he's enjoying the ride, potholes and all.
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