Men's Journal

Showalter concedes he can be a load, even on a so-called off-night. “My wife will come out, 1:30 in the morning, and say, ‘Really, Buck? Still?’ ” he says, frowning. But she doesn’t get it; no one does. There’s always much more to be done. Take the spring-training park in Sarasota, Florida, that’s being remodeled, on his orders, to the specs at Camden Yards; that way his fielders will know it backward and forward before they break north for Opening Day. Or the clubhouse he’s having reduced by a quarter so his players can’t hide after a loss. That’s another virtue Showalter brings: He’ll make a dozen subtle decisions to improve a team before he even deals for a star. With the Yankees, for instance, he changed the infield sod, which was dreadful and produced bad hops, then turned the indoor batting cage from a sty to a shrine so his players were proud to hit there. “I mean, who else studies umpires’ schedules and plans his rotation around them?” says Sherman of the New York Post. “The guy just has no off switch.”

He’ll need more than home improvements, though, to make the O’s contenders in the big-dog AL East. He certainly can’t match the Maybach budgets in Boston and the Bronx, and for now must get the most out of midlist players who come with gaping flaws. His GM, Andy MacPhail, traded this winter for a thumping third baseman in Mark Reynolds, who’ll hit 40 homers in that bandbox stadium — and shatter the AL record for striking out. He brought in vets Derrek Lee and Vlad Guerrero, who’ll either be anchors or dead weight. And aside from Brian Matusz, the O’s don’t have a starter or a closer they can count on. But Showalter’s fine with an uphill fight; in fact, he seems to prefer it. Without him, the Birds were 8–16 against the Yankees and Red Sox; with him, they served notice, going 6–6 against their longtime tormentors. “I’d like to see how smart Theo Epstein is with the Tampa Bay payroll,” he jeers. “You got Carl Crawford ’cause you paid more than anyone else, and that’s what makes you smarter? That’s why I like whipping their asses: It’s great, knowing those guys with the $205 million payroll are saying, ‘How the hell are they beating us?’ ”

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In his years of soft exile after Texas fired him, Showalter worked for ESPN, classing up the dais on Baseball Tonight and rarely tempering his sometimes-withering critiques. It surely burned him to trade opinions with dopes like John Kruk while managing jobs went begging in prime markets, but Showalter wouldn’t bite when I raised the question. “A couple of teams called to kind of kick my tires, but the fit wasn’t right either way,” he said. Nor was he disposed to take my bait when asked how it felt to fix three teams, then watch them go to the Series with someone else. “If that’s my epitaph, I’m OK. I think Joe Torre was the perfect guy to take the Yanks to the next level. I consider all those guys my friends.”

Really? Even Bob Brenly, who replaced him in Arizona and won the World Series his first year? Didn’t he take the rule book Showalter wrote and toss it into the garbage in front of the players?

“He did that to promote himself, and probably pissed a lot of people off,” said Showalter. Moreover, he clarified, it was a manual, not a rule book, that was trashed. “I’ve never had a set of rules. I take the senior players and go, ‘You make the rules — but when you leave here, they’re your rules.’ ”

But his tough sangfroid had chipped a bit, a spider-crack in the ice. And if it happens with Baltimore, too, I persisted, that they go on and win without you?

He began by saying that Orioles’ owner Peter Angelos had been gracious and supportive thus far, even offering to spend on big-ticket stars. Then he paused and, after a moment’s reflection, said, “Look, I’m at a state now where I’m not naive. I lost that when I left New York. To this day, that breaks my heart.”

And here I recalled that parting in ’95, after he’d taken the bedraggled Yanks from worst to first. He’d just lost an indelible playoffs to Seattle on a game-five, walk-off double, and stood in the dugout, scribbling notes, as the Mariners and their fans went bonkers. Later, when the Boss barged into his office, presumably to skin his hide, he found the skipper slumped over the desk, sobbing into his hands. Quietly, Steinbrenner slunk from the room while Showalter wept for a half hour. A man can only stand so much, said those tears; he needs to see a return on all his labors. No one in baseball has worked harder than Sho­walter and gotten less back for his toil. It’d be something other than human not to wish him luck on his last push up the mountain.

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This article originally appeared in the April 2011 issue of Men’s Journal.

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