The 45-year-old father of three who was introduced as the new manager of the Orioles on Monday afternoon didn’t deliver very many snappy quotes or tell long, winding perspective-laden stories like his predecessor did from the same table in Camden Yards’ auxiliary clubhouse the last eight years.

But Brandon Hyde isn’t going to be Buck Showalter, or anyone else for that matter. “I’m going to be me,” he said during a 35-minute debut press conference. Which begs the question, upon his arrival in Baltimore: Who exactly is he?

For starters, no offense, Hyde is a dirtbag. More specifically a Long Beach State Dirtbag, a 1997 alum of the California college and baseball program. From there, the mascots and names he wore on his uniform didn’t get much more glamorous. After a five-year minor league playing career as a catcher, Hyde began his coaching career by managing the Greensboro Grasshoppers, Carolina Mudcats and Jupiter Hammerheads of the Florida Marlins organization from 2005 to 2008.

At 10 years older than his new boss, the O’s new data-driven general manager Mike Elias, Hyde is already a baseball lifer, a journeyman type that toiled in the minors—“I was an average to below average minor league player who had to work for everything that he got,” he said. Then as a coach, before breaking into the big leagues as a bench coach, essentially a team’s No. 2 in command, in 2010 and holding that job for two different teams, most recently for the Chicago Cubs alongside Joe Maddon, one of the most respected managers in the game.

“He’s somebody who’s viewed as an up-and-coming star in our business,” Elias said of Hyde. “His was the very first name I heard. Every phone call I made, his name always came up.”

Shortly after Elias handed Hyde a fresh Orioles hat and a white No. 18 jersey to slip over his white collared shirt and orange tie to make things official, he became emotional as he sat down to read out loud from a sheet of prepared notes. “This is overwhelming,” he said, before hitting all the right points.

He talked about his strengths developing players and relationship building, skills that will be much needed as the O’s embark on a comprehensive overhaul from the front office to the lowest rungs of the minor leagues after a team-worst 115-loss season.

Hyde recognized Orioles Hall of Fame third baseman and current team ambassador Brooks Robinson sitting in the front row of the audience, and showed reverence for the team’s history and tradition. “Brooks Robinson’s sitting here,” Hyde said. “I’m in my new office, and there’s pictures of Earl Weaver and Cal Ripken, Sr. To be around history, and be involved in a city like Baltimore, is a dream come true. . . . I understand the significance of this position.”

And he and Elias, who’ve just gotten to know each other through the interview process, each talked about how they planned to work together. Elias and his right-hand man, former NASA engineer Sig Mejdal, and staff will supply “advanced information,” in the form of statistics, analytics, and scouting reports to Hyde, who, along with his yet-to-be-named assistant coaching staff (the work begins on that this week), will make sense of it and relay it to players.

“The buzzword,” Hyde said, “is collaboration. Open thinking and free conversation, creative ideas. That’s our goal here.”

The new manager, the 20th in Orioles history, also teared up when he thanked his parents, sister, wife, two daughters, and son Colton, who was somewhat of a fixture in the Cubs clubhouse when they broke their franchise’s 108-year long championship drought in 2016 and won the World Series.

Before each game at Wrigley Field, a then eight-year-old Colton and his dad played catch in the outfield. The next summer the he could be seen in the outfield making diving catches during batting practice. And now you can watch him here on YouTube. Cubs players considered Hyde’s son a lucky charm.

Chances are you might see the kid doing the same in one of the outfield corners at Camden Yards, if he practices what his father preaches. “The bottom line is to be true to yourself every single day,” his dad said. And so, we’ll see what that looks like in action soon enough.

The Orioles hired 35-year-old Mike Elias as the team’s next general manager, and reportedly as the highest-paid first-year GM in Major League Baseball history. The Houston Chronicle, the newspaper that covers the city where Elias has worked for the last six years with major league baseball’s Astros, first let us know about the announcement, as did a few other reports citing Elias as the front-runner for the job.

Elias, who has been Houston’s assistant general manager and was key in that franchise’s rebuild, is the person who will replace Dan Duquette as the O’s top front office official—and be the one who will hire a manager, shape the future, and be tasked with shifting the philosophy of an organization that’s coming off an embarrassing 115-loss season.

With that, here’s an introduction to Mr. Elias:

He was nine months old the last time the Orioles were in a World Series and is somewhat of a local.
Elias will turn 36 in December, meaning he was less than a year old when the O’s last appeared in (and won) the World Series in 1983. If hired, Elias would be part of a trend of younger front office officials across baseball, particularly those with a background heavy in statistics and analytics.

He’s also from Northern Virginia. Elias attended the prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a public magnet school in Alexandria, so he’s not a stranger to the Mid-Atlantic area. It’s also possible he was an O’s fan growing up, though he’s worked in other parts of his country for his adult life. He graduated in 2006 from Yale, where he was a pitcher on the baseball team, after which the St. Louis Cardinals hired him as a scout.

He’s all about the numbers.
Think Moneyball. Elias represents John and Louis Angelos’ desire to replicate what other small-market franchises around baseball have done, using international scouting, drafting, and talent cultivated within its own minor-league system, and a deep understanding of data and analytics to field teams that can compete for championships no matter the budget.

Sports is so often a copycat business, and the Astros were one of the many teams that have made this approach work, culminating with a World Series title two years ago, a few seasons after losing an average of 108 games from 2011 to 2013. (See, there is hope!) And Elias was there for the entire transition. No doubt that was a big talking point that landed him the job. He’s also credited with being the driving force behind Houston selecting shortstop and future American League rookie of the year Carlos Correa No. 1 overall in the 2012 draft.

His right-hand man is a former NASA engineer, who could join him in Baltimore.
This is where things start getting exciting. What do the O’s start to look like with new front office leadership? It’s likely that Sig Mejdal, a former NASA engineer and blackjack dealer who worked with Elias in previous stops, joins him in the front office. Mejdal recently left the Astros organization after six years as the team’s top analytics mind.

His career route is fascinating. While working a biomathematician at NASA, where he was studying sleep patterns of astronauts on the international space station, Mejdal became a fantasy baseball expert and eventually a key figure in the Cardinals and Astros organizations.

In 2012, Houston hired him as “Director of Decision Sciences,” and he’s been at the cutting-edge of analytics throughout his career. Can’t we all use a Director of Decision Sciences?

Elias has no current ties to the O’s organization.
This, overall, is probably a good thing. But what does that mean for current employees in the organization like Brady Anderson, who is still in the front office? We shall see.

It’s within reason that Elias hires current Houston bench coach Joe Espada as manager to replace Buck Showalter. (Related: Buck’s home is now on the market for $1.5 million.) If that’s the case, we might be calling this team “the AstrOs.” Though we might anyway as it seems they’ll take on their rags-to-riches philosophy. So what? There are worse names to be called.

He’s got a lot of work ahead of him.
The Yankees and Red Sox are perennial powers in the division, and the Orioles are coming off their worst season, based on wins and losses, in franchise history. The O’s are the longest shot to win the 2019 World Series. This is also Elias’ first job as the big boss. There’s always a learning curve there. Bright side? He’s got the No. 1 overall pick to work with and a fanbase more than ready for a sustainable winner.

It’s sad, but true. The consensus among Las Vegas sports books—and they typically know a thing or two about how games and seasons unfold—is our Baltimore Orioles have the longest odds at winning next year’s World Series.

Anywhere from 350-to-1 to 300-to-1, they say.

I guess this shouldn’t be surprising, but it still hurts. The Orioles are in major rebuild mode, and haven’t hired a manager, or a permanent general manager just yet, to lead a roster comprised of what are largely unproven players—and all that after a 115-loss season and the painful teardown of what we knew as the Old Guard. Buck. Manny. Adam. And the rest. (Okay, this is the last time we’ll write their names. Maybe.)

“It’s a process. It’s not going to happen overnight. In baseball, when you’re rebuilding, it takes some time,” first baseman Trey Mancini said on the last day of the season. “You have to get some of the right guys, people have to click, and unfortunately, it might take a couple years. That’s usually the case.”

A couple years? Really? Yes, another one in the sad, but true department. And as each day passes, those low expectations for the start of a new era of O’s baseball unfortunately become more real. Buck (Okay, last time we mention him, really) returned to town a few weeks ago to hold a previously scheduled charity event at Camden Yards, and he mentioned he and wife, Angela, sold their tractor, mower, and land at their Baltimore-area home, and would be holding an estate sale. That was two days before former Oriole Steve Pearce won 2018 World Series MVP with the Red Sox, after crushing three home runs in five games against Machado’s Los Angeles Dodgers.

Meanwhile, at the current moment, the O’s are like a schooner floating in the bay without a captain while powerboats zip by. John and Louis Angelos, now in control of the team’s day-to-day operations, have reportedly interviewed a few candidates to be the team’s top executive from a broad list of targets—including Houston Astros assistant general manager Mike Elias (analytics, man!), former Red Sox and current Blue Jays assistant GM Ben Cherington, and former Dodgers GM Ned Colletti. But Orioles player development director Brian Graham is still the point person for the roster in an interim role.

Whoever the next front office leader is will hire the next manager, but that’s a way’s off, even as major league baseball’s free-agent signing period has already begun.

That means the guys we used to know—Machado and Jones (Okay, last time, seriously. That’s it), the latter who will be back in Baltimore Thanksgiving weekend for a Boys & Girls Clubs charity tailgate—now have the chance to sign with new teams. But it’s doubtful anyone will want to come here given the lack of clarity in leadership. The O’s are the only team in baseball without a general manager right now.

Aside from a few in-their-prime leftovers from last season—like Mancini, pitcher Dylan Bundy and prospective closer Mychal Givens—and a handful of second-year pros, you’re unlikely to be familiar with the O’s Opening Day roster come April. They don’t even know who they are yet.

So, as much we want the Vegas odds-makers to be wrong, they’re probably right. On the bright side, an Orioles World Series win next October would give you the greatest return on investment of any baseball bet you could make right now. If you ever wanted to turn $10 into $3,500, no strings attached and for a good cause, this is the time to take a chance.

Buck Showalter, though he wouldn’t admit it, even as late as Sunday afternoon, could guess like the rest of us that he was on his way out. So in what might ultimately prove a parting gift, about a week ago he showed a new generation of Orioles’ players a reminder of what’s possible when things go right at Camden Yards.

In the team’s film room, he played the video of Delmon’s Young’s three-run, down-the-left-field-line double from, it’s hard to believe, four years ago in the playoffs against the Detroit Tigers. The sea of orange-clad fans went bonkers, decibels rose, TV cameras shook, and all was right with the franchise and the city for a few moments in time.

“He wanted to show us how this place could be,” first baseman Trey Mancini told Baltimore on Sunday. “It took a while for Baltimore to get back from the dark ages, if you want to call it that. He wanted to show us what we could work towards.”

“I wanted them to know that’s why you’re doing certain things,” Showalter said. “And I played it for me, too, not just them.”

I don’t know who the next Orioles manager will be, but save for Cal Ripken Jr. or Jim Palmer, it’s hard to imagine that it will be somebody who can bring an air of respectability or leadership to the manager’s office of the wayward franchise like Showalter did upon arrival in the summer of 2010.

For whatever reasons, the team had burned through six managers in the previous 12 years, and hadn’t made the playoffs since 1997. Showalter, he confirmed to the Associated Press today, is out after eight full seasons, in which the O’s made the postseason three times.

Clearly, management—brothers John and Louis Angelos met with Showalter on Wednesday to make the decision official—wants to move forward, after imploding the core of players of successful seasons past, into whatever this new era is with a different voice in charge. There was some speculation that Showalter may end up with a front-office position, but that won’t be the case.

Maybe the next manager is somebody younger or more polished. Showalter is 62, and his slight Southern drawl is legendary. Or, maybe, as Showalter subtly alluded to during a media session Sunday, it’s somebody who fits more with the statistical analytics trend that teams across baseball have adopted over the last decade.

Whoever it is, we wish them well, but it’s hard to imagine another Buck in our lives. This is somebody who single-handedly increased MASN’s ratings 45 percent in the first two months of his tenure here. “It would be extremely awkward not to see him in the clubhouse,” catcher Caleb Joseph said Sunday. “He wants to win every single day.”

This was, by wins (47) and losses (115), the worst season in Orioles history and worst of any team in Major League Baseball this year, but it’s hard to pin the results all on Buck. Hope for a fruitful season was essentially dashed before it started. The parts, even, of a possible starting pitching rotation weren’t established until weeks before opening day. At the same time the team’s homegrown elite star and pending free agent, Manny Machado, was already assumed to be a goner at some point this year.

That proved correct. General manager Dan Duquette—who was also let go from the team today—sent Machado and all other usable humans on the roster, including closer Zach Britton, to other teams in exchange for prospects between the All-Star break and trading deadline—except for captain Adam Jones, who only didn’t leave because he had the rights to decline a trade. (But he’s likely gone, too. On Sunday, Jones said he was excited to test free agency come November.) It was as complete of a teardown as one could imagine.

Showalter’s departure was a while in the making, perhaps dating to the night of October 4, 2016 when he elected not to use Britton in the closing innings of the American League wild card game in Toronto. The pain of Ubaldo entering from the bullpen still haunts many. It sure felt like something we’d seen at Showalter’s other managerial stops: getting teams (the Yankees, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Texas Rangers) close to postseason glory, but not all the way.

Still, this change is hard to accept. Showalter embraced the character of our city. “I love getting things that other people don’t get, and if you don’t get Baltimore . . . it’s just people that are very passionate about the Orioles doing well,” he said.

And he always had reverence for the franchise’s history, often citing Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver. And he consistently shared sage perspective and reflections that we could personally listen to for hours. “It’s almost a trait I wish I didn’t have sometimes,” Showalter said. “I’ve always been able to take in a moment while everyone else is caught up in the celebration. I know these things are fleeting. I’ve been doing that since I’ve been 35 years old, or 28 in Albany, or wherever I was managing.”

And the O’s won, more than they had before.

A few hours before what’s now known as his final game leading the team, in a room beneath the Camden Yards stands behind home plate, Showalter held court with reporters, as managers regularly do before games. It was hard not to sit there and feel sad, as he fielded questions about his future, almost nine years after his arrival. He revived Orioles Magic.

Showalter spoke fondly of Sunday’s opponent, the defending champion Houston Astros, who were preparing for another October (“I’d trade with them”) and of starting Jones in centerfield one last time (“Treat people how you want to be treated, for the most part”). Then MLB reporter Rich Dubroff asked Buck if he thought he’d be back next year.

“I don’t know,” Showalter said. “To say I haven’t given it some thought would be crazy, and would really insult your intelligence . . . But that’s the industry, that’s the way it is. Do you know for sure you’re going to be doing the exact same thing next year? What’s the old expression? ‘You want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.’

“ . . . Mr. Angelos and his family have been great to me and mine. So whatever direction they decide to go, I’m at peace with it.”

Does he want to manage again? “Who knows where life is going to take you?” he said, and mentioned he’d evaluate that possibility the next few weeks.

Then he joked about getting fined by MLB for questioning a call from the previous night’s game, and asked to turn the MASN cameras off before saying, “You know what? Leave it on. I don’t care.”

After the game, Showalter’s wife, Angela, and kids were present in the same room as their husband and father addressed the media for a final time. His eyes welled up when asked if he heard the many fans in the crowd who stood watching after last pitch of the 4-0 win, who wanted him to acknowledge them for a post-game ovation—like they had given Jones on an orchestrated and emotional farewell day.

“What do you think?” Showalter said. “I’m not going to go there, thanks. You know how much it means to me.”

After most everyone left, Buck chatted with his family, sharing in part a piece of trivial baseball history from his past (just like he’s done so many times in public), then he started to walk back toward his office. “I got things to do,” he said.

But before he got there, another family of five, with one child in a wheelchair wearing a Yankees shirt, came down the hallway. “Who brought the Yankee fan?” Showalter joked, before offering: “You want to take a picture?”

“Sure,” the boy’s father said, stunned with a smile coming across his face. “Thank you.”

Yes, indeed. Thank you, Buck, for everything.

Adam Jones has been around a while. I can guarantee he doesn’t remember, but I talked to him seven years ago, at the start of Buck Showalter’s first full season in Baltimore, which coincided with my own arrival here. While reporting on a story for the New York newspaper I used to work for, looking ahead to Showalter’s return to his old Yankee Stadium stomping grounds a few days later, I approached Jones at his locker in Camden Yards before a Sunday afternoon game and asked how things we’re going so far, with Buck at the helm.

“Heck of a lot better than last year, I can tell you that,” he said, earnestly, and without hesitation. The O’s were in first place in the division at the time. “Winning is a lot better than losing.”

Jones, who arrived in 2008, obviously knows the toils of the pre-Buck years, as much as the spoils of success during the memorable playoff runs in 2012 and 2014. And now, 33 years old and near the end of his 11th season wearing an O’s uniform, he’s a metaphorical bridge of sorts to the bad times again, finding himself of all people—benched for four recent games, including last night against the A’s at home—as the latest piece of evidence of perhaps the most dismal of the franchise’s 64 seasons.

The O’s have lost more than 100 games—104 to be precise; just three short of the team’s infamous low-water mark of 107 defeats in 1988—and they still have 16 games to play the last three weeks of the season.

There’s speculation of a possible offseason house-cleaning, meaning goodbye to Buck and general manager Dan Duquette. We already saw the roster imploded—Manny Machado, Zach Britton, Jonathan Schoop, Kevin Gausman, Brad Brach, and Darren O’Day, where art thou?—and sold for prospects. Hope for the future, they say.

But, jeez, the present is hard to digest. If the O’s don’t have the resources or yearning to keep a player like Manny, what, exactly, is the point of all this? Empty green seats at Camden Yards are the lasting image of the last several months, which hit a bottom on Monday with a little over 9,141 fans announced in attendance.

That came after a weekend series away in Tampa Bay in which Jones, the team’s de facto captain, was benched for three games in favor of giving “the younger guys” playing time, after he already acquiesced to management about a month ago and shifted from his traditional centerfield position to the less glamourous right.

The benching led to this tweet . . .

. . . and support from Jones’ teammates, like shortstop Tim Beckham, who was quoted this week in the The Sun saying, “As much as he’s done for this city, as much as he’s done for this organization, he should be in there every day.” Jones also happens to lead the team in batting average since August 1.

So, sadly, it appears Jones and the O’s could now be headed for a bad breakup once the year is over. He, and Chris Davis, with his own set of circumstances, again wasn’t in the lineup last night, displaced by Joey Rickard, who’s 27, not exactly young by baseball standards and former top pick D.J. Stewart. Nothing says more about the state of the franchise than this situation.

Here’s Jones, the not-too-long-ago centerfielder and pie-throwing centerpiece, whose been a pro’s pro for 10-plus years and with the Orioles for at least five, a “10-and-5” status that, under Major League Baseball’s negotiated player rights, gave him the ability to veto a trade that would have sent him to Philadelphia in late July.

And did anyone else notice that it was Jones (and a few others) who were put on billboards around town and featured in MASN giveaway posters, and not the lame-duck Machado, clearly the team’s best player, before the season started?

Jones is a guy who’s appealed for a contract extension for several years, and subtly told the media during FanFest his desire for one again. But he hasn’t gotten one.

More recently, he mentioned publicly that if the O’s mentioned trading him to a contender for just the rest of this season, he’d be up for it, and would still consider signing back to play in Baltimore, where his wife is from and where he’s spent most of his adult life.

Then, of course, Jones nixed the trade to the Phillies, who were in first place in their own division. That decision presumably ruffled a few front office feathers, and certainly got us to where we are today, amid the O’s looking to the future at the expense of a fan favorite.

Professional sports is a business, at times more than it should. We know that from the Orioles’ enduring TV contract discussion with the Washington Nationals that’s set to impact the team’s finances, big name players we’ve seen leave or not sign here, and the hopefully-not-important fact that the team’s lease at Camden Yards ends in 2021, and has yet to be extended.

There are so many questions without answers right now, not the least of which is who’s really running the team? Brothers John and Louis Angelos seem to be in charge, with their father and owner, Peter, 89, reportedly in declining health.

For now, there are 10 games left at Camden Yards this season, and six straight starting tonight. We already missed a chance to wave an official goodbye to Manny Machado, although the writing was on the wall.

If this is also the end here for Jones, let’s hope the team gives anyone who wants to see him one more time the opportunity to say, “We love you, A.J.”

During today’s Orioles spring training game against the Tampa Bay Rays at 1:05 p.m., fans will notice a different logo on the players’ caps. 

To honor the victims and survivors of last week’s tragic, deadly shooting in Parkland, Florida, the team will be donning hats of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School baseball team.

“It’s important to the organization to do it, and I know the Angelos family has been talking about it,” said Orioles manager Buck Showalter today in Sarasota, Florida. “One of the victims already knew about this today and was really touched by it.”

In addition, the Orioles will be auctioning off the autographed caps at 1 p.m. on their website and the proceeds will benefit the Broward Education Foundation, which provides educational resources, high school scholarships, and innovative teaching tools to the Broward County School District. 

“We’re honored to wear these hats on the field today,” Showalter said. “I wish we could do more. More importantly, I wish we could make it not happen.”

“Has anyone seen Manny?” relief pitcher Darren O’Day joked on the kids’ press conference stage late in the day, in response to a teenage girl’s question about Manny Machado’s whereabouts at Orioles FanFest.
 

It was close to 5 p.m. Saturday, and most of the more than 11,000 people who attended the annual rite of the approaching baseball season had left the Baltimore Convention Center with their free giveaways, purchased merchandise and player autographs. Vendors began to pack up. Kids headed home with memories, perhaps of asking a question to players like Adam Jones or manager Buck Showalter—and getting a funny answer, like this one:
 

(Buck also said he’s recently started to watch the Netflix series, The Crown. Nice! Jones said his favorite candy is Reese’s—to much applause—and that his most-liked transformer is Bubblebee. “He’s coddling and nurturing.”)  

Though Machado wasn’t present, the 25-year-old was nonetheless a big topic of conversation, too. First, just the fact he and buddy Jonathan Schoop weren’t there for undisclosed reasons ruffled fans’ feathers. Then Showalter casually mentioned to reporters that Machado will switch positions in 2018, to shortstop, and Tim Beckham will move to third base. The switch seems to acquiesce to Machado’s desire to showcase his skills at shortstop ahead of his impending (and unfortunate) free-agent status once this season is over.  

About that. The dissolution of the six-year marriage between the Orioles and their prized homegrown talent — who’s brought us so many great moments — appears inevitable. Especially when you hear this: “Stranger things have happened,” Showalter told fans Saturday. “We may sign him.”  

Machado, who the O’s would trade now in exchange for a big haul, including some starting pitchers, likely will command mind-shattering and life-changing money on the free-agent market, and be promised a bright future from many teams across Major League Baseball, two things mid-market teams like the O’s can’t necessarily do. General manager Dan Duquette uttered the words “those teams up North,” and spoke about the market advantages (i.e. more money) that they have—No, Yankees, no!—when answering question about what fans could do to convince O’s ownership to keep and sign players of Machado’s caliber long term.  

Alas, at least we have Buck’s pearls of wisdom and plenty of other fun to get us through Manny’s apparent lame duck year. 

A few other nuggets from FanFest:  

• Jones, whose contract is also up after this season, said he’d like to play six to eight more years, but that the team hasn’t approached him about a contract extension.
• Dylan Bundy, when asked if he’s wondering who will be in the starting pitching rotation with him and Kevin Gausman, said, “Yeah, definitely,” with a laugh. “We have no idea.”
• O’Day, who along with Brad Brach and Mychal Givens, is in the running to close games while the injured Zach Britton (Achilles’ tendon) is out to start the season, noted he’s growing a beard until spring training, and he’s feeling good. “I have two times dad strength now,” the 35-year-old veteran said. “I have two kids. I have a beard. I like where I’m at.” The O’s bullpen also seems to have great camaraderie. Brach said during games they play their own game, throwing balls against the bullpen wall a certain number of times to keep score of the real game. Givens said he has an assigned seat. To be a fly on the wall beyond left-centerfield for a night.
• Showalter was particularly concerned Saturday with getting sick, and he signed autographs later in the day with a container of hand sanitizer on the table with him.
• Just three weeks until pitchers and catchers report in Florida, and 60 days until Opening Day.

The Good, The Bad, and The Adorable: O’s edition
The Good: Despite the O’s latest slump, Manny Machado continues to shine. ESPN the Magazine’s Tim Keown has christened Manny as “the face of MLB’s new identity.”  

“Machado moves with a sprawling looseness that flirts with elegance,” Keown writes in the profile. “His endless limbs and their unusual liquidity have spawned tales — possibly apocryphal—about their composition.”

A perfect example of the “sprawling looseness” and “liquidity” were showcased during last Saturday’s win against the St. Louis Cardinals. Machado seemed to defy the laws of gravity and strength with an insane throw from foul territory to Davis at first base. 

The Bad: After Thursday’s 6-3 loss to the Cleveland Indians, the O’s have now allowed five or more runs in 19 consecutive games, placing them one game away from tying the MLB record set by the 1924 Phillies. Ouch!

The Adorable: Buck Showalter missed Thursday’s game to be with his daughter, Allie, in Dallas and witness the birth of his first grandchild, Winston. Hopefully he will be the good luck charm the O’s so desperately need. Let’s hope he starts practicing his wind-up once he’s home.

Ravens football is back.
Training camp officially begins on July 26, so that means football season will be here before we know it. If minicamp highlight videos are any indication of what the season will look like, we are so ready.

Speaking of the Ravens, tight end Benjamin Watson has been spending his time in the offseason advocating for human rights. Watson traveled to Lebanon in April where he saw first-hand the Middle East’s refugee crisis and now plans to travel to the Dominican Republic later this month with the International Justice Mission to fight for rights against sex trafficking.

Shootout for soldiers
For the past six years, volunteers have signed up to play 24 games of lacrosse for 24 hours straight to raise money to support American veterans. In order to participate, teams must raise a minimum of  $750 to secure a one-hour game slot. This year’s event, June 20-21 in Elkridge, raised more than $200,000. 

Saturday night is Showtime.
West Baltimore’s Gervonta “Tank” Davis won the 130-pound world title in January at Brooklyn’s Barclay’s Center in one of the most exciting bouts of the year, finishing off Jose Pedraza with a thrilling seventh round KO. This weekend, the charismatic fighter travels to London for the first defense of his crown against No. 1 challenger Liam Walsh. We can’t wait for Davis fill Royal Farms Arena at some point in the future, but for now we will catch the action on Showtime, scheduled for Saturday at 6 p.m.

Explained: How the O’s do it.
FiveThirtyEight, the popular politics, sports, science and health, economic and culture blog for numbers nerds, recently dedicated a post attempting to uncover how our beloved Orioles keep beating the experts gloom and doom predictions of failure each season. As baseball columnist Neil Paine notes the O’s have far exceeded the expectations of forecasters over the past half-dozen seasons, by as much as 21, 16, and 12 games in recent seasons. What did he find? Buck Showalter, basically. And the O’s bullpen, which, of course, he reveals has been wonderfully managed by Buck. It’s a case of researchers collecting the data on what every O’s fans already knows based on our own subjective observations. We do appreciate the effort.

Boys’ Latin Tops St. Paul’s in 100th regular season match.
Talk about historic rivalries. Perennial Baltimore lacrosse powerhouses Boys’ Latin and St. Paul’s met for the 100th time this week and the occasion lived up to its billing, with Boys’ Latin rallying from a 3-0 deficit, and then holding on to win a 10-9 nail biter. The win pushed Boys’ Latin overall margin in the series to 52-47-1, according to reporting by the The Sun’s longtime high school sportswriter, Glenn Graham, in a rivalry that began in 1933.

There is a little horse race in Baltimore this weekend. 
This is setting up as a nice duel between Derby-winner and odds-on favorite Always Dreaming in the No. 4 position and Classic Empire, at 3-1 bet, in next to him in the starting gate at No. 5. Goes without saying that Preakness is not to be missed, but especially this year.

O’s catchers deliver more than flowers for Mom.
Oriole catcher Francisco Peña, before a rare start Mother’s Day weekend, promised he’d hit a home run for his mom. And he did better than that—blasting two round-trippers. Which means the bar has been set awfully high for every ballplayer ever going forward. That said, O’s catcher Caleb Joseph went deep the following day, on the actual Mother’s Day, as did Chris Davis. Not bad a compliment to the usual flowers, candy, and card.

Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti says team will continue to pass on players with domestic violence history. 
Watching from afar, it was unclear who asked the question during the Ravens’ annual State of the Team press conference on Tuesday in Owings Mills, but kudos. It came not in these exact words, but team owner Steve Bisciotti answered as if it did. More than two years after video surfaced that turned Ray Rice from a loveable small-sized hero to a toxic, unemployable running back, are the Ravens still staying 100 yards away from drafting or signing players with questionable pasts, or nebulous “character issues”?

“Character is a pretty big pot,” Bisciotti said, “but some people we’re going to take off our board. That’s the way it goes. Domestic abuse? Not taking them. Kansas City is in the playoffs, partly because of a guy they took a chance on. Will we take chances like that again? I don’t think so.”

In the razor-thin, competitive, and big money NFL environment, the approach can make a difference. The Ravens had an 8-8 record with nine games decided by six or fewer points and . . . we all know what happened in the Steelers game on Christmas. As the Ravens self-made billionaire owner noted, Chiefs rookie wide receiver Tyreek Hill, who in 2015 pleaded guilty to beating his pregnant girlfriend while in college at Oklahoma State, has been a key player as Kansas City grabbed the second seed in the AFC postseason. In the name of winning, teams take calculated, if not morally questionable, risks. “It does [come up] all the time,” Bisciotti said, like with talented Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon in December (who, like Rice, was caught on tape).

The Ravens aren’t going there. Even with “the pitchforks,” out from fans, after a second straight playoff-less year, as the owner acknowledged during the 30-question, 70-minute media session. Bisciotti, general manager Ozzie Newsome, and coach John Harbaugh primarily fielded questions about how the team can improve.

“We need to get more out of Joe [Flacco],” Bisciotti said in one of the answers, which were typically measured and reasonable, and also included mention of a potential ticket price increase for next season.

West Baltimore boxer Gervonta Davis gets first world championship shot Saturday. 
As we wrote in the December issue, 23-year-old West Baltimore-native and up-and-coming boxer Gervonta “Tank” Davis was waiting for his first world championship title shot. He will get it on Saturday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, against Puerto Rico’s Jose Pedraza, the IBF super featherweight (130-pound) champion.

Davis, a relatively small 5-foot-6 lefty, is pound-for-pound strong with amazingly quick hands and a remarkable backstory. He trains out of Upton Boxing Gym on Pennsylvania Ave., under the mentorship of coach Calvin Ford—the inspiration for The Wire character, Cutty—and has endured all kinds of rough situations, with drug-addicted parents for starters. Ford’s been a father figure, Upton a refuge.

“I dedicate this fight to my team,” Davis said Thursday at a press conference in New York. “I’m no Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, or Sugar Ray Leonard. I’m Gervonta Davis, and on January 14th, I will become a world champion.”

Saturday night’s fight will air live at 9:30 p.m. on Showtime. Watch early. Davis usually makes quick work of opponents. He’s 16-0 with 15 knockouts, 13 coming within the first four rounds, and is promising something similar this time around against the more experienced, taller Pedraza. If Davis wins, he will be Baltimore’s fourth world champion boxer; the others are Joe Gans, who owned the world lightweight title during the time of segregation more than 100 years ago, Vincent Pettway (1994) and Hasim Rahman (2001).

Orioles have a minicamp in Florida.

It’s not much, but just the sight of the Orioles black-and-orange uniforms under sunny skies makes winter feel a tad warmer. (And it really was yesterday!)

The start of spring training is the traditional sign that baseball season is near. Minicamp? Not so much. Not many major league teams even have them, but the Orioles have the last few years under Buck Showalter, who finds the time valuable. He and a small gang of players had a three-day camp in Sarasota, Florida, this week, mainly to evaluate those coming off injuries, and to look at a few of the organization’s minor league pitchers who are a bit more off the radar, but may be factors come the six-month, 162-game slog that is a major league baseball season.

Minicamp did not appear too stressful for veteran players like Chris Tillman, the O’s top hurler. Guys like him aren’t the focus. Select prospects are. Here Tillman, alongside Showalter and the team’s new pitching coach, Roger McDowell, watches young pitchers Garrett Cleavinger and Brian Gonzalez throw.

One pitcher not there? Yovanni Gallardo, who the Orioles traded to Seattle last Friday in exchange for corner outfielder Seth Smith. Gallardo went 6-8 last year with a 5.32 ERA in 23 starts, and spent a good amount of time on the disabled list with shoulder issues. Smith is a veteran, 34-year-old left-hand hitting outfielder, something the O’s needed (with Mark Trumbo gone, for now). Last season, while his batting average wasn’t spectacular (.249), Smith played in 137 games, had an on-base percentage of .342, hit 16 home runs, and a career-high 63 RBIs. Fun fact: Smith, a Mississippi native and multi-sport athlete, was Eli Manning’s backup quarterback at Ole Miss in the early 2000s.

Just 32 days until spring training and less than two months until Opening Day at Camden Yards. Not that we’re counting.

Terps win, Terps win!
With a 75-72 win over Indiana on national TV on Tuesday night, the Maryland men’s basketball team improved to 15-2 and 3-1 in the Big Ten, and should enter national top-25 polls early next week. The hero of their latest triumph? That would be 6-foot-7, 190-pound ginger-headed freshman guard Kevin Huerter. Call him Big Red. The former Mr. Basketball from New York, who had a late growth spurt in high school, sank a go-ahead three-pointer with just under two minutes left then grabbed a rebound and fed fellow freshman Anthony Cowan with a long pass to give Maryland a three-point lead with 1:12 to go. Fight on, turtles!

The Orioles were robbed of Gold Gloves, Cy Young nod.
There were clearly a lot of surprises this week and, while this one seems minor in the grand scheme of things, Orioles fans were shocked with the news. For the first time since 2010, no Orioles were awarded with Gold Glove awards. This is especially jarring since third baseman Manny Machado had the highest fielding percentage and the second-fewest errors at his position. The decision not to award Chris Davis, who we saw make some impressive catches at first base this year, is a bit more understandable considering his 10 errors to winner Mitch Moreland’s two.

But the real crime is that closer Zach Britton wasn’t even named a finalist for the Cy Young Award, when he didn’t blow a save all year. Granted, relievers don’t normally factor in, but his 2016 season was exemplary with a perfect 47-for-47 in save opportunities, a league-leading 0.54 ERA for pitchers who have worked at least 50 innings, and a span of 43 appearances without a single home run (from April 30 to August 24). Needless to say, manager Buck Showalter is not pleased.

“That’s a real poor reflection on the people who are evaluating him,” the skipper told MASN. “This guy had maybe the best year in the history of relief pitching. He should have finished in the top three in MVP, OK? He should. There’s nobody in baseball who’s more valuable to their team than Zach Britton is to the Orioles.” Preach!

One possibly silver lining? Quite literally, Mark Trumbo received the 2016 Silver Slugger Award for one of three American League (AL) outfield positions, the first Oriole outfielder to win the award since 2013. And, possibly best of all, Showalter was once again named a finalist for AL Manager of the Year with some stiff competition in the Indians’ Terry Francona. The winner will be announced next Tuesday, November 15, but we all know who gets our vote.

Orioles don’t make QO to catcher Matt Wieters.
Fan favorite and hometown boy Matt Wieters may not be wearing an Orioles uniform next year. While the team made a qualifying offer to Trumbo, they passed on the chance to extend the $17.2M, single-season offer to Wieters this time around. The catcher struggled a bit this past season with a .243 average and fell well shy of the above-average offensive number he has posted in prior years. Though he was an All Star, hit 17 home runs, and had solid fielding, the team likely wasn’t willing to pay big bucks based on his age, offensive production, and future injury risk. But Wieters, now a free agent, should have his fair share of suitors.

As far as the Orioles, they may not have to look very far for a replacement since Chance Sisco was named as the best position player in the club’s minor league system by Baseball America. The 22-year-old spent most of the season at AA Bowie before a promotion to AAA Norfolk, hitting for a combined .317 with six homers, 28 doubles, and 51 RBIs.

Tatyana McFadden wins fourth-consecutive New York City marathon.
We’ve got a real-life Superwoman in Clarksville native Tatyana McFadden. After a stunning performance at the Olympics in Rio, the Paralympic athlete returned to the states to dominate at the New York City marathon on Sunday. It is her fourth-consecutive title, finishing the wheelchair race in one hour, 47 minutes and 43 seconds. Not to mention that she completed the Grand Slam by winning in London, Boston, Chicago, and New York. The New York Times beautifully recounted McFadden’s multi-burough race, in which she thrived on the uphill climb of the Queensboro Bridge and stayed focus throughout:

McFadden pushed well ahead of the field at the start, before Schär, Amanda McGrory and Susannah Scaroni caught up by Mile 6 in Brooklyn. The pack stayed tight until the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. Koch, a former New York mayor, had a trademark line — “How’m I doin’?” — and McFadden had an answer. Just fine. She even loves the crosswind. Makes it even tougher. Here she continued to pass the elite male wheelchair racers, including her coach, Adam Bleakney, a four-time Paralympian. What did he say to his star racer? “Not a word,” Bleakney said. “She was going too fast.”

5. Buck Showalter critiques baseball movies for Esquire.
One thing we really miss about baseball season is hearing manager Buck Showalter’s one-liners during post-game interviews. His brash, quick wit caused even the most stoic reporters to giggle in the background. Luckily, Esquire magazine is producing a series where they ask real-life coaches what they think of watching their fictional counterparts on screen. We think it’s no coincidence that they tapped our own Showalter first to get his opinion on baseball movies, drawing from his knowledge as a player and manager. The results are amazing.

We learn he has a deep disdain for the movie Moneyball, calling it “complete fiction” and saying that Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of Oakland A’s manager Art Howe “was so far off that it was comical.” He was a great actor, but whoever was coaching him just had no idea. Maybe they just didn’t care. Maybe most of the people watching it just didn’t notice.” He then softened a little, talking about his affinity for Kevin Costner in movies like Draft Day and Field of Dreams, though, he says, the latter didn’t have enough baseball. Showalter liked The Natural because “Robert Redford looked like a hitter.”

But the best part has to be the end, where Showalter admits his favorite baseball movie is The Sandlot. “That was me growing up,” he says. “That’s realistic. We were in the back wearing tennis shoes, hitting homemade balls. If you hit it too far, it goes in somebody’s yard and you’re screwed; the game’s over . . . Although they killed it (in a bad way) with The Sandlot 2. That movie was terrible.” Buck, never change.

Honorable mention: For the second week in a row, we have a bit too much news to fit into five segments, so our honorable mention (pun kind of intended) goes to Ed Reed, who will be inducted into the Ravens’ Ring of Honor during this Sunday’s game, becoming the ninth member of that elite group. “Home is here. Home has always been Baltimore,” Reed told BaltimoreRavens.com. “My heart has always been in Baltimore. It will always be in Baltimore and at M&T Bank Stadium.”

“Let’s Go O’s! Let’s O’s! Let’s O’s!!!”

Believe it or not, the familiar Orioles rallying chant echoed throughout empty Camden Yards during Wednesday’s surreal “closed to the public” contest versus the Chicago White Sox. And it started right away.

“O-R-I-O-L-E-S”

When the O’s batted around in the first inning and exploded for six runs, highlighted by Chris Davis’ 3-run first inning home run, dozens of dedicated Orioles fans—sneaking peaks through the left-center field gates—could be heard all the way into the press box behind home plate going crazy. If nothing else, the O’s and White Sox players realized they were not entirely alone despite an official, announced paid attendance of “zero” later in the game.

In fact, the strange thing about today’s game was not what wasn’t heard, but what was—everything.

Literally, you could hear the ball smacking into the gloves of O’s second baseman Rey Navarro, shortstop Everth Cabrera, and first baseman Chris Davis during an early, inning-ending, 5-4-3 double play. Outfielders could be heard calling for fly balls, umps making third-strike calls, White Sox and O’s players cheering their teammates from the dugouts. There were also fans positioned as usual atop the Hilton and Hyatt hotels across the street, with a “GO ORIOLES” banner—visible in the ballpark—even hanging from one upper-level room deck. The only people in the stands were a couple of scouts in the first few rows. The paid attendance was announced as “zero.”

Later in the game, another chant of “Give me an ‘O,’ Give me an ‘I,’ Give me a ‘R’ … went up from the fans standing out in left field as well as a “Man-ny! Man-ny! Man-ny” chant after Manny Machado’s two-run homer made it an 8-2 game.

Also, foul balls could be heard loudly ricocheting and rattling in the sea of vacant field box seats. But no beer or hot dog vendors, of course. No Oriole Bird. And O’s relievers in the center field bullpen looked lonelier than ever.

After two postponements in two days at Camden Yards in the wake of protests around the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody, the Orioles and Major League Baseball decided they needed to squeeze in the final game of the O’s-White Sox series this afternoon before Chicago left town. The first pitch was moved from 7:05 p.m. to 2:05 p.m. Wednesday—at least in part to comply with the curfew in place in Baltimore following Monday’s riots in the city.

Meanwhile, this weekend’s Orioles series with Tampa Bay, scheduled for Baltimore, has been switched to Florida, where the O’s will wear their white uniforms and play as the “home” team.

In his pre-game press conference, Orioles manager Buck Showalter expressed his deep concern for the city and said that baseball should not be the priority at this time in Baltimore. But he also acknowledged that baseball and sports have the potential to help bring cities together.

“Every city has challenges,” Showalter said. “Down the road, there is [also] the chance that our city could be better because of this.”

“It’s not an easy time for anybody right now,” the O’s Adam Jones said. “It doesn’t matter what race you are. We need this game to be played, but we need this city to heal first.”

For the most part, players appeared very relaxed before the game during pre-game warm ups and batting practice. But Showalter acknowledged, “This isn’t something we prepare for.” He said the team pumps in sound during spring training games to simulate the noise of a big league park—to practice communication skills between outfielders, for example. “That’s what we prepare for,” Showalter said. “Not this.”

He also joked that he was concerned about the umpires hearing “all the sweet nothings” that typically are expressed in the O’s dugout, but go unheard.

Jim Palmer, outside the MASN booth before the game, recalled once playing before less than 1,000 fans in 1965 in Dodger Stadium where the Angels first played their home games. “There had been a Sunday rainout and it was the first game of a Monday doubleheader,” Palmer said. “There were 655 people there. I was in the bullpen, I counted them.” Still, a bigger crowd than today at Camden Yards.

John Denver did play during the seventh-inning stretch and there was music in between innings, including one attempt at humor—a blast of the ’80s classic “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode.

In the first MLB game to be played with no audience, the Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox 8-2.

Buck Showalter is redecorating.

He’s just been hired and, seemingly out of the thick August air, has transformed the Bad News Birds into the hottest team in baseball.

But the extreme makeover is not just restricted to the field.

On a wall opposite his desk in the Camden Yards manager’s office hangs a framed photo of Oriole Park in all its glory—the sun is shining, the place is packed, and no doubt the beer is cold.

Where others might just see a pretty photo, Showalter senses trouble. A closer look reveals why.

“The bases were loaded and we were getting hammered,” Showalter says. “I ain’t looking up at that.”

Down comes the picture.

The new skipper’s eye for detail is legendary. “Never draft an 18-year-old with a full beard,” he once told ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian, a former Sun reporter. “It means he’s fully developed and won’t grow any more.”

“He is hyperobservant,” says Karl Ravech, anchor of Baseball Tonight, a show on which Showalter worked two stints as an on-air analyst. “I’ve been doing this for 17 years now, and watching games with Buck was like watching games with nobody else. He would always raise questions: Why a third baseman was playing a foot off the line, why an outfielder was shaded one way, why a manager was sitting next to a particular person in the dugout.”

Throughout his wildly successful yet turbulent managerial career, Showalter’s obsession with baseball’s minutiae has served his teams well. His 916 career wins place him in the top 10 percent of baseball managers for all time.

Shockingly, in Baltimore his winning percentage improved. For the first time since 1900, a manager who took over a team in August won more games (34) than the team had won in the previous four months combined. And for the first time since Cal Ripken was punishing pitchers (not pitching Comcast), it was fun to be an O’s fan again.

Indeed, Showalter’s biggest victory may very well have been returning the Orioles to relevancy. Minutes after the first pitch on his September 14 T-shirt Tuesday giveaway, the team ran out of Showalter number 26s. No matter—one fan wore a custom-made shirt declaring “In Buck We Trust.” Another sported antlers. The O’s won that night, clinching their fourth straight series win, a feat they hadn’t pulled off since 2004.

The Buck Effect reverberated beyond the park as well. In August and September, Orioles’ broadcasts on MASN averaged 100,000 viewers per night, a 45 percent increase over the previous three-year average for the same months.

On a team long bereft of national stars, Showalter has become the face of the franchise.

But with his trademark small-town twang and humility, he swats away much of the credit for the team’s stunning revival.

“I think our guys had got to the point where they were just fed up,” he says, noting that his arrival corresponded with the return of key players Brian Roberts and Koji Uehara from the disabled list. “It all kind of came together and snowballed, and I was fortunate to be here at the right time.”

His players aren’t buying it.

“It’s not a coincidence we’ve turned it around since Buck showed up,” pitcher Jeremy Guthrie told reporters in mid-August. “We know what he expects. No magic formula, but maybe just a good shift in gears for us.”

Legendary O’s pitcher and broadcaster Jim Palmer has his own theory: “[Showalter] made everyone accountable, from the coaches to the players. A young player all of a sudden maybe is going to give a little more attention to detail.”

For starters, Showalter-managed teams are among the most prepared in baseball. He’s been known to scout umpires, or change his signs mid-inning. Showalter prods his players to be aggressive, think through their individual battles, and, most importantly, he demands that they respect the game.

One fan wore a custom-made shirt declaring “In Buck We Trust.” Another sported antlers.

“He’s great at in-game decisions,” says Yankees slugger Mark Teixeira, a Severna Park native who played for Showalter in Texas. “He can see how the game is unfolding and make adjustments as it goes on.”

As Teixeira quickly learned, Showalter treats the baseball field as a temple. When Tex was a rookie in spring training, he strolled out to the plate for batting practice without a helmet. Showalter promptly sent him back to the clubhouse to retrieve it.

“He expects a lot out of his players,” Teixeira says. “He expects you to play hard, he expects you to play the game the right way.”

Showalter harbors no illusions about the challenge ahead. He resurrected the New York Yankees, who hadn’t been to the postseason in more than a decade before he arrived; built the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks from an embryo into 100-game winners; and even managed to make the Rangers more than a footnote deep in the heart of football-crazed Texas.

While Showalter has established himself as a bona fide franchise fixer, he hasn’t mastered the art of happy endings. Twice he’s been named Manager of the Year, and twice he’s been fired. What’s more, two of his teams won the World Series the year after he was sent packing.

Rumblings about his need for absolute control continue to linger. Google “Buck Showalter control freak” and more than 2,000 hits appear.

Not that he seems to care.

“There’s certain things in my life that I don’t dwell on,” Showalter says. “You treat people how you want to be treated and live with the consequences. I understand the shelf life of managers. I came in here and told the guys I don’t have a lot of time for BS that’s not conducive to the Orioles winning.”

William Nathanial Showalter III was born on May 23, 1956. Like all of us, he was buck naked.

“Nat,” as he was known then, grew up with three sisters in the small Florida Panhandle town of Century, a “Mayberry-ish” place with one hospital, one post office, and one drug store.

“Everybody knows everybody,” says Showalter, whose no-nonsense father was his principal at Century High School.

“Thank goodness I had a dad that didn’t really care about being my pal; he wanted to be my father,” Showalter says. “He had the guts to say no.”

Showalter first played organized baseball at the age of five or six. After excelling as a hitter in high school, he starred at Chipola Junior College, where his jersey was retired. In one All-American season at Mississippi State, he hit .459, still a school record.

That was enough to attract the attention of the Yankees, who, in 1977, drafted him in the fifth round, marking the start of a 19-year marriage filled with all the happiness and heartache of any long-term relationship.

His first minor-league manager was Ed Napoleon, a Baltimore-born, Panamanian-raised baseball lifer, who fondly recalls their first meeting.

“He came to me with long hair, he looked like Prince Valiant, the cartoon guy,” says Napoleon, who later coached under Showalter with the Yankees. “I saw the intensity and dedication that he had. We became very close. One day, I come into the dressing room in Nashville. He’s always got that stern face like you see on TV. He just had a towel draped over him. I said, ‘Hey do you have any street clothes? You’re always buck naked.’”

Napoleon didn’t think “two shakes” about the exchange, he says, but Showalter’s teammates certainly did.

“Buck” stuck.

After seven seasons in the Yankees’ farm system, it was clear that Showalter could hit, but he lacked power. The team offered him a job as a Single-A hitting coach.

Of course, no kid who’s ever broken in a new glove or worn out the leather of an old one has dreamt of falling short of the majors, then becoming a bus-league coach. But Showalter was a realist.

“I’ve always been able to look at things the way they are as opposed to the way I would like them to be,” he says. “I’d just gotten married, I was looking for something a little more stable, at least as stable as you can get in baseball. I said, ‘Hey, I’ll give it a roll for $12,000.’”

He quickly found gratification in teaching fundamentals to rookies with the same big-league aspirations he once held.

“You live vicariously through the players, their improvements, their successes,” he says. “You try to give them shortcuts so they don’t trip on their tail. The players are so raw, everything is just like a piece of clay that you can mold.”

While Showalter has established himself as a bona fide franchise fixer, he hasn’t mastered the art of happy endings.

It’s hard to fathom now, but the Yankees haven’t always spent money like Charlie Sheen at a strip club. Back when Showalter took over as the team’s manager in 1992, the Bronx Bombers hadn’t won a pennant in 10 years.

“They gave me a one-year contract, so I was on a one-year plan,” says Showalter, whose boss was the famously meddlesome owner George Steinbrenner.

In the circus that is New York, navigating the back-page headlines and surreal celebrity comes with the gig. Showalter appeared on an episode of Seinfeld in which he switches the team’s uniforms from polyester to cotton. (George: “Cotton breathes.”)

“I didn’t know at the time the show was making fun of Mr. Steinbrenner,” Showalter says. “When it actually ran, it kind of got communicated to me that I probably don’t need to do a sequel.”

Steinbrenner grew to embrace the show, but not Showalter. In 1995, Showalter led the team to the postseason, which apparently wasn’t enough for the Boss. After a playoff series loss, Steinbrenner demanded Showalter throw a handful of his coaches overboard. Showalter balked, and the two sides went their separate ways.

“Broke my heart because I’d grown up there,” Showalter says. “But it’s like my dad says, at some point you’ve got to plant your feet and take a stand, and you’ll know when it is. That was one of those moments in my life.”

Five minutes after his contract expired, he was on the phone with the expansion Diamondbacks, who hired him to help build the franchise from the ground up. Twelve months later, the Yankees—the only organization Showalter had ever known—won its first World Series crown in 18 seasons.

In Arizona, Showalter scoured the globe for players and offered his opinion on virtually every aspect of the organization’s growth. It was a level of micro-involvement that some whispered grew stale after he guided the club to a division title in 1999. A year later, he was fired.

In 2001, the Diamondbacks won the World Series.

As Showalter pursued other managerial jobs, he found the “controlling” label tough to shed.

“Maybe my problem is that I take the responsibility of my job too seriously,” Showalter told USA Today in 2002. He had just been passed over by the lowly Kansas City Royals and was working his first stint as an ESPN analyst. “I don’t leave any stone unturned. Maybe that makes people uncomfortable.”

But later that year, the struggling Texas Rangers took a chance on him. In four years, two rather predictable things occurred: He became the Rangers’ third winningest manager. He also was fired again.

For the second time, he headed back to Bristol, CT, and ESPN.

“What I had heard about him never seemed to apply,” says Karl Ravech. “He is as entertaining a personality as I’ve ever worked with. I got a chance to work with him, play golf with him, go to dinner with him, watch games with him. I found him to be incredibly engaging, able to laugh at himself.”

Showalter claims that he liked the more easygoing life in front of the camera: “At the end of the day, I folded up my briefcase, went home, and didn’t care about who won or lost. I slept a lot better,” he says. But his competitive nature was simply too strong to suppress.

So when the Orioles fired Dave Trembley in June, Showalter took note, and when president of Baseball Operations Andy MacPhail contacted him about the opening, Showalter took the call.

Two months later, he was hired.

Some around baseball questioned the fit—for both parties. After all, Showalter was the O’s third manager in 2010, the seventh since Davey Johnson took them to the playoffs in 1997. The Orioles change managers more than Larry King changes wives. And it’s not like the O’s job was exactly considered a prize.

“[Managerial] jobs are few and far between,” explains Fox Sports baseball reporter Ken Rosenthal, former O’s beat writer for The Sun. “Whatever opportunities arise, even someone with stature has to consider them.”

The bigger question, then, may have been whether the Orioles were crazy for hiring Buck, given his reputation.

“His supporters obviously say that it’s a bad rap and he only did what he was asked,” says Rosenthal. “There are other people that say, yeah, this guy does like control and eventually he will wear out [his welcome]. Maybe that’s true, maybe in this particular job he’ll be different. That remains to be seen.”

From the moment he landed in Baltimore, Showalter made a concerted effort to embrace the Oriole Way.

Before his hiring became public, Showalter called Gloria Oates, the widow of the late Orioles manager, Johnny Oates.

“He said, ‘I’d like for you and your children to think about me wearing number 26,’” she recalls.

Oates had worn the number as a rookie manager with the Orioles from 1991-1994. When his managerial career began in 1982 at Double-A Nashville, one of Oates’s most trusted players was a serious student of the game they called Buck.

“I was overwhelmed that he would even think to do that,” Gloria says. “I called the children, and they were so excited about it. I immediately called him back.”

As fate would have it, Oates was scheduled for induction into the Orioles Hall of Fame a few days later.

“He’s into it like very few people that I’ve met in baseball. He’s my kind of baseball person.”

“We were sitting on the field and I glanced into the dugout,” Gloria says. “I couldn’t see [Buck’s] face but I could see the number 26. It very well could have been Johnny. To see that number on the field again and to know that it’s being worn out of love and respect for Johnny is a true blessing.”

Showalter soon established a connection with another Oriole legend as well.

“He invited me into his manager’s office,” says Cal Ripken Jr., who speaks with Showalter “from time to time.” “I felt really comfortable sitting in there talking to him, and I hadn’t always felt that comfortable. He’s into it like very few people that I’ve met in baseball. He’s my kind of baseball person.”

Which is to say, a winner. Ripken calls Showalter’s 34-23 record with the O’s nothing short of “miraculous.”

“In many ways it seemed like the Orioles would beat themselves at times,” Ripken says. “When Buck took over you could really see an immediate impact. All of a sudden the little things were being taken care of. I think the young team trusts his knowledge. He was able to motivate and get them to believe in themselves.”

This approach has resonated with prized catching prospect Matt Wieters, whom Showalter has entrusted to take more of a leadership role. “Anytime your manager has that kind of faith in you, you want to do a great job,” Wieters says, noting that Showalter’s confidence is infectious. “It’s an attitude—[that] the guys in this locker room can play with anyone.”

Showalter didn’t implement any rigid rules or make any rousing speeches. He kept his eyes and ears open and let it be known that he was doing so.

“I kept my mouth shut, but I had some moments when I came in initially, watched, and thought, ‘Hmm, really?’” he says. “You see some challenges, things you file away. The sense of entitlement, the sense that you’re owed something is not [acceptable]. It’s about competition. These jobs we give out as Orioles players are very precious in my eyes, and you better earn them.”

It’s an intriguing match—the manager twice left at the altar and a franchise so far from bliss it’s just hoping to one day date again.

Showalter’s commitment is real. His wife of 28 years, Angela, already found a Baltimore-area home perfect for the couple and their four basset hounds, Opie, Jasper, Crusader, and Webster.

“I love the city,” says Showalter. “It’s blue collar, there’s not a whole lot of pretense. There’s a passion, energy, and sincerity about the Orioles with the fans.”

On a snowy January day, he’s picking out office furniture.

“I appreciate that they asked my input,” he says. “[They] asked me about chairs, and I said a chair’s a chair. We’re tweaking the locker room a little bit, expanding the video room, adding a prep room for advanced scouting, trying to make the locker room a little more functional for the players. It’s a great locker room but it’s really too big.” He chuckles: “We’re probably the only team making the locker room a little smaller.”

Closer proximity, Showalter believes, leads to more bonding.

“Bottom line is it’s got to be important to the players to please each other,” he says. “You gotta hold each other accountable. It’s got to come from within. If it comes from us [coaches], we’ve got the wrong players.”

But finally, it seems, the right manager.