Buck Showalter doesn't care if his team is 2-11 this spring

SARASOTA, Fla. — Buck Showalter will be 60 years old in a couple months, a minor inconvenience to which he seems to have given little mind. In fact, brought to his attention here Monday morning, Showalter raised his head and said, "You?"

"No, you," he was told.

And he said, "Oh."

With a well-it's-better-than-the-alternative neck crick, Showalter said the tough one was 40 – not 30 or 50 or even 60 – though anymore he can't remember why that one stuck with him exactly. Maybe, and this is a total guess, because 40 can be that big, round day when a person might consider himself mostly formed. You sort of are who you are and the next 40, if you're lucky, is minor edits and revisions. It's heavy. Again, just a guess.

He smiled thin. Whatever the number says he's going to be couldn't be more important than the 45 minutes he'd just spent swinging the fungo bat he was leaning on, or the roster cuts he'd make soon as this conversation was over, or the relentless advance of the season, his 18th as manager and seventh for the Baltimore Orioles.

His ballclub is again legit, if primarily because it will hit and mostly defend, and then see if it can weather its starting pitching. Never mind the 2-11-2 spring record for, as Showalter pointed out, "We won two intra-squad games and a B game."

In spring a manager should be able to decide what his record is.

He'd begun Monday, a morning that broke hot and swampy here, as he always did, as he always does, by wondering what the day would bring. See, that's how he knows it's still in him. The game doesn't change. The people in it do, but not so much he doesn't recognize them. Best he can, Showalter measures what the years have wrought, finds the give-and-take to be fairly even, and goes to work.

"It's a challenge, every day," he said. "I always check my barometer. Every spring. That I still can't wait to be here. We get here in the dark and we leave in the dark. Everybody does. But it's a work of passion and love."

That's the question, though, isn't it? You show up because it's the middle of February or because it's 7:05 and that's when the game starts or because your contract says you're here for another three seasons. You say yes I'm ready because that's the correct answer, the one you're responsible for and are expected to give.

"That's a great question," he said. "What's important to you? It's about winning, obviously. It's about sincere care about the players. But I don't know. How do you answer? What's that barometer? You go, 'I can't wait to get to the ballpark. Can't wait to see what the day has in store for me.' "

And then you know. Something's out there and you don't want to miss it. It might be good. It could be horrible. But there'll be something for sure.

"So, many days I wake up, I put my stuff on, I go, 'Let's go see what the boys and the game has in store for me today,' " he said. "And you take it as it comes. Like I got two guys I gotta send out right now and I hate it. I [stinkin'] hate this day. This guy's gonna cry in my locker room."

He paused.

"Been there," he said.

He pawed at the grass with his foot, which seemed to jog his memory of those 45 minutes he'd spent on the fungo bat, his words bringing the morning to his ballplayers and those redundant drills into the daily barometer.

"Let's go guys!" he'd shouted. "What're we doin? What're we doin'?"

And they'd do it again.

"Who's the cut-off man?" he'd demanded. "Let's go! Let's go!"

And they'd do it again.

"Guys," he'd hollered, "what changes? First and third delayed steal. What changes? Just follow the rule of the play! Follow the rule of the play! Believe me, we're doing it for a reason!"

And they'd do it again.

"Boys," he cried, "we're done! Let's go hit! Nice goin'!"

A clinic shrunk into those 45 minutes, Showalter hitting lefty, shooting for holes, aiming for something like perfection, finding what was out there in the day for him. If you ever hoped to take seven weeks of spring training and cram it into 45 minutes it would look like Monday morning at Ed Smith Stadium, Buck Showalter at the point, urging, "Game speed, here we go!" No music. No idle conversation. No standing around. A dozen-and-a-half guys inching toward April, finding their baseball legs, starting to feel it again, praising each other with atta-boys and there-ya-goes.

Showalter had loved that. All of it, even the parts that weren't so precise. They'd come. Maybe that's what had been waiting for him Monday, why he'd shaved when he hates shaving but he's the manager of the Baltimore Orioles and should look the part, why he'd neglected that pile of books he'd like to read but hasn't gotten to because there are so many other things to do, why he'd have time to scan headlines on his computer and call his two grown children to "make sure their lives are all right" and then get on with the baseball but little else.

So, yeah, he's coming up on 60. He was asked if it'd made him any more introspective, now four weeks into another spring and 18 seasons in this job and nearly 40 since the New York Yankees drafted him, and Showalter said it was hardly possible.

"I always have been," he said. "I've always been able to take in the moment and, 'All right, slow down. You may not pass this way again.' Something with my kids. Something with a player. Something as simple as Adam Jones having a baby. Knowing what he was like the first day he got here, and seeing the man and the husband and the father he's become. Those are things, those are real."