My guess: Buck last night was pondering London's fearsome giant "fatberg" - a blob of disposable diapers, grease and turd - currently clogging the sewers and terrifying more Brits than ISIS will do with a thousand dumpster bombs. In Buck's mind, he was inside a hermetically sealed space suit and blasting the thing with laser jets of hot water. That's what caused the twitches. He was shooting the fatberg. Or maybe thinking about growing tomatoes, like Earl Weaver did.
He's managed 19 years now, and he's approaching Gene Mauch status for failure. No world championship, no World Series appearance, nothing. His career post-season record: 9-14. In his eight years with the O's... one division title (2014) which quickly went nowhere, and nothing since. And not this year, either.
I've had a love-hate thing with Showalter for many years. I remember him pulling his starters in a final regular season game, allowing the Angels to win and take home field advantage over the Yankees. I felt he was settling scores, because of his firing. But in recent years, he seems to have softened on the Yankees. There have been stories about acts of respect, courtesies toward the franchise. If he were to leave - well - beating Baltimore wouldn't be the same.
I wonder if there could be a final act with the Yankees? Could he come home, to where he started? Listen: Buck is just 61. (Joe Torre came to the Yankees at age 55; Joe Girardi is now 52.) Nobody has ever faulted his knowledge of baseball. Twice - with the Yankees and the Diamondbacks - he helped build World Series champions, but was fired the year before those teams won. My guess is that he would make a great general manager or - at least - an adviser to Cashman (if that's the only way Hal would bring him on.)
But take his picture, folks. Eight years without a world series game - that's a long time in the AL East. And it might be coming to an end.
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Buck has become almost a legendary literary character, like the Flying Dutchman.
For not trusting in Mariano, he is doomed to wander the baseball world forever, never quite attaining the World Series. He builds the Arizona team that beats the Yankees in 2001—but before they can do so, he is fired, his ambitions thwarted by the Mets, of all teams, in 1999.
He makes the Rangers winners for awhile, but is gone before they're in the Series. The Orioles win a division title—but lose the ALCS in 4 straight.
Shelby Foote wrote how for every 14-year-old Southern boy (he might have added "white boy," but never mind) it is always just before 2 p.m. at Gettysburg, just before Pickett's Charge.
For Buck Showalter, it's always the bottom of the eighth inning in Seattle, on October 8, 1995. This is what he sees when he appears to be staring at the fatberg.
The Yanks are clinging to a one-run lead, the bases are loaded, David Cone has thrown over 140 pitches, and Doug Strange is walking up to the plate. Out in the bullpen, his dazzling new phenom is warmed up and raring to go. He's already shut down the Mariners twice in the series.
But no. Buck stays in the dugout. Cone walks in the winning run, the game is lost in extra innings, he is fired.
Off he goes, the Flying Dutchman of baseball, doomed never to win it all, or stay in one place.
Speaking of legendary literary characters, this Horace Clarke is quite a literary commentator.
I second that. The man has a way with words.
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