Buck Showalter (AP)
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Thits was a phone call during the 2010 season. Buck Showalter was discussing the potential to become the Orioles’ manager and, at some point during the conversation, asked my opinion of the job.
I thought it was the worst possible place for someone likely getting his last chance to manage in the majors. He was taking over not only a bad team, but a team with a horrible farm system and dubious ownership — a triumvirate that would undermine the managerial clone of Joe McCarthy and Tony La Russa.
And, of course, he was going to the AL East, where the Yankees and Red Sox were long-running, successful, financial super powers while Tampa Bay was perhaps the greatest guerilla baseball operation in history.
I told Buck, “Even if you did a great job, how would anyone know? You could do the greatest job in history and have no chance to finish better than fourth.” I thought Buck Showalter was committing career suicide.
THIS was a series of text messages shortly after Bobby Valentine formally became manager of the Red Sox last December. I congratulated him and mentioned how happy he had looked at the press conference. He seemed to be floating.
It was not hard to figure out why. This almost certainly was Valentine’s last chance as a major league manager, as well. But what a chance. When he had taken over the Rangers, Mets and the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan, each was a long-standing dead franchise. Valentine did not have to manage as much as he had to resurrect a team from the bottom.
Even with the historic September 2011 collapse in the recent past, Valentine appeared to be taking over a ready-to-win-from-Day-1 group. In the 10 seasons from 2003-11, only the Yankees (975) won more games than the Red Sox (932), and only the Cardinals had captured as many World Series (two). Valentine was about to manage Jon Lester, Josh Beckett, Clay Buchholz, David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford as part of a $175 million payroll.
I thought Valentine had fallen into a great situation and congratulated him on just that.
WE LOVE baseball because there are predictions and expectations, but ultimately no scripts that honor them.
As Showalter’s Orioles have demonstrated yet again. They were roundly expected to finish last — again. Instead, Showalter has navigated Baltimore into contention. He just might win his third AL Manager of the Year award. The Orioles are talking about extending his contract. If he ever guides a team to a championship or two, then William Nathaniel “Buck” Showalter just might end up in Cooperstown.
Showalter grew up an admirer of Bear Bryant — something he picked up as a boy from his father, as they would make the long car trip on Saturday mornings from the Florida Panhandle to Alabama home games. Showalter quite often would turn on the Southern aspects of his voice to cite a famous quote he liked best about Bryant: “Bear Bryant can take his’n and beat your’n, or he can take your’n and beat his’n.”
Well, it turns out Showalter has a lot of Bear in him. He now has laid the seeds for winning in four places. As the 2012 Yankees and Rays may attest, he certainly can beat your’n.
VALENTINE is not going to Cooperstown. In fact, I wonder if he ever works in baseball again after this disastrous soap opera of a season. I have heard even ESPN probably wouldn’t have him back.
In the past, he brought improvement of the team along with the controversy. But the 2012 Red Sox have plummeted to an on- and off-field embarrassment. What percentage of it is his fault almost is beside the point. Valentine has more enemies than any other three men in the game combined, including Showalter, who might rank second on this list.
In the past, what protected Valentine from having his antagonists completely define him was his talent for managing, notably the ability to make a club better, especially early in his tenure. But in Boston he has added more adversaries without the shield of winning. His enemies now are getting the first and last words.
Valentine, despite advancing age and tortured knees, always had looked spry, the most energetic guy in the room. These days he appears old, beaten, pep-less. In other words, nothing like the guy who was floating at a press conference just nine months ago.
FULL disclosure: I like Showalter and Valentine a great deal. No 50 other people combined have taught me more about baseball than those two. And though the game is filled with knowledgeable folks, the best you are going to get from me is that someone else is the third-smartest baseball person I have ever met.
Covering Showalter as a coach and then a manager in the early 1990s was like taking a masters course in the sport. He revealed inside parts of the game I had no idea existed. Not a day goes by that I do not apply some element he taught me about strategy, team building or philosophy on winning and losing.
Valentine was a finishing school. If you gained his trust, he would dissect a play or a personnel move into so many granular parts that you could not believe he had thought of them all.
Did I see the flaws? Of course. Some of the worst arguments I have had with those I covered happened with Showalter and Valentine — heck, one time Valentine and I had an on-field spring-training heated exchange that lasted about an hour and was stopped only by the playing of the Canadian and American national anthems.
But I like the feistiness, that neither suffers fools well. If you asked a question or made a statement as the farm director, general manager or guy covering the team, you better have really thought it out and be able to defend it or expect to be challenged. That bothered many around them. I thought it should make you better equipped to do your job.
They have been polarizing men. Too ambitious, too competitive and too confident, a brew that leads them to believe they could do anyone in the organization’s job better — and often act upon that belief to their own detriment.
They went from sitting side-by-side as ESPN analysts to their last chances to do what they believe they do best — manage a baseball team — side-by-side in the AL East. I thought it was a great move for one, horrible for the other. I was right, while being as wrong as I’ve ever been.
joel.sherman@nypost.com