Mets manager Buck Showalter has experienced highs and lows in New York
Mets manager Buck Showalter talks on the field before Game 2 against the San Diego Padres, Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022, in New York. Credit: AP/John Minchillo
Buck Showalter knows what it means to win here. He won 313 games as manager of the Yankees in the 1990s and spearheaded the Mets’ 101-win regular season.
But he knows what it means to lose here, too.
Most people around these parts might equate Showalter’s postseason resume with the 1995 Yankees season, one that ended in the 11th inning of Game 5 of the Division Series against Seattle. It featured a gut-punch in the form of Ken Griffey Jr. barreling past a throw to Jim Leyritz at home in Seattle’s Kingdome.
But Showalter has felt heartbreak in Flushing, too, such as in 1999, when Todd Pratt’s walk-off home run in Game 4 of the NLDS snuck past the glove of the Diamondbacks’ Steve Finley to help the Mets advance to the next round.
The camera usually doesn’t pan to the losing manager in clinching situations like this — it’s generally too busy concentrating on the pandemonium on the field. But if it had, it probably would have showcased Showalter’s trademark grimace — the one that tells you what it’s like to love a sport that doesn’t always love you back.
On Saturday evening, he again faced elimination. The fact that he is one of the winningest managers of all time does not mask the fact that he’s also one without a World Series ring. And though this sort of thing doesn’t get easier, Showalter said he’s learned from it all, as hard as learning from this sort of thing can be.
“You can want something too much — players, coaches, managers,” he said before the Mets took on the Padres in Game 2 in the NL Wild Card Series. “You can want something too much, but to temper that because you can do all these things that loosen people up. All of a sudden, the magnitude of what you’re trying to accomplish — what’s tough is you’ve played all these games, and you’ve got a certain mindset and mentality, and then that sense of finality comes in there. You’re just looking for something to get a toehold and get some things going that you know you’re capable of.”
When asked if managers, like players, can “press,” he laughed ruefully. Showalter is a baseball lifer who came into the day with a track record of turning teams around, but October hasn’t been kind.
Going into Saturday, his record in the playoffs was 9-15, or a .375 winning percentage. And despite the many accolades that follow him — the way he’s deftly managed a clubhouse and fans and the media this year — that remains a millstone around his neck.
The three-time manager of the year is in 19th place on the all-time wins list (1,652), the only manager to bring both the Yankees and Mets to the playoffs and the only manager who’s managed four different teams to the playoffs without a ring to call his own (Dusty Baker won the World Series as a player).
So yes, a manager can press, he said. Though if done right, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
“If somebody says somebody pressing? I hope so because that means you care,” he said. “Not just in sports, but we’re all faced with things in life where it’s like, gosh, let’s try something else.”
Showalter has two more seasons on his contract after this one and, at 66, he’s said numerous times during the year that he doesn’t intend to do this forever. Reasonably, this team, these few years, could be his last shot. Either way, he doesn’t intend to end his career staying in the same box, afraid to change.
“That’s one thing about experience,” he said. “I tell the players at times with different stuff, listen, I’ve done what you’re doing and it didn’t work out. So I think it would be a really poor thing to say about somebody if they didn’t adjust to the things that life throws at them and experiences that they get.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.