Oh, For Buck's Sake!

See what I did there? That's not starting to get old already, or anything...


Everybody is weighing in. PTI. Around the Horn. The New York Daily News. The blogosphere. And now, me.

Buck Showalter made several comments to a reporter for a story in the upcoming issue of Men's Journal. Among the more incendiary of his remarks were saying that he doesn't like how Derek Jeter attempts to "take a dive" (my words, not his) on every close pitch to draw a free trip to first base, and how he would like to see how well Theo Epstein could do if he didn't have a large payroll to play around with in Boston.

It is always very risky to attack specific people in such interviews. Let us say that he said he hated "certain players" who would try for the fake hit-by-pitch, or "those who run teams with gigantic payrolls" should try it with less. He still gets the same point across, and everyone knows exactly who he means.

But those words simply do not have the same impact with their generalization. By being specific and naming two extremely visible members of rival ballclubs, Showalter is essentially calling out the Red Sox and the Yankees as a group. He is saying publicly in the national media what he has been saying locally in Baltimore since he arrived in August: Baltimore is no longer a pushover, and we will no longer act like pushovers.

From the success the Orioles had in the second half of the season last year, to the "movie"* that he had the club watch in Sarasota at the beginning of the spring, to these comments and beyond, Showalter is trying to create that famous "culture change" that every club is supposed to go through before they can win.

*Something I wonder is how often these things actually happen. We usually hear, when a team begins to win, that there was some catalyst or series of catalysts that caused the change. However, what I want to know is whether it happens all the time and because most of the teams don't win we don't create the association of coincidence in our collective minds.


Just one example: the "Orioles Magic" video from several years back. That was supposed to be a catalyst for the Orioles, but it couldn't make up for the fact that they weren't any good.


I'm betting on it happening more often than we want to believe.


I'm not a true believer in "culture" when it comes to athletics. I'm a believer in talent and how it is used. So the comments don't affect me at all as a purely motivational tool, and I don't see them affecting the team. However, that doesn't mean that the fans shouldn't be very interested in the comments and the response.

One of the biggest complaints you hear again and again about media coverage around Baltimore is that it is somehow biased against the Orioles; that national reporters have something against the club and thus they focus on the Yankees and Red Sox instead. Well they are right, but not for the reason they think.

The national media covers teams other than the Orioles because those are the teams people care about. The ratings are higher whenever the discussion turns to the Yankees or Red Sox or Dodgers or Cubs or Giants because there are simply more people who actively care about those clubs. I say "actively" because I feel that Baltimore can generate that kind of fan interest, but the losing has brought the numbers down too low to register on the national radar.

The other problem is that the Orioles, for the past decade, have been, very simply, boring. When you are a reporter, a team that loses consistently and doesn't make many major player moves--a boring team--is a terrible assignment. That is what the Orioles have been. Other than a short period in the second half of 2004 and first half of 2005, they have been constant losers. Other than the Bedard trade in 2007, they haven't made moves that would create a shockwave around the sport.

These comments are meant to create that shockwave. They cause the media to look in the direction of Baltimore not only to judge what Showalter has to say, but also to see what the Orioles are doing. They took some notice with the way the club finished the 2010 season, but now they can see a team that quietly worked to build on that late-season success with an improved club that can compete on a more-even field with the Yankees and Red Sox, and even Tampa bay and Toronto. They won't win the division, and they may not even make .500 yet, but this is a different team.

No matter what you believe in when it comes to baseball, you cannot be an Orioles fan and not love what Buck Showalter said.