COMMENTARY : Showalter Can’t Find Replacement Counsel

William Nathaniel Showalter Jr., known as Bill, was a hero to his son in a way all fathers hope they can be heroes. He was principal at Century (Florida) High School in the 1960s, and one year there was a teachers’ strike in Century, and Showalter was forced to choose between the school department and his teachers. He went out with the teachers. His son was in the sixth grade at the time, and was supposed to have a replacement teacher, from one of the local churches. Bill Showalter took the boy out of school.

“It’s when I learned how to play golf,” Buck Showalter said Monday (January 23). “My dad would drop me off at the golf course in the morning and pick me up later in the afternoon. He told me he’d rather have me on the golf course than be taught by a replacement teacher.”

In a few weeks, Buck Showalter--William Nathaniel Showalter III--will have to decide whether or not he wants to manage replacement baseball players. He will make an appearance at a dinner in Columbus, Ohio, the second week of February, then fly to Tampa for a charity function in which Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is involved. The next day he is supposed to drive from Tampa to Fort Lauderdale with Yankees general manager Gene Michael, and get ready for replacement pitchers and replacement catchers to masquerade as the New York Yankees on Feb. 17.

“I wish I could talk to my dad about all this,” Showalter said. Bill Showalter died in 1991. “I mentioned that to my mom on the phone the other night and she said, ‘You know what he’d tell you.’ ”

All this time after the teachers’ strike in Century, Buck Showalter has his own strike. He is the one who has to pick a side, in a fight where both sides have lost already.

“I keep hoping that something will still happen, that it won’t come to (replacement players),” Buck Showalter said last week. “It’s going to be a personal decision for me the way it’s going to be a personal decision for all the other managers and coaches. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just know I’m sorry it’s ever come to this in baseball. Because the game deserves better, from all of us.”

He is used to apologizing by now. Showalter says he has spent the winter “making one apology for our game after another.” He has talked on the telephone to his coaches and to other managers and he talks to his ballplayers all the time. And Showalter, who honors baseball and the Yankees’ uniform as much as anyone ever could, keeps trying to imagine himself on the field in Fort Lauderdale, putting replacement pitchers and replacement catchers through workouts and pretending it is all real.

“It’s a nightmare,” he said.

He had come up from Florida to attend the New York Baseball Writers dinner. He had been presented the award as American League Manager of the Year, and presented the National League’s award to Felipe Alou of the Expos. Monday night, he would go to Madison Square Garden to watch the Rangers play, and to visit with Rangers coach Colin Campbell, who became a friend last summer. All last week, Showalter looked forward to the hockey game more than the dinner. It was the wrong sport for him, but a real game. It was a real season.

“You know what I think about all the time?” Showalter said. “I think about how long ago August 12 (when the baseball strike began) seems. Sometimes I want to be on a field so bad, I feel like I’d want to manage at one of those fantasy camps, just to be in contact with the game again. I remember one of my coaches asking me why I chose to address the team before that game on August 12. I said, ‘I have a sneaking suspicion I won’t be seeing them again this year.’ If that was the case, I wanted them to know how proud I was of what they’d accomplished.”

If nothing changes between the owners and the players, Showalter will be asked to show up and manage strangers in a few weeks. The young manager is not one of theinnocent bystanders who have lost their jobs because of this ugly fight between players and owners. It does not mean he should be caught in the crossfire.

Showalter is not as lucky as Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston, who will be spared managing fraud players because the Blue Jays have announced they will bring in a replacement manager and coaches. Showalter works for George Steinbrenner, who will expect him to be in Fort Lauderdale no matter what.

“This is usually one of my favorite times of the year,” Showalter said. “You’re so worn out when the season is over, but around the first of the year, you can’t help yourself, you feel the bounce coming back into your step, and all of a sudden, you can’t wait to get started. Spring training is the time for your best-case scenario.”

There was a pause and Showalter said, “Except when it becomes a worst-case scenario.”

He is one of the best managers in baseball, one of the game’s true gentlemen. He was 70-43 when the strike took away his chance to put the Yankees in the playoffs for the first time in 13 years. Five months later, the strike does not end. In a few weeks, Showalter will be asked to make a ridiculous choice about the only job he ever really wanted. Only the sport of baseball at this time could ask someone like Showalter to choose between his own players and the Yankees.

He is caught between loyalty to the man who pays him and fierce loyalty to the players he might have taken all the way to the World Series, players who are fiercely loyal to him. He does not want to lose those players when the strike is over. He also does not want to lose his chance to manage them. He knows that managers who were once strong union men--Don Baylor, Phil Garner, Bob Boone--are expected to show up at spring training. Other than Cito Gaston, they all are expected to show up. It does not make up Buck Showalter’s mind.

He is Bill Showalter’s son. When the strike was over in Century, his father got another job with the education department. It was not as principal of Century High.