COMMENTARY : Showalter Stays Calm, Yankees Stay in Race

The windbag owner runs his mouth, about everything, to the point where you wonder if he should be sedated occasionally. Irrelevant controversies about players like Steve Howe and Jim Leyritz are treated as big as the Waco hearings.

No one knows when Darryl Strawberry is coming. Danny Tartabull is the biggest baby around the Yankees since they had to get Eddie Lee Whitson out from under his bed when it was time to pitch. Through it all, the manager keeps his team in the race in the American League East. People lose control of themselves around the Yankees all the time. Buck Showalter isn’t one of them.

In a season at Yankee Stadium that sometimes has felt like a trap, Showalter has carried himself like a star. To talk about mistakes Showalter has made is like talking about an out Tony Gwynn makes after he has gone 3 for 4.

“When will you feel as if you’re really in the race again?” Showalter was asked one morning last week,about 9:30, sitting in his office with coaches Rick Down and Brian Butterfield.

Showalter had been furiously making some notes at his desk. There was a stack of newspaper clippings next to his notebook, filled with stories about a crazy week for the Yankees. Some of the stories suggested that things were about to fall apart for Showalter and his baseball team. Only now the Yankees had won four games in a row and were about to make it five on this day against the Rangers.

Showalter looked up and said quietly, “I’d like to just get to .500 and take it from there.”

Showalter said, “Let’s get to .500 and take our chances, OK?”

He would have a much better chance if he had another starting pitcher. Jimmy Key is gone. Melido Perez has been hurt. He got Scott Kamieniecki back a week ago. It doesn’t mean Showalter’s problems are any worse than Kevin Kennedy’s problems have been with the Red Sox.

But Showalter is still trying to win the American League East with three starting pitchers--Sterling Hitchcock, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera--who had a combined total of five wins before this season. He also has no designated hitter, because Tartabull seems to have no interest in playing until he is traded.

Showalter makes his lineup work with the players he has. He does this with skill and patience and more dignity than any Yankee manager since Dick Howser. Steinbrenner points fingers, Jack McDowell puts a finger in the air. But Showalter is the same when he spends nearly three months under .500 as he was a year ago when his team was running away with its division. If the Yankees do anything in August and September, it will be because the manager stayed in control of his clubhouse and his team when few managers could have.

If the Yankees were going to fall completely apart, they would have done it already. Their best chance yet came last week, after that doubleheader loss to the White Sox the other night that was as bad as the Yankees have looked since Showalter became the manager.

The Yankees did not fall apart. This is a team with flinty character. It all starts with the manager and his captain, Don Mattingly. So far the center of the Yankees has held. Only baseball idiots like Steinbrenner think chemistry does not matter around this particular baseball team, that all you need to understand everything are box scores.

“I tell these guys the same thing over and over again,” Showalter was saying. “I tell them that I trust them. I keep saying, ‘I trusted you last season and I trust you this season.’ I believe in the things I’ve preached to them all along, and I believe in them. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t change. I’ve been pretty consistent about that.”

He has seen plenty, from the time Key went down. He has seen good and bad over the first 80-plusgames. He has seen Tartabull quit on him, and seen Mattingly refuse to quit. And he has been bullied constantly by Steinbrenner, even if most of it has stayed behind closed doors. Now Steinbrenner says he wants Showalter and Gene Michael to talk about Tartabull in public the way they talk about Tartabull in meetings.

Steinbrenner said that if Michael and Showalter didn’t start being more honest, there would be trouble. Steinbrenner on honesty is always good for a laugh. He is an amazing hypocrite, after all these years, one for the ages. What Michael and Showalter should really do is tell everybody all the rotten things Steinbrenner says about all his players, and his coaches, all the time. Steinbrenner is always threatening his employees with lie-detector tests. Let’s have him take one once in a while, so we can scientifically test his devotion to Mattingly, for instance.

Once again, the Yankees don’t just try to climb over the other teams on their way to the top of the division, over the Orioles and Red Sox, but over their own owner as well, who creates distractions and bad feelings for sport.

Somehow Showalter works around Steinbrenner. Only now are people starting to figure out no Yankee manager has ever been better at it. And no Yankee manager under Steinbrenner has been better at holding a team together in trouble.

“I have never stopped believing in this team’s character,” Showalter says.

Character won’t win the A.L. Eastif the Yankees don’t get more pitching over the last 65 games. It does no good if the Yankees don’t keep hitting. But the Yankees are still here. So is Showalter. Maybe another manager would have been fired by now. Maybe another manager would have started to lose his team, or his head. Showalter has not. He does not turn 40 until next May, and he is already as good as there is.

The owner still goes out of his way to make him look like an errand boy sometimes. He sat behind the dugout in Detroit, taking notes. The other morning, Steinbrenner waited until Showalter’s office was filled with media people before he poked his head in and said, “You. Me. Five minutes.” Another meeting about nothing. Another waste of the manager’s time.

The Red Sox had their chance to run away. The Red Sox didn’t. Roger Clemens is hurt again and no one knows when Aaron Sele might be back. The Red Sox might have a second half like the Yankees’ first half. Last week there was some conversation among Showalter’s coaches about all the controversies of the previous week, both great and small. Finally, Down said, “Anybody notice we’ve won four in a row?”

“Me,” the manager said in a voice even quieter than before, and went back to making his notes, keeping his head down when people around him are losing theirs. It was a mistake to write his team off, the way it was a mistake to write off his first baseman.