Keith Mills: Showalter Brought Classic, Winning 'Formula' To Orioles

When Art Modell hired Ted Marchibroda to be the first head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, Ozzie Newsome, then the team’s vice president of player personnel, asked Marchibroda what kind of players he wanted him to draft and sign.

“Tough, passionate guys who loved to play,” Marchbroda told him.

That simple, yet incredibly astute answer is still the mantra of Ozzie’s personnel staff today.

Marchibroda was a wise man and in my opinion one of the most underrated coaches in NFL history. Tough and passionate himself, he coached the Baltimore Colts to three straight division championships in the mid 1970’s and learned very quickly in his time in the NFL that you don’t win championships without talented players. Or passionate and tough ones.

Marchibroda’s team personified that philosophy. Lydell Mitchell was one of the toughest athletes I’ve ever been around. So were Bert Jones, Mike Barnes, Bruce Laird, Joe Ehrman, Stan White and Freddie Cook. The list could go on.

Marchibroda also knew Baltimore because he went out and met the fans. He grew up in western Pennsylvania and had heard about the legendary passion of the Colts fans and told me when he took over as the Ravens head coach in February of 1996 that he and Joe Thomas built the Colts of the 1970’s to reflect the fan base.

He and Ozzie did the same thing with the Ravens and though Marchibroda did not have a winning season as the team’s head coach, he left Brian Billick with a roster full of talented and tough players. Ray Lewis and Jon Ogden were obviously bursting with talent but were also as tough as any left tackle and middle linebacker in the history of the game. Add to that Rob Burnett, Rod Woodson, Peter Boulware, Jamie Sharper, Brad Jackson, Kim Herring, and Mike Flynn and the foundation had been set for the Ravens to make their first Super Bowl run.

Ozzie then drafted guys like Duane Starks and Edwin Mulitalo and signed free agents such as Sam Gash and Shannon Sharpe and the team won its first championship in 2001. Twelve years later the Ravens won another by following the same blueprint: Talent + toughness + passion equals success.

Buck Showalter did the same thing in Baltimore, minus the championships.

Buck understood Baltimore. He loved the Orioles fans here because he was one of them. A student of the history of the game he realized from his first day here what Baltimore was about. Tough, blue collar, no nonsense and no excuses.

Granted the Orioles championship teams of the 1960s, '70s and '80s featured some of the greatest players of all time – Brooks and Frank Robinson, Jim Palmer, Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray. But they also featured some of the toughest in Brooks and Frank, Boog Powell, Paul Blair, Davey Johnson, Mike Flanagan, Rick Dempsey, Ken Singleton and Al Bumbry.

Bumbry was the personification of toughness. He was a former Marine who once walked 10 miles to attend a major league tryout camp that was witnessed by former Orioles scout Walter Youse.

Buck knew those teams because he studied them and grew up watching them in Florida and later at Mississippi State, like I did here in Baltimore. One of the first things Buck ever asked me when he learned I grew up here was this: Who did I learn the game from and what made those teams so special?

I told him we learned watching the Orioles. So did our fathers and high school coaches, who coached the legendary Oriole way on the sandlots and high school fields of Baltimore the same way Cal Ripken Sr. and Earl Weaver did with the Orioles at Memorial Stadium.

The Orioles had some of the best defensive teams in the history of Major League Baseball. Teams that rarely, if ever, made a fundamental mistake. Throw in a pitching staff that threw strikes and rarely walked batters and an offense that could also bunt, run and play small ball while Boog and Frank and Eddie and Cal hit home runs, and you win five division championships, five American League pennants and three World Series titles in 17 years.

Buck Showalter was an Orioles fan long before he took over as manager in August of 2010 but he became a fan of the Orioles fans when he got here.

That’s because, again, he was one of them. The son of a high school teacher and principal, he grew up in a no-nonsense blue collar house that rewarded hard work and tolerated no excuses.

When he arrived here the Orioles hadn’t had a winning season since 1997. You know the story: 14 years of frustration amid a lot of losses and increasing fan apathy. At the time trying to compete in the American League East with the talent level on the roster was almost impossible, but it was getting better thanks to the rock solid Nick Markakis and Brian Roberts, the Adam Jones-Chris Tillman-George Sherrill trade engineered by Andy MacPhail and the emergence of number-one draft picks Matt Wieters and Brian Matusz, 5th round pick Jake Arrieta and the continued development of Manny Machado in the minor leagues

MacPhail left after the 2011 season, replaced by Dan Duquette. Before Duquette arrived, though, Buck orchestrated another one of the great trades in Orioles history: Brett Jacobson and Jim Hoey to the Milwaukee Brewers for J.J. Hardy.

Hardy was the perfect Buck Showalter player. A consummate professional who ran the Orioles defense, rarely if ever made a fundamental mistake, hit and hit with power, and was a quiet but powerful clubhouse leader.

Duquette arrived in November of 2011 and, like Buck, was very familiar with the Orioles. One of Duquette’s mentors with the Milwaukee Brewers was Youse, the legendary long time scout for the Orioles, Angels and Brewers and the architect of one of greatest amateur baseball teams of all time – the Leone’s-Johnny’s baseball club of Baltimore.

It is true Buck and Duquette didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but for most of their tenure with the Orioles they co-existed well. Duquette’s first moves included trading Koji Uehara to the Rangers for Chris Davis and sending Tommy Hunter and then Jeremy Guthrie to the Rockies for Jason Hammel. Buck himself picked up Darren O'Day on the waiver wire just before Duquette was hired.

Suddenly, the doormat Orioles were doormats no more as Duquette gave Buck more players who fit his criteria for a successful major leaguer, as well as the time-honored Orioles-Ravens not-so-secret formula: talent + toughness + passion equals success.

One of Buck’s strengths was he also knew the American League East. He was part of it with the Yankees in the 1990’s, laying the foundation that eventually led to four Yankees World Series titles from 1996 to 2000. He knew it would take talented players who were not afraid of the big stage and a tough “no fear-of-failure” manager to put them in position to be successful.

No disrespect to Earl Weaver or Davey Johnson but Buck is the best manager I’ve ever been around. There weren’t Hall of Famers up and down his lineup card like Weaver’s or a starting pitcher like Johnson had in Mike Mussina, but Buck knew he had the foundation of some very good major league players who were not intimated at all by the American League East. Throw in locker room leaders like Jones, Hardy, Wieters, O’Day and Davis and the Orioles were ready for whatever the vaunted American League East threw at them.

So he molded them in 2011 and by 2012, when Manny Machado joined the team in early August, the Orioles were in second place, 5 1/2 games back of the Yankees. They would eventually beat the Rangers in the wild card and lose to the Yankees in the Division playoffs, but the message had been sent to the rest of the division… the Orioles were back.

And so were the fans. A new generation of Orioles fan had bought into Buck Ball and Camden Yards was again the place to be. Two years later, that point was driven home again when they won the Division and eventually lost to the Royals in the ALCS.

One of the first things Buck did when he took over as manager was walk his 2011 Orioles over to the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards, which housed the history of Orioles baseball. He showed them the jerseys worn by Brooks and Frank. Made them watch videos of Cal and Eddie and made them aware of what it meant to wear the Orioles orange and black and what it meant for the players to respect the fans.

Adam Jones personified what it meant to be a current Oriole. Talented, and as tough as any Oriole ever he also bought into what Buck was selling: love of the game, the passion to play and the toughness needed to compete in the American League East.

It was an odd marriage. Grizzled, veteran, white manager and young, proud and brutally honest African-American budding star who would eventually rewrite the rules of getting involved in the community, become a perennial all-star and who asked Buck one simple question before he signed his record-setting contract in 2012 – was Buck here for the long haul?

The answer was "yes," and the two became the faces of the Orioles. Even when Manny Machado was developing into a superstar right before our eyes – Adam was the rock of the franchise on the field and Buck was its fearless and caring keeper of the Orioles' keys off it.

And now they’re both gone. It’s a punch to the gut for Orioles fans everywhere, especially those who reluctantly joined the party back in 2011 when Buck said, "Hey, trust us, Orioles fans, we’re here for you."

And trust him, they did. The fans kept coming back, their faith and love for the Orioles fully restored thanks to this fascinating 62-year-old baseball lifer who restored the pride of an entire region in one of our most trusted entities – the Baltimore Orioles.

Thank you, Buck Showalter. Thanks for passing our way.