Adam Ottavino is one of the rare people who got to live out his childhood dream of playing baseball for the team he grew up watching and playing for the manager who helmed it. Maybe the reverence for Buck Showalater came from his father John, a stage actor and a local umpire, who loved Showalter as the Yankees skipper.
But once Ottavino was in Queens playing for him, he developed a new appreciation for the veteran manager.
“Buck was my dad’s favorite manager when we were younger, so I was a big fan from a distance but never really thought I’d play for the guy,” the Mets reliever told the Daily News on Sunday night at Citi Field. “He stopped managing after the Orioles for a bit there and I didn’t see it coming. But then the stars just sort of aligned.”
The stars came out of alignment Sunday with Showalter’s two-year stint with the Mets coming to an end. The Mets fired the 67-year-old manager before the final game of the season in order to let David Stearns, the new president of baseball operations who was announced Monday, bring in his own skipper.
While the news may not have been shocking to fans who have been calling for Showalter’s ouster all season, the clubhouse was caught off guard by the timing.
Showalter took some players into his office after he made the announcement. Word soon filtered through the clubhouse. Others found out through social media, or, in the case of Ottavino, through his mom, Eve.
The news wasn’t exactly welcome. Several players had voiced their support for Showalter in recent weeks and there had been some hope that Showalter might return for the final year of his contract.
“I was really upset,” Alonso said. “He’s an unbelievable manager. I think he’s a great mentor and I think that he does a great job of understanding his personnel, not just their talents and what they do day to day on the field. I think that he understands how they tick and how each guy ticks on the roster as an individual.
“But again, that’s something that’s out of my control.”
It’s a business decision. These are pros, so they understand. Stearns rightfully wants to bring in his own manager. But business decisions aren’t always popular.
The Mets know the best way to keep personnel around is to win. They didn’t do that enough this season, which brought back some uncomfortable reminders of seasons past. Alonso, Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil have played for countless managers and executives in their Mets careers. But this was different.
This was different than in 2017 when Terry Collins was coming to the end of his career. It was different than when the Mets fired Mickey Callaway after three seasons of ineptitude. It was different than when the Mets fired a well-liked, but overmatched Luis Rojas.
Alonso, Nimmo and McNeil no longer play bit parts. They’re key characters and have been supplemented with elite players like Lindor and a slew of high-priced, now-departed free agents.
The clubhouse conclusion: The manager is only as good as the players on the field.
“It’s tough to see him go because I feel like, obviously, it came down to us,” Nimmo said. “We didn’t perform the way that we were supposed to, we didn’t meet the expectations that we were supposed to as the as a team and as the players. So yeah, I do feel like, we had something to do with him being fired.”
“Truthfully, we didn’t play well enough for him,” Ottavino added. “We didn’t get where we needed to go. But certainly, it was nothing that he did. He was awesome.”
The former Yankees, Orioles, Diamondbacks and Rangers manager didn’t want any sort of celebration from his players or even the media. To him, the job is to absorb the criticism from the media. Everyone is “somebody’s son,” is an oft-repeated phrase. He didn’t always like the way the New York media played up negative storylines and ignored the positives, even when there were only few. He rarely ripped players publicly and kept discipline and difficult conversations internal.
But he still got that celebration. Bench coach Eric Chavez had the players come out on the field for an ovation while Showalter exchanged the lineup cards. He said Chavez must have used a “cattle prod.” He didn’t like the attention.
Lindor patted him on the back during a mound visit.
“I said, ‘I love you, and you’re right where you need to be,’” the shortstop said.
The Mets still want Showalter in a dugout. But it won’t be theirs.
Monday marks the start of yet another new era for a team that seems to embark on them every few years. It’s another new era for Showalter too, who has often mentioned his wife’s knack for upping the resale values of their houses in a show of gallows humor. In this business, coaches, managers and executives are often hired to be fired.
The stars aligned for long enough that Ottavino was able to tell Showalter that he was his dad’s favorite manager. The manager had his eyes on his player.
“I told Buck that,” Ottavino said. “Buck said that he wanted to be my favorite manager.”
Abbey Mastracco
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