Vast Times

Buck Showalter and the other, now irrelevant candidates for the Mets’ managerial opening were reportedly summoned to Steve Cohen’s home in Connecticut for their respective face-to-face interviews. They probably didn’t travel in quite the style that Casey Stengel did when he was accepting the keys to the Polo Grounds dugout sixty years ago. “We arrived in New York,” Edna Stengel recalled in Joe Durso’s biography Casey, “and were driven from the airport in a Rolls Royce. Casey wondered about it, so I said to him, ‘You’re returning to baseball in New York, Casey. We might as well go first-class.”

Of course Casey already had the job. He was the only candidate. New Mets president George Weiss, his partner in dynastic crime in the Bronx, had the call and he planned to make only one. “It was the fifth time in nearly 50 years that Stengel had marched on New York,” Durso reflected in a book published shortly after Casey’s retirement. “In 1912, eagerly, to join the Dodgers; in 1921, jubilantly, to become a Giant; in 1932; gratefully, to coach the Dodgers; in 1948, solemnly, to take over the Yankees, and now in October 1961, apprehensively, to direct the Mets.”

Five times back in town. Other than Billy Martin, that’s not something many a New York baseball man can say. Showalter is back for only a second time, although he does have one leg up on his original Mets predecessor. Casey Stengel, as you may have inferred if you weren’t already aware, had been around forever. When Casey managed his (or anybody’s) first Mets game, it happened 28 years after he first managed in the major leagues — or two fewer years than the epoch that spans the inaugural and next chapters of Buck Showalter’s managerial career.

Anything to be apprehensive about there as the Mets turn to someone who’s been around close to forever to take them to their next and hopefully gratifying era? Probably not. Not for us, who have been lately ill-served by trust placed in neophytes, and probably not for Showalter, who returns to the Big Apple with vast experience and all that confers, yet no doubt also totes serious hunger. His MLB résumé is impressive, what with generally positive results piloting the Yankees, the Diamondbacks, the Rangers and the Orioles, but it’s also incomplete. Stengel had won seven World Series prior to taking over the Mets, or seven more than Showalter has won.

The world changed plenty between Stengel getting promoted to skipper in Brooklyn in 1934 and the Mets first taking the field in 1962. The Ol’ Perfesser was 71, which was a number of years that was perceived in those days as absolutely ancient. Twenty-eight years was probably a longer time then that it is now, too, what with no YouTube clips making everything measurable by decades feel fairly recent.

Buck Showalter started doing what he’s going to do for the Mets in 2022 in 1992. It was a while ago. Six of his contemporaries are now in the Hall of Fame. One of them, Tony La Russa, shook himself loose from the plaque gallery in Cooperstown to lead the White Sox anew last year. He led them to a division title. Tony, who earned his first big league managerial spur in 1979, turned 77 during the playoffs. That’s older than Stengel ever was when he managed.

Vastness of experience is a detriment only if it goes stale. Showalter managed as recently as 2018 and had stayed in the game on the TV side. He wasn’t looking to step back from baseball. Buck was a young first-time manager in 1992 — 35 when he succeeded Stump Merrill on the other side of town, 39 by the time we learned he had succeeded in slowing if not stopping the Steinbrennerian revolving door from whirling. Buck did a good enough job in the Bronx that a person who didn’t care for the Yankees wasn’t sorry to see him go because maybe George would follow Showalter’s dismissal by hiring somebody who couldn’t carry Buck’s clipboard. He hired Joe Torre; Joe’s in the Hall of Fame now.

We took on Showalter’s D’backs in the 1999 NLDS and beat them. We had Bobby V. A smart manager — and Todd Pratt — is a good antidote to somebody else’s smart manager. Thirty years before, Gil Hodges took it to Earl Weaver; they’re both in the Hall of Fame now, too. Buck, it is generally agreed, has been a smart manager and a prepared manager. His vastly experienced profile may have fallen out of favor for a few years, with the Joe Espada and Matt Quatraro types more likely to be chosen for openings in many markets. But we saw Dusty Baker contest Tony La Russa in the ALDS this year, and Brian Snitker best Baker. Those young bench coaches Cohen, Sandy Alderson and Billy Eppler passed on might very well have their day, but for these Mets in this offseason, it’s the day of proven veterans, none more veteran and few having proven as much as Buck Showalter.

Will he prove the right fit at Citi Field? Vast experience will tell.