By JIM KEVLIN
‘What the heck are you doing here?” Buck Showalter said in surprise as he entered the ballroom at the swank Hyatt Sarasota for a mid-February speech.
“He was surprised to see me,” said Sam Nader, the former Oneonta mayor who’s been wintering in Venice, Fla. Buckwalter, currently the Baltimore Orioles manager, had gotten his start in 1985 and 1986 with the Oneonta Yankees, then owned by Nader.
Nader said he’d seen an item in the paper that Showalter, on Florida’s west coast for spring training, would be speaking at the February luncheon of the Sarasota Area Sports Authority.
“There’s the guy who gave me my first break, in Oneonta, N.Y. – a place you’ve never heard of,” Buck told the crowd, according to Foti.
During the 45-minute speech, “he kept referring back to Oneonta and Sam,” said the mayor’s pal. Said Sam, “He talked very favorably about Oneonta.”
Reached by phone the other day, Nader and Foti had just returned from an exhibition game between the Orioles and the Yankees, using tickets his former manager had given them.
Some tickets, too: They sat just behind Yankees GM Brian Cashman.(It was 73 degrees and clear the afternoon of Tuesday, March 22; meanwhile, 7 inches of snow were predicted locally.)
“He was quite a guy,” Nader recalled of Showalter. “He had his goals and objectives all set. As a matter of fact, I think we set a record for wins both years. He was a go-getter from the start.”
In 1987, George Steinbrenner sent an envoy, Sal Smith, to scout the Yankee minor-league teams for talent.
At Damaschke Field, he asked Nader, “Who do you like?”
“Take a look at the manager,” Sam said.
It wasn’t long before Steinbrenner called up Showalter to manage the Yanks. (In the 20 years since, he managed the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers before joining the Orioles.)
“When Buck was appointed (to the Yankees,) Sal said, ‘Buck ought to kiss you’,” Nader recalled.
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