SARASOTA, Fla. -- When the players have gone and the sun is getting ready to set on the beautifully renovated Ed Smith Stadium complex, it is not unusual to see a lone figure steering a golf cart slowly around the facility and examining everything from the landscaping to the light fixtures.
Buck Showalter will tell you that the Orioles' scenic spring training home is the creation of architect Janet Marie Smith and the Angelos family, but it's telling how much time he spends helping them perfect it after working all day trying to rebuild a broken baseball franchise.
This is how Showalter got his long-held reputation as one of baseball's great micro-managers, but he just might have found the perfect team for it. The Orioles have been doing things wrong for so long that everything he does seems right.
The training facility is just an example. The new baseball operations center is so functional it almost runs itself, which is exactly how Showalter envisions his team operating when everyone's priorities are aligned and everything is in its proper place. His attention to detail is legendary and he will not apologize for it. It's just a matter of it translating into winning baseball, which did not happen in his first full season last year.
"What people miss about the Oriole Way, it was efficiency," Showalter said. "They did things efficiently. When they made a mistake and they did — they messed up a rundown, they messed up a relay — they learned from it and they corrected themselves from within. We want to get to the point where we have a standard that everybody else has a stake in, because sooner or later, if it has to come from me every night and the staff every night, we've got the wrong players."
No doubt, there are a lot of people out there who think the Orioles do have the wrong players, but the players clearly think they have the right manager. If Showalter's desire to engineer a perfect baseball environment didn't sit well in some other locale, it has been very well-received in the Orioles clubhouse.
ShortstopJ.J. Hardynoticed right off when he arrived at spring training last year. Showalter never spent a game at short during his seven-year minor league playing career, and yet he seemed to have a sense for every subtlety of the position.
"There was a time when wewere playing the Rays and Johnny Damon hit a ball in the six hole and I knew even if I fielded the ball cleanly I didn't have any chance to get him," Hardy said. " So I automatically threw to third in case the runner rounded the base too far. I don't think we got the out, and I've had managers call me out and ask why I didn't try to make the play at first, but when I came in, he's saying 'Good thinking.' It's like he's seeing the same thing you're seeing.
"I think he has a way of putting himself in everybody's shoes, and that's why he is so aware of everything."
Catcher Matt Wieters could probably come up with a similar anecdote, but he's content to just marvel at how many balls Showalter is able to keep in the air.
"There is not one detail that Buck is not involved with and makes decisions about," he said. "He is the most attentive manager or coach I've seen."
There might be a player or two who doesn't appreciate that, but Wieters believes — like any good catcher —that you can't have enough information and it's important to be in complete control of the game.
"I think so," he said. "We're playing in the AL East against the teams that are spending all the money. That attention to detail can win a game for us. The great thing about baseball is, anybody can win any day, so one little thing can end up being a big thing."
It's probably no treat to be Showalter's groundskeeper at Camden Yards or the guy in charge of putting down the sod around the Sarasota camp, but every request has purpose and that purpose usually is to put the players in the best position to succeed.
"If the players ask about the hitting background in the cages," he said, "if it's important to them, it better be important to you. Whether it's shiny green paint or flat green paint. If somebody says, 'Hey, the shiny reflects and I can't see as well to work my trade,' and if two days later it's fixed, they go 'Damn, they're serious about this.' It's not a sympathetic ear…it's an ear. If it's something that helps us win, I got it."
Former All-Star shortstop Mike Bordick, who will wear a couple of hats in the Orioles organization this year, says that Showalter's almost-global view of the organization isn't all that unusual. Since he played for Tony La Russa, Davey Johnson and Bobby Valentine (among others) over the course of his 14-year major league career, he should know.
"Most good managers are really detail-oriented," he said. "Buck is on top of everything, right down to the grass where a path should have been. That's cool. It rubs off on the staff and the players, especially when it comes down to the game and the little things that make a difference."
It's pretty clear that Showalter doesn't care a whole lot what anybody thinks of him, or at least anybody who isn't close enough to him to know him very well. If you're going on his demeanor in the dugout or his reaction when a player isn't on board with the program, you're probably not getting the whole picture.
"I laugh the hell out of it every day at things that go on," he said. "I don't take myself nearly as seriously as people think. I do take the Orioles and what's going on here real seriously. I don't apologize for that and I'm real comfortable in my skin. I know what I am and I know what I'm not."
In other words, if you don't like the way he drives that golf cart, stay off the sidewalk.
"The Schmuck Stops Here" appears at http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/schmuck-blog. Listen to Peter Schmuck when he hosts "The Week in Review" on Fridays at noon on WBAL (1090 AM) and wbal.com.