Buck Showalter

William Nathaniel “Buck” Showalter III was born on May 23, 1956, in DeFuniak Springs, Florida. He grew up in Century, Florida, where his father served as a teacher and principal at Century High School. Showalter, known as “Nat” before acquiring his nickname, pursued collegiate baseball at Chipola Junior College in 1976 and later at Mississippi State University. During his college career, he achieved an All-American status in 1977 and set a Mississippi State record with a .459 batting average for the season. He also played collegiate summer baseball for the Hyannis Mets in the Cape Cod Baseball League (CCBL) in 1976, where he won the league batting title with a .434 batting average and was named league MVP. In 2002, he was inducted into the CCBL Hall of Fame.

Showalter was drafted by the New York Yankees in the fifth round of the 1977 MLB draft. He spent seven seasons in the Yankees’ minor league system, accumulating a career batting average of .294 with 17 home runs and 336 runs batted in. He never played in Major League Baseball, reaching Triple-A Columbus as his highest level. His coaching career began in the minor leagues, managing the Single-A Oneonta Yankees in 1985 and earning an induction into the New York–Penn League Hall of Fame in August 2017. He then managed the Fort Lauderdale Yankees from 1987 to 1988 and the Double-A Albany-Colonie Yankees in 1989, where he was named Minor League Manager of the Year by Baseball America.

His Major League managerial career commenced with the New York Yankees in 1992, followed by stints with the Arizona Diamondbacks (1998–2000), Texas Rangers (2003–2006), Baltimore Orioles (2010–2018), and New York Mets (2022–2023). Showalter has been recognized repeatedly for his managerial skills, earning four Manager of the Year awards (1994, 2004, 2014, 2022). He is one of only three managers to win four Manager of the Year awards, the seventh to win in both the American and National Leagues, and the only one to achieve this with four different teams and over four different decades. He also worked as a television analyst for ESPN and the YES Network.