For 8 years, Showalter had trust of players, fans

and usually expressionless — of course his dogs were basset hounds — exuding an affection for his players and even this city so beleaguered both within and without the emerald diamond that is Camden Yards.

He came here having already managed the Yankees in that city where, supposedly, if you make it there, you can make it anywhere. Baltimore was appropriately, humbly grateful.

“We as Baltimore sports fans tend to sometimes have an inferiority thing,” said Jason Policastro, 37, of Rodgers Forge. “We don’t deserve the best; we don’t get the best.

“With Buck, we were getting one of the best,” he said.

Policastro, a copywriter at T. Rowe Price, was among several fans to note one particularly glittery section of Showalter’s resume. “He was on ‘Seinfeld,’” he said. And indeed, Baltimoreans soon came to see for themselves the deadpan style of that cameo appearance, from 1994, in which Showalter listens to George’s typically harebrained scheme: to switch from polyester to cotton and give the Yankees a five-degree-cooler advantage over opponents.

Policastro’s cover photo on his Twitter account may declare, “BRITTON SHOULD HAVE PITCHED IN THE WILD CARD GAME,” a widely held view after Showalter didn’t go to the then-perfect closer, who had saved 47 out of 47 games in the regular season, for the 2016 wild card game that the Orioles went on to lose. But Policastro said even that didn’t change his opinion of Showalter, nor did this year’s disastrous season.

“Find me a manager who would have succeeded in this situation,” he said. Craig Allen, at 49 a lifelong O’s fan, agrees. “What do you do?” said Allen, ticking off some of this season’s lows — from Chris Davis’ lowest ever batting average for a regular major leaguer to the way he believes the team mishandled the last year of Adam Jones’ contract.

Allen, a self-described “sneaker head” who sells shoes online from his Owings Mills home, is among the many who fully expected this day to come, with the Orioles already having launched a team-wide renovation effort.

“How do you rebuild,” he said, “with the same coach?”

And yet, Allen said he would miss Showalter, noting how fully he had embraced the city and proved to be the right manager at the right time — until he wasn’t.

“He had a quiet cool,” Allen said. “He was calming.”

You couldn’t help but “pull for the guy,” he said, because for all his successes, like the Orioles of recent decades, he still hadn’t won a World Series.

“I wanted him to have a ring,” Allen said. “And now, he’ll never get a ring with us.”

Bob Leffler, a longtime Baltimore-based sports marketing executive, said Showalter’s personal charisma made him the unusual manager who could sell tickets in the way a player might. He views Showalter as something of the anti-Bill Belichick, the NewEngland Patriots coach whose winning ways don’t extend to his scowling demeanor.

“How many managers before him were on ‘Seinfeld’?” Leffler said. “He is a media star, and the managers before him were basically technicians. He’s very glib. He handles himself very well. “But,” he added, “you still have to win.” Fans — and Baltimoreans in general — clearly bonded with Showalter in his more than eight years here. They remain grateful.

“He brought the Orioles back from the dead,” said Beau Boughamer, 40, of Catonsville.

What stands out for Boughamer is how the manager handled one of the darkest times not for the team but for its city — the April 2015 rioting that broke out following the death of Freddie Gray from injuries suffered in police custody. Tensions remained so high that the Orioles played a game in an empty Camden Yards several days later rather than risk further trouble downtown.

“It was a difficult day, and people were listening to what players were saying, and what Buck would say after the game,” said Boughamer. “And he said, ‘I’ve never been black’ and that he didn’t know what [black] players are going through. He basically said it wasn’t for him to say.”

That struck Boughamer, a senior communications manager for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, as exactly the right thing to say at an otherwise divisive time.

“The Orioles are one of the things people in the city and county have in common,” he said. “I thought he represented the city really well.”

Boughamer said he would always be grateful to Showalter for the magical 2012 season that ended the Orioles’ 15-year postseason drought, and led two years later to their division championship.

“I think there’s a whole generation of Orioles fans who are forever in debt to Buck for the 2012 Orioles and then of course the 2014 Orioles,” he said. “Buck pulled great performances out of veteran utility players and the young guys just coming up.”

As for who can fill Showalter’s shoes, there’s only one person, Boughamer said.

“We need Buck to apply,” he said, “wearing a fake mustache and glasses.”