Would Showalter be the solution for the Mets?

Now the Mets need a manager. They should hire Buck Showalter. It’s what the team needs.

Buck first became manager in 1992, when the great Gene (Stick) Michael selected him to be the youngest manager in Yankees history. The two began to shape the team – and the culture – that resulted in four World Series trophies in five years, between 1996 and 2000. George Steinbrenner fired Buck after the 1995 campaign, following the Mariners’ impressive comeback after be down 2-0 in the Division Series.

That doesn’t change what Michael and Showalter did. Yankees fans who saw the 1994 team before the strike will always believe that the club – which was 70-43 by then – would have won the World Series that year, two seasons before Joe Torre’s arrival.

The Yankees won 71 games in 1991, the season before Buck took over. The team had the first pick in the amateur draft that year, which speaks to the state of the club at that time. In 1993, in his second season in office, New York won 88 games. I was talking to him recently about the state of the Yankees before his arrival and he remembered his father, William Nathaniel Showalter II.

“He told me that all jobs come with problems.”

That describes very well what he inherited when he came to the Yankees. It’s something similar to what he would face with the Mets now. What he did, with the endorsement of Gene Michael, was make people believe in the Yankees. That would do with the Mets. Billy Eppler could become the game-changing executive at the Mets, as Frank Cashen did in the 1980s. But just hiring Eppler won’t make fans in Queens believe.

Showalter has not won a World Series. Neither did Dusty Baker. But there are reasons why he has been recognized as Manager of the Year with three different teams. For something, his last team, the Orioles, had the best record in the East of the American, where the Yankees and Red Sox live. Nothing has changed since the Mets had a managerial vacancy, which they first wanted to fill with Puerto Rican Carlos Beltran and then Luis Rojas.

There is no better foreman among those who are not leading. The other day, Sandy Alderson, the right-hand man to Mets owner Steve Cohen, was talking about the problems the club faced in getting a general manager.

“I think it’s more about New York and not so much about Steve or the organization, you know,” Alderson said. “It’s a big stage and many people prefer to stay elsewhere.”

Good thing Showalter wasn’t afraid of the spotlight when he took on the job with the Yankees, in the other part of town, 30 years ago.

When the 65-year-old Showalter’s name comes up in conversation, people often refer to his age. The idea that age could be an impediment to doing a good job with the Mets doesn’t make sense. That is silly. Tony La Russa is 77 years old. Dusty Baker 72.

There are many candidates to lead the Mets. Buck Showalter will not be the only one. But yes the best. There have been times in club history when a mature cave presence is required. That’s the case in Queens now.

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Would Showalter be the solution for the Mets?