Baltimore Orioles Manager Buck Showalter deftly fielded questions from the approximately 150 NAIOP Maryland members attending the SpringFest networking event at One Charles Center, a project of Artemis Properties, Inc. More than 370 professionals are involved in NAIOP Maryland, comprised of companies and individuals working in development, investment, construction, brokerage, asset management, finance, architecture, engineering and legal services.
“You want to hear about the Baltimore Orioles and I want to talk about them,” Showalter began. “So fire away with questions, including why I always wear a jacket during games. What the coaches and players do for Baltimore and the community is important. They care about us and follow us closely, and we don’t apologize for that. I never again want to play a game with a closed gate for a number of reasons, but after the first pitch, it was just baseball. And, we did have some crowd noise from fans watching beyond center field but, yes, it was eerie. However, I noted that the time of game was just over two hours, which tells me that all that ‘other stuff’ is a significant contributing factor to the length of games. And, who exactly is complaining about games running too long anyway? A family of four enjoying a game is not going to mind if it goes an extra ten minutes.”
Commenting on the current state of the Orioles, “with all of the injuries we have now, other teams better take advantage of us now, because watch out when we are healthy. We feel extremely good about this team. And, of course, it is always about the quality of starting pitching.”
About his tenure in Baltimore, Buck stated, “we love it here and this is my last rodeo. I don’t want to start over again. We have the resources and commitment from ownership to accomplish all of our goals. When I first started, I asked management to help identify ‘who the Orioles are and what we want to be.’ We needed an identity, but have it now.
Responding to various questions, “we take a hard look at everything we do and look for better ways. The Orioles might be the only team in baseball that has a cook that travels with the team. It is important to eat nutritionally all the time, not just when we are on the road. When one player gets sick, we all get sick. I had a player complain about fans wanting autographs all the time and responded ‘go sign them. You’ll have more to worry about when they don’t want your autograph.’
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