Showalter one win away from tying Martin on all-time list

Orioles manager Buck Showalter said Chris Davis will report to the Sarasota complex between Friday and Monday. Davis is flying back to Texas first before heading to Florida for workouts and instructional league games. The Orioles also can set up simulated games. Showalter may adjust the rotation following Thursday's off-day. He already met with Chris Tillman after last night's game. Also, the Orioles could add a player to their roster for the weekend series against the Red Sox that concludes the final homestand. "We'll see what the off-day brings," Showalter said. Showalter is one win away from tying Billy Martin, his mentor with the Yankees, for 36th place on baseball's all-time list with 1,253. He recently passed Joe Cronin and Bill Rigney. Whitey Herzog is 35th with 1,281 victories. Showalter's daughter, Allie, brought the list to his attention. "She knows what Billy meant to me, so from that standpoint, I actually find it a little sad. It's like one of those things, I'd like to give him a few so he can go back up there where he should be," Showalter said. "I haven't looked at it. I'm sure he did it in a lot less years. That's the only feeling I have initially about it. It's all so fleeting. You look at all the losses, too. You look at the thousands of games you managed before you got to the big leagues. "His son stays in touch with me some. Some of the things in the game you get to just by osmosis and, as Adam (Jones) says, 'posting up.' You absorb things. Things like this are you absorb the goodness of your players. So many times I'll come back and say, 'Boy, I did a good job of staying out of that one. I fooled them again.' Some of the best managing you do is the managing you don't do. "Billy, he had time for me and I still don't know why. He made time for me when you were with him those mornings, about 11 o'clock on the back fields in Ft. Lauderdale. He would always bring all the minor league managers in. We'd walk behind him like little chickadees and he'd stop at every drill and talk about this and talk about that, and this is how you need to do this and this is why. "People looked at Billy as some roughneck cartoon character who argued with umpires, but he was brilliant. He had such a feel for the game." Martin died in a car accident on Christmas Day 1989. "The last year of his life, he was supposed to be scouting. In fact, he was gearing up for another return," Showalter said. "When he told me that, I was managing in Albany and he was supposed to be scouting the Eastern League for the Yankees. He called me and asked me if I would just send him my reports on the Eastern League. That was good enough for him. That was pretty cool when I hung up. If you ask me about Billy, I can talk forever. But he wasn't perfect. "There's a lot of things you remember in your life. I remember when I got the news that he had been in the car accident. He was one of those guys you felt like he could take yours and beat his and take his and beat yours." What's the most important lesson that Martin taught him? "Being organized and being prepared and stuff is great, but don't be afraid to trust your gut," Showalter replied. "You can look at all those numbers to verify your gut. Don't let your gut be established by a bunch of numbers." Showalter already ranks ahead of another mentor, former Orioles manager Johnny Oates, on the all-time wins list. "It means I'm old. It does. What else?" Showalter said. "It's just the honor and longevity of people allowing you to do it. The players allowing you to do it. You don't manage them. They allow you to manage them. And if you ever forget that, you're in trouble. "I'm a ship passing in the night. I know how this works. I know the shelf life of managers and when the time comes (salutes), appreciate the honor and the chance." Showalter already has managed more games with the Orioles than in his previous three stops, including Arizona and Texas. What's kept him here? "That's the best question of the year," he said, smiling. "Good players. I wake up every morning and go, 'Really?' It's good players, really. A supportive ownership. Just timing was great. When I got here, regardless of who was coming in here, it was getting better. "We're never as good as they say we are. We're never as bad. You try to keep a grip on reality. It's hard. When you get older, you get a better shot at it. "Spending half an hour with Curt Schilling yesterday, he came in early, you get it. He's a proud man. Probably the best pitcher I ever had and I had some good ones. If I had to pitch one game, it would be Curt Schilling. He was special. You could see a little different look in his eye yesterday and a different confidence. That was a nice little jolt of reality. We're going out there to do something that's important to a lot of people, but there are a lot of other things going on." For the Blue Jays Jose Reyes SS Jose Bautista CF Edwin Encarnacion DH Danny Valencia 1B Dioner Navarro C John Mayberry Jr. RF Steve Tolleson 3B Kevin Pillar LF Ryan Goins 2B Marcus Stroman RHP