Media MonsterMLB

Keith Olbermann Is Not A Fan Of Orioles Manager Buck Showalter

These days Keith Olbermann is better known for his feuds with the likes of Bill O’Reilly and certain media news and opinion websites, but according to his latest mlb.com blog post, another major target of Olbermann ire stems from his sportscasting days.

That target: Orioles manager Buck Showalter. Showalter was managing the Yankees when he and Olbermann crossed paths on August 22, 1993 (Olbermann either has one hell of a memory or used baseballreference.com to dig up the game in question).

Olbermann said Showalter told him he was a fan, but his players weren’t – so much so that he worried “[Wade] Boggs or especially [Paul] O’Neill might take a swing at [Olbermann],” and that his team wouldn’t even enter the clubhouse until Olbermann was gone.

Only, Olbermann says, he found out years later it wasn’t quite like that.

So at the ESPY Awards of, I guess, 1997, I was more than a little worried as I saw a door open and several Yankees step out. As I tried to look shorter, the outfielder extended a had: “Keith! Paul O’Neill. Big fan!”

Not exactly taking a swing. So what’s the deal?

I rushed through my thanks to tell him the Showalter story. “What? That was you? Nobody was avoiding you. Buck ordered us into the trainers’ room…All he told us was there was a reporter he hated and he wanted to air out and we needed to stay put till he let us back in the clubhouse.”

So…his players’ “hatred” of Olbermann was a front? That’s certainly what this makes it sound like – and Olbermann later updated his post when a baseball writer friend told him Showalter used the same tactic on him. Either multiple people are exaggerating, or Buck Showalter really does not like confrontations.

H/T SPORTSbyBROOKS

Photo via