The Orioles manager was asked if he had advice for the young black men in the section of Baltimore at the center of the unrest, noting that he was “well-respected” there. Earlier, Showalter had taken note of the connection the team had to the residents, to the point that protesters were often wearing Orioles gear.
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Showalter’s answer:
“A lot of times, you hear people try to weigh in on things they really don’t know anything about. I tell guys all the time — I’ve never been black, OK, so I don’t know. I can’t put myself there. I’ve never faced the challenges they’ve faced.
“So I understand the emotion. It’s a pet peeve of mine when somebody says, ‘Well, I know what they’re feeling, why did they do this, why doesn’t somebody do that?’ You have never been black, so just slow down a little bit.
“I try not to get involved in something that I don’t know about, but I do know that it’s something that’s very passionate, something that I am, with my upbringing. It bothers me and it bothers everybody else, but can we understand — we have made quite a statement as a city, some good, some bad. But now, let’s get on with taking the statement we’ve made and creating a positive.
“We talk to players — I want to be a rallying force for our city, and that doesn’t mean necessarily playing good baseball. There are some things I don’t want to be normal, you know what I mean? I don’t. I want us to learn from some stuff that’s gone on, from both sides of it.
“I could talk about it for hours, but that’s how I feel about it.’’
The upbringing Showalter refers to is that his late father, William II (Buck is William III), was a high school principal in Florida for 23 years, including when the once all-white school was desegregated in the 1970s, while Buck was a student there.
