Ron Polk Ring of Honor 2026 Selection Buck Showalter: A future orchestrated in maroon
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College Baseball Central complements its coverage of Southeastern Conference baseball by returning our feature series on Mississippi State's Ron Polk Ring of Honor. Now in its eighth class since 2019, CBC writers Doug Kyle and Bo Carter team up again to provide insight into the 2026 class of honorees, infielder Alex Grammas, pitcher Chris Stratton, and outfielder Nat "Buck" Showalter. Today, we profile Showalter, who spent a season at Mississippi State, set a record or two along the way, and began a career in professional baseball that lasted decades, plus a short but memorable career as a TV guest star.
By Bo Carter
Famed Mississippi State outfielder, and four-time Major League Baseball American League Manager of the Year, Buck Showalter likens the coaching and life techniques of College Baseball Hall of Fame coach Ron Polk to a conductor leading an accomplished symphony.
That’s why his April 4 induction into the prestigious MSU Ron Polk Ring of Honor takes on some special significance for the Bulldogs great, who set the Southeastern Conference season record for batting average in 1977 at .459. Of course, it was also a new Mississippi State record, breaking a 23-year mark set by two-sport All-SEC great Jackie Parker. His 44 RBI also was a new school record at the time.
The personable college star and MLB manager for five teams over 22 seasons in the 1992-2023 time frame with 1,727 all-time wins in 3,391 MLB contests reflected on the influence that Polk had on Nat (as he was known before he gained the pro baseball nickname of Buck) and his lifelong love of the diamond sport on all levels.
“The one thing I remember most about Coach Polk is how he planned everything so well on a daily basis,” Showalter recalled. “He talked to us about attending class, being on time for all meetings, studying practice schedules, going over game plans at pregame meals, accountability in all phases, times to board the team bus, and being prepared for the unknown.
“He really was like the conductor of a symphony,” Showalter added, “and I can tell you that what drives people crazy in baseball is the element of the unknown. Coach Polk prepared us for almost every situation, and he had a sense of purpose in everything he did and how he coached us. He taught us as players that after that this preparation we needed to win games and help Mississippi State gain recognition.”
The dedicated Showalter also related one of his funniest stories while he starred for the ’77 Bulldogs who came within inches of making MSU’s first NCAA postseason appearance since 1971 and laid the groundwork for a Southeastern Conference-most 35 NCAA tourneys from 1978-2025 and the university’s first NCAA team title in any sport in 2021.
“We were in the middle of the 1977 season,” Showalter remembered, “and for some reason Coach Polk did not say a word to me for 10 straight days. I spoke to him, I thought something might be wrong, and he asked me if he needed to talk to me every day and to tell me how I was doing. That was Coach Polk – working on so many aspects of the game daily and making sure everything was going according to plan.”
Showalter took those life lessons to heart and applied them to his professional career and the often-unforgiving years as a MLB manager, after an interesting introduction to MSU baseball when he was a sophomore star at Chipola College in Marianna, FL. Showalter ventured to Chipola, in the Florida Panhandle (sometimes known as LA for Lower Alabama), after making history as a senior at Century High School in 1974. He helped CHS win its first Florida baseball championship at a tiny school with a graduating senior class of 50.
“I knew about Mississippi State Baseball because Coach Polk recruited my Chipola College roommate Russell Adrich (a standout catcher for the 1977-78 Bulldogs and a Birmingham, AL, native),” he said. “It was Coach Polk’s first recruiting class, and he had to go after several junior college players (from Florida) because Mississippi high school baseball at the time was not producing college prospects on a large scale.
“Of course, he caught some heat for it,” Showalter added, “but when we started winning, people accepted how Coach Polk turned around the program. I was proud to be in his first recruiting class at State (after Polk was hired in November 1975, too late to sign players for the 1976 Bulldogs). High school baseball in Mississippi is much better today, thanks to Coach Polk’s influence and the many clinics he held.
“At the time you had to graduate from junior college to be eligible to play in the SEC,” he noted, “and Russell and I made sure to finish our studies at Chipola. Then we had a great tournament in the Florida Community College State Championship in Lakeland, and Coach Polk introduced himself. We knew we had a very solid team at Chipola, and our coach Ellis Dungan (later a scout for the Baltimore Orioles during Showalter’s 2010-18 managerial tenure there) said he thought we might have 14 players sign with four-year colleges.
“I earlier had committed to play at Florida after finishing at Chipola,” Showalter continued, “and at that time there were no such terms as de-commitments. My dad (William Showalter) made me call the Florida AD (NFF College Hall of Fame former Gators football head coach Ray Graves) and tell him that I was signing with Mississippi State.”
That choice paid dividends for Buck and the Bulldogs, as he starred in 47 games for the 33-15 overall crew in 1977, batted a then-SEC-record .459 batting average (still an MSU school season mark and later broken in 1983 by Dave Magadan at Alabama with a still-SEC-standing .525 average), had 52 walks and just 10 strikeouts in 198 plate appearances, was 67-for-146 at the dish with seven doubles, two triples, four home runs (including a tape-measure blast in a game at Southern Miss), 44 RBI, and 13-of-18 stolen bases. Polk, always an advocate of plate discipline, particularly loved Showalter’s walks-to-strikeouts ratio, .601 on-base percentage and 1.217 OPS.
Showalter and his 1977 teammates also hold the distinction of being one of just four teams to play in the first Southeastern Conference Baseball Tournament, after it moved to a double-elimination format from a two-team best-of-three series.
His hard-working demeanor soon earned him a draft choice in the fifth round by the New York Yankees in 1977 after the MSU star batted .434 in the 1976 Cape Cod Summer Amateur Baseball League. He was a Cape Cod Player of the Year, is in the league’s Hall of Fame, and the .434 average stands as a league record after 50 years, a reminder of his elite vision for knowing the strike zone and spending swings on just the most hittable pitches. He later garnered an assignment in the prestigious amateur Alaska Summer League with Bulldogs teammate and MLB pitching standout Jack Lazorko, a River Edge, NJ resident who like Showalter helped fill out the roster for Polk's first crop of recruits.
Showalter then passed up his ’78 senior season with the Bulldogs and signed with the Yankees, where he began a seven-year career in the minor leagues and gained even more insider baseball know-how from a variety of baseball legends.
He still values his time at State as some of his best days in baseball and life under the tutelage of Polk. He proved a quick study following his playing days, and it's likely no coincidence he managed his first minor league team (the Oneonta Yankees) at 28, the same age Polk was when he coached his first game as head coach at Georgia Southern.
Showalter made and continued lifelong friendships with Chipola and MSU teammate Aldrich, Lazorko, Howie McCann (later baseball head coach at Marshall and father of MLB catching great Brian McCann), Del Bender, and many others.
“It was a great time to be a Bulldog,” he said with a smile, “and I am honored to be included in this year’s Ron Polk Ring of Honor. It brings back many great memories, and I have followed Mississippi State in all sports for the whole time since I attended there.”
And, while Showalter is a household name now among Major League Baseball and Mississippi State followers, he also has an entirely different legion of fans who may not know a base hit from a bass drum.
Afficianados of the comedy TV show Seinfeld prove their couch potato worth by reciting in detail his appearance as himself, the New York Yankees manager, amidst the uniform misadventures of actor Jason Alexander’s George Costanza character, who served as the “assistant to the traveling secretary” for many episode plot lines. Although Showalter reportedly still receives residual checks for the 1994 appearance, there is some question of whether he actually nets anything from them after taxes and actors dues are deducted.
It's hard to believe it was 50 years ago when Polk went nationwide to recruit so many youngsters who succeeded both in baseball and in life, and Buck Showalter is a classic example of that class and spirit.
And, thanks to Showalter and his teammates, Bulldog fans in the late 1970s also learned the names of many other community college baseball hotbeds besides Chipola in the Sunshine State, such as Indian River, Seminole, and Miami Dade. And why was that? You can thank Buck, Russ, Jack, Howie, Del, and all the other slugger and hurler Polk recruits for the geography lesson.
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