McLaren was patient on journey to big chair

John McLaren recognized what was happening. This was probably the most important phone call of his life. Pat Gillick was on the other end and for McLaren the voice sounded as authoritative as a god's and as mischievous as the devil's.

Gillick had good news, the best news, for McLaren, but he was prolonging the moment and good-naturedly torturing his good friend.

It was winter 1986. McLaren was managing in the Venezuelan Winter League. Gillick was in Toronto having a little fun.

"I'm sitting here with [Toronto manager] Jimy Williams, Mac," said Gillick, who was then the Blue Jays' general manager. "How you doing? You enjoying yourself? How's the team? Who looks good?"

Uninterestedly, Gillick strung together question after question, while McLaren waited for him to pop the big one.

"You got any interest in coaching third base for the Toronto Blue Jays?" Gillick finally asked.

McLaren had made it to the bigs.

Twenty-one years later, McLaren sits at the desk once occupied by Lou Piniella. He leans back in his chair, tugs tightly on his Mariners cap and begins thinking about all of the games, plays and people, all the help he has gotten to get to this point.

After 37 years in baseball, McLaren is a big-league manager. And, even now, more than a month after he took over after Mike Hargrove's sudden retirement, McLaren's eyes water when he thinks about the people who got him here.

He names names — Piniella, Gillick, Williams, Hargrove, his first minor-league manager, Billy Smith, and Jackie Moore, who was Piniella's bench coach when McLaren coached in Cincinnati.

"The people I've been around," he said, "I've been very lucky."

McLaren hasn't skipped a step in his inexorable climb to this place. He played seven minor-league seasons in stops such as Covington, Sumter, Cocoa, Columbus and Dubuque. He was a scout. He managed in the winter leagues — two years in Colombia and six in Venezuela.

He managed in Medicine Hat, Utica, Kinston and Knoxville, was a major-league coach at Toronto, Cincinnati, Tampa Bay and twice in Seattle. He coached the United States team in last year's World Baseball Classic.

He prepared for this job with the diligence of an astronaut.

When he played in the minor leagues, McLaren kept notebooks on all the players. Detailed scouting reports he still has today. He has taken those notebooks with him to every interview he has ever had.

"It's easy to say you're organized, that you dot your I's and cross your T's," McLaren has said during interviews for managing positions with Tampa Bay and the Los Angeles Dodgers. "But I want to let you know that I've always been a thinking man. I just wanted to show you that I always wanted to do something, one day, besides being a player."

Still, it took 37 years and four countries for him to get this job. And it took Hargrove's resignation on July 1.

"I've thought about this job for years," McLaren said last week, just hours after the trade deadline. "I've run scenario after scenario in front of me to prepare myself for this. I knew it was going to happen, I just didn't know when. And I've always known that I'm going to be the same person that I was before I got this job. I want to have the openness, mixing with people, because that's what's got me here.

"I want the players to know that they can still talk to me. I think it's important. I can always make time for the players. That's what I'm all about, so I don't want to lose what I've got going for me."

Unlike a lot of managers, McLaren, 55, doesn't hunker in his office. Every day he circulates around the clubhouse. Meets with players. Jokes with them. Challenges them.

McLaren is a player's manager, but he's far from a pushover. He's gotten into Jose Guillen's face and earned Guillen's respect. He has been equal parts stern and compassionate during Richie Sexson's elongated hitting slump.

"John is a nice guy," said Moore, who is celebrating his 50th season in professional baseball, managing at Class AA Round Rock (Texas). "But don't misunderstand that just because he's nice that he's easy. Trust me when I say that. There's a fire that burns in John McLaren.

"Baseball is a people business and John's a people person. But he knows you won't be around long if you can't get in players' faces. John will do that and it will be the player who's at fault. I guarantee you that. It won't be John's fault. Sure there will be friction on the club, but John will handle it right."

In a sport where managers often speak through their coaches, McLaren is the great communicator.

"Jackie taught me a lot, about working the clubhouse, talking to the players," said McLaren, who keeps a Jackie Moore bobblehead in his office. "I've always been a people person and, when I met Jackie, he took it to another level. There's a lot ... that he taught me.

"Things like getting out there and watching body language and talking to them and winning their trust and having them be able to tell me anything. And putting out fires."

Baseball grabbed McLaren when he was in grade school in Galveston, Texas, watching with his grandfather as Dizzy Dean called Saturday's Game of the Week. He told his teachers he was going to make a living in baseball.

"They would say to me, 'What if you don't make it?' And I would say to them, 'There's no don't. I know I am,' " McLaren said. "Of course, they were right. I didn't make it as a player, but I knew I could make it in a different way. And that's what I did."

The minor-league scouting report on him said he was a very good defensive catcher who could barely hit his weight. McLaren felt like he always was fighting against the current. His last season in the minors, he hit a mere .220 in 1976 at Memphis.

"I tried as hard as I could; I tried everything," McLaren said. "But I didn't have a quick enough bat to make it. I could tell in the first three years that it was going to be difficult for me. I was cheating as much as I could to catch up with the fastball and I was having trouble with the breaking ball, which isn't a good combination."

McLaren laughs easily at himself. Nice guys do. But don't mistake easygoing for easy.

This is his team and this is his chance. He rocks comfortably in the chair that once belonged to Lou Piniella. He's earned that chair.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com.