A lifetime of sports, another milestone for M's manager Melvin

Already, the names in Bob Melvin's sphere of influence are coming into focus — Phil Garner, Bob Brenly, Roger Craig and Frank Robinson, to name a few.

But here's a name that briefly entered the world of the Mariners' new 41-year-old manager that's not normally associated with a baseball man: Vince Lombardi.

Lombardi was a close friend of Melvin's grandfather, R.B. "Bud" Levitas, who was president of Juillard Inc., a wholesale liquor distributor in the Bay Area. Levitas was a pallbearer at Lombardi's funeral and once partnered with the legendary football coach in a secret and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to buy the San Francisco 49ers in 1968.

Lombardi once wound up visiting the Melvin home, where he advised young Bobby (who recalls being 7 or 8), "If you want to play professional sports, you should learn to punt."

Melvin did, in fact, become a decent punter, practicing with his friends by trying to boot the ball over the trees that lined his street in Menlo Park, Calif., south of San Francisco.

"But I wanted to do a little more than punt," he said with a smile.

Describing his Bay Area upbringing as "typical middle class," Melvin grew up immersed in and obsessed with sports. All of them.

"Every day, after school, we'd play for hours and hours," said his closest boyhood friend, Matt Morey. "Whether it would be hitting plastic golf balls over the roof, or playing with Nerf balls, we used to be out in the street all the time."

Mike McCormick, the San Francisco Giants pitcher who won the Cy Young Award in 1967, was a family friend. Through his grandfather's season tickets, Bob hung out often at Candlestick Park. Dick D'Oliva, longtime trainer with the Golden State Warriors, was Melvin's godfather, allowing him to take in NBA games at the Oakland Coliseum arena.

Melvin was good enough at basketball that California Coach Dick Kuchen inquired about his services when he landed on the Berkeley campus in 1980. And he's a scratch golfer who was good enough that his agent, Doug Baldwin, says, "It wouldn't have been foolhardy for Bob, at the time he retired, to think about a career on the pro circuit."

But, to the Mariners' ultimate relief, it was clear to all who knew him that baseball was Melvin's sport.

"He was the best kid player I ever had," said Tom Dunton, Melvin's American Legion coach, whose youth baseball involvement in the Bay Area spanned more than 30 years.

Melvin rode his talents to a Cal baseball scholarship and a journeyman major-league career that spanned 10 years, in which he played for seven teams and never rose above the ranks of backup. One of the quirks of his career was an .435 average (10 for 23) — .202 above his lifetime mark of .233 — against Randy Johnson.

"Luck, I guess," he shrugged. "Once you do have success, it breeds success."

Johnson and Melvin would cross paths again in 2001 when Melvin became Brenly's bench coach in Arizona, where Johnson and Curt Schilling would pitch the Diamondbacks to the World Series championship.

"It took me awhile to broach that situation with him," he said of his Big Unit mastery. "But once we did, it ended up being kind of a funny situation. Not knowing Randy that first year at all, you're a little hesitant about bringing something like that up, but I found Randy to be a great guy."

Those who came across Melvin on his path to the big leagues, as well as when he got there, are universal in their assessment that Melvin mastered the cerebral elements of the game far more than the mechanics.

"I'd call a lot of pitches when he was catching, and he'd ask why and wherefore," said Dunton, who was Stanford's pitching coach for more than 25 years. "That was a little unusual for a kid player. He could look at a hitter and recognize how to go after him. He always had that."

At Cal, where the Bears made the College World Series in Melvin's only season, he was the backup catcher to senior Tom Colburn. The freshman Melvin wound up as Colburn's road roommate and eventually became a close friend.

Colburn, who now cultivates vineyards in Napa Valley, recalls talking baseball with Melvin long into the night in their hotel rooms.

"We'd discuss how to set hitters up," he said. "Bob would imitate guys' stances in front of the mirror. He was extremely smart as far as baseball sense. I'd come into the dugout after an inning, and he'd go, 'Why did you do that? That was interesting.' He'd be following pitch sequences, always picking my brain. For an 18-year-old kid, it was pretty amazing."

Melvin's coach at Cal, Bob Milano, had similar recollections.

"From my perspective, he was a guy who asked good questions," Milano said. "We'd be doing bunt defense, relays, and he'd say, 'Why do it that way?' Right or wrong, he wanted to know what was going on. It was so clear in his mind what to do when he was in the game."

Eager to get on with his pro career and by all accounts not enamored of academics in college, Melvin left Cal after just one season, transferring to Canada Junior College in Redwood City to become eligible for the now-defunct winter draft. He signed with the Detroit Tigers, who drafted him with their first pick.

"He was going to be a superstar, I thought, if he stayed at Cal," Milano said. "I didn't get enough chance to see how good he could be, but he had all the talent."

The decision to leave Berkeley kept Melvin from catching a promising left-hander from Mill Valley, Calif., named Bryan Price, who joined Cal as a freshman in 1981. Amazingly, despite growing up in the Bay Area and taking similar career paths, the two have never met, a circumstance that will soon change now that Price is Melvin's pitching coach.

On the other hand, if he had not turned pro when he did, Melvin might not have met his future wife, Kelley, who was an usher with the Memphis Chicks of the Southern League.

Melvin met Kelley in 1982 when he came through town with the Birmingham Barons, a Tigers farm team.

"It was immediate," Kelley said. "I saw him, and that was it."

The two were engaged within three months and married three months after that. This year, they celebrate their 20th anniversary and will go to Hawaii in January to reaffirm their vows.

Melvin's friends and colleagues are unanimous in two aspects of Melvin's personality the Mariners believe will help make him a success. Foremost is his ability to get along with people from diverse backgrounds.

"I think these guys are going to commit hard to him because of the type of personality he has," said Jim Morris, who grew up with Melvin in Menlo Park.

Cal teammate Rod Booker, who went on to have a five-year major-league career, said of Melvin: "Bob was a consummate teammate, a total team player. As time passes by, it's hard to remember the plays, the events. What stands out is the character of teammates. Bob was one of the guys who really stood out as far as work ethic, determination, integrity."

Melvin's outward geniality was immediately revealed at his introductory news conference Friday.

"Baseball fans are probably scratching their heads and saying, 'You're kidding, right?' when they hear Melvin has been hired," said Diamondbacks public-relations director Mike Swanson said. "They have no idea what they're about to get. He's one of the most organized, highly motivated, highly thought-of people in the game."

And yet, for a "people person," Melvin is single-mindedly competitive, friends say. It's almost as if he picked up, through osmosis, Lombardi's famous philosophy, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."

Morey, his oldest friend, calls it "a hidden competitive nature. No matter what he's playing, whether it's cards or Nerf ball, he always wins, or found a way to win."

Of course, not all of Melvin's competitive endeavors are quite as important as, say, the seventh game of the World Series, of which he is just two years removed.

When he and Brenly, for instance, would make the two-hour drive down Interstate 10 from Phoenix to Tucson each day for spring training, they would put the radio on scan and engage in a spirited version of "Name That Tune," trying to be the first to name the upcoming song.

Both men are aficionados of classic rock (think Zeppelin, Stones, Who, Skynrd), and often would carry their game over to batting practice, trying to be the first to shout out songs playing over the public-address system.

Speaking of batting practice, Melvin is regarded as something of a master in the art of pitching BP. Diamondbacks veteran Mark Grace said recently, "He's the best BP pitcher in the world. He gets guys locked in. Even I can get hits off him."

Melvin's predecessor with the Mariners, Lou Piniella, rarely participated in any form of baseball drills, but even as manager, Melvin plans to keep right on throwing BP.

"I love to be hands-on, get into drills in spring training and get involved," he said. "That's half the fun. I enjoy getting down and dirty with the players. I will definitely stay active in that role."

At 41, Melvin is barely older than some of the players he will be managing, particularly Edgar Martinez, 39, and, if he re-signs, Jamie Moyer, who turns 40 on Monday. Yet Melvin, who works out six days a week — including a rigorous stair-climbing regimen at Bank One Ballpark and frequent mountain-bike riding excursions with Hall of Famer Robin Yount — is superbly conditioned.

At the BOB, Melvin would run up and down the steps in the lower bowl six times, followed by one lap around the concourse — for three sets.

"I tried it once last year, and it knocks you in the dirt," Grace told the Arizona Republic.

Melvin's arrival in Arizona to join Brenly's staff in 2001 involved leaving his close friend, Garner, a decision he called "the hardest thing I've ever had to do in baseball."

It was Garner, a brief teammate with the Giants in 1988, who had guided Melvin's return to baseball after he retired as a player in 1995. Garner, managing the Brewers at the time, urged Melvin to write Milwaukee General Manager Sal Bando, who hired him as a scout.

Melvin rose through the Milwaukee organization, serving as roving instructor and special assistant to Bando before becoming Garner's bench coach in 1999. In August, Garner was fired and Bando was reassigned.

"Quite honestly, if I had stayed, I would have named Melvin as manager," Bando said. "He just had that feel about him, just an overall knowledge, yet he could see both sides. He understood what a player needs and what you need from management side."

Melvin finished the year with interim manager Jim Lefebvre, but when Garner landed as Detroit's manager in 2000, his first move was to bring Melvin with him again as bench coach. The two were so close, Swanson said, that friends would jokingly refer to Melvin as Garner's "other wife."

When Brenly — another close friend and former Giants teammate — called Melvin the following winter after landing the Diamondbacks job, offering a coaching position, it was an agonizing choice.

Melvin had to balance his loyalty to Garner with the chance to come home and be more involved with his family (daughter Alexi will be 14 next month), which had settled in the Phoenix area.

"I went back and forth, changed my mind three or four times in one evening, when I had to actually have a decision the next day," he said. "To this day, it still bothers me I had to make that decision, and it hurt me.

"I don't think it affected our friendship, but I know it hurt him, too. If I have two best friends in baseball, it's Phil Garner and Bob Brenly."

Garner admits he was hurt, to the point that didn't talk to Melvin for months.

"My wife tried to get me to call him," he said. "I have a great deal of respect for him professionally, but I consider him a close friend. It was almost like breaking a friendship. But I guess when a decision comes down to what's best for his family, you really can't hold a grudge. In reality, for his career, it was probably the best move for him."

Garner says he's "gotten over it."

In fact, as Melvin assembles his coaching staff, the currently unemployed Garner may be a consideration as bench coach, a reversal of their former relationship. Garner, still being paid by the Tigers, said he would be willing to talk to Melvin.

"I'd consider Phil for anything, but whether or not he's interested in doing it ... he's a big-league manager, and a good one," Melvin said. "He was just in some situations that were really no-win situations. Unfortunately, he's never gotten an opportunity like I'm getting right here with a veteran team and a good team.

"I would welcome Phil in any role. I have to talk to Pat (Gillick), but put it this way: There's no one I respect more than Phil Garner in baseball."

The feeling is mutual.

"He knows the game, there's no question of that," Garner said. "Technically speaking, he runs a good game, but more importantly, he's a good judge of talent and character. He has good instincts."

Those instincts came to play years ago, when Bob Melvin politely ignored the advice of Vince Lombardi.