Pete Mackanin's nearly 50-year baseball journey started in a Virginia diner

CLEARWATER, Fla. - The first day of Pete Mackanin's baseball career ended in a small diner in a tiny Virginia town. He would have never guessed that sitting alone with a plate of fried chicken would be the start of a baseball odyssey that enters its 49th consecutive season Monday.

Mackanin, now the Phillies manager, was then simply trying to find his way in the game he grew to love as a kid on Chicago's South Side. The Washington Senators drafted Mackanin a month earlier, but his start was delayed after he broke his thumb in a high school all-star game. His minor-league team was on the road by the time Mackanin arrived.

"I checked into some hotel in Wytheville, Va., population of 7,000 and went across the street to get dinner," Mackanin said. "I was 17 years old and pretty green. The waitress kept coming over and saying, 'Is everything all right? Need anything? How's it tasting?' I looked at her and said, 'You must want a big tip.' She looked at me like I was crazy. I was pretty stupid at the time."

It was the beginning of a journey that has yet to stop. Each year of Mackanin's life - since being drafted in 1969 out of Chicago's Brother Rice High School - has been spent in professional baseball. He played, coached, and scouted before finally becoming the Phillies manager.

The journey does not have an end date. But Mackanin, who will turn 66 in August, does have a goal. He wants to spend 50 consecutive years in professional baseball.

This season will determine whether Mackanin's golden anniversary is spent as the Phillies manager. His contract has a team option for 2018. It will likely be exercised if Mackanin's young team continues to show improvement under his watch.

"It would be perfect. It would be the perfect cap to my 50th year," Mackanin said about staying to manage the Phillies next season. "That's a long time in baseball when you think about it. Sixties, '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s, 2010s. I've been in baseball for six decades. It would mean a lot."

Mackanin reached the majors four years after irking that Virginia waitress. He played in the majors for four teams, including 18 games with the Phillies. His time in Philadelphia was so anonymous that the team's owner at the time asked Mackanin why he had not been playing, unaware that the infielder was on the disabled list after undergoing elbow surgery.

By 1983, Mackanin was 31 and at triple A, two years removed from playing in the big leagues. This was it, he thought. Mackanin had spent 15 years in baseball. He did not know what he wanted to do, but he knew it was time to find something else. Before he could check out, Mackanin received a call. It was Gordon Goldsberry, the farm director of Mackanin's hometown Cubs.

"He asked me if I would be willing to play third base for the triple-A team in Des Moines, Iowa, with the agreement after that season that I would manage and give it a shot," Mackanin said. "I said, 'You know what? I can do that.' I didn't know if I would be any good at it or if I'd like it, but I wanted to try it."

Mackanin spent the 1985 season managing Chicago's single-A affiliate, just two years after believing his baseball journey was finished. There was no leaving now. Mackanin spent 13 years as a minor-league manager, rolling across the country with buses of kids who clung to the same dream Mackanin had when he left his parents' home on the South Side.

His pursuit of a big-league managing job included stops in Nashville, Ottawa, Iowa, North Carolina, and Illinois. He managed winter-league teams in Australia, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Mackanin was on four major-league coaching staffs but never as a manager. He even managed a single-A team in a Virginia town just two hours from that diner in Wytheville.

That dream had nearly faded when the Phillies named Mackanin interim manager in 2015 after Ryne Sandberg abruptly resigned. He impressed the new front office and had the "interim" tag lifted, and last season - his 48th in baseball - was Mackanin's first as a full-time, major-league manager.

He guided last season's young Phillies team with calmness and a needed sense of humor. His mood stayed level, win or lose. And the losses - as expected for a rebuilding franchise - were plenty. Mackanin walks through the clubhouse with confidence. He seems to have a relationship with every player. The manager speaks Spanish, which plays well in a Phillies clubhouse full of Latin American players.

"He's one of those guys that expects nothing but the best from the moment you show up until the final out is made," first baseman Tommy Joseph said. "I've enjoyed being around him every day because you don't know what he's going to do or say. The sort of witty comebacks, the one-liners, the stuff you wouldn't expect a manager to say. Sometimes you get into a position of power and stern up and lose that side. I think that's a part of why we all respect him. He has that side. If he's going to be himself, it allows us to be ourselves."

Mackanin's 49th season - the one that will determine if No. 50 is spent as the Phillies manager - will begin against the Reds, one of the teams that passed him over on his quest to be a big-league manager. Mackanin's road from that fried chicken dinner to Year 49 has involved a lot of disappointment and near-misses. He was an interim manager twice before landing the full-time role with the Phillies.

He is now just a year from a milestone and at the helm of a team that is inching toward contention. Perhaps Mackanin will be with the Phillies long enough to be the manager when the winning returns. Mackanin knows that nothing is guaranteed past this season. But nothing has ever been guaranteed for a man who grinded to stay in baseball, season after season, for nearly half a century. And Mackanin has no plans to leave.

"My first professional game as a Wytheville Senator was against the Pulaski Phillies, and Dallas Green was their manager," Mackanin said. "All these years later, the fact that I'm with the Phillies is really special, especially an organization with the history that they have behind them. I feel privileged to be here."

mbreen@phillynews.com

@matt_breen