After 50 years and 30 countries, ex-MLB manager McLaren continues to 'spread the word of baseball'

Former big league manager John McLaren had his career planned from a young age, telling his schoolteachers, "I'm going to make a living in baseball.” But even the 74-year-old baseball lifer couldn't have predicted where the game would end up taking him.

Name a job, and he's likely done it: A Minor League catcher before turning to coaching, McLaren managed the Mariners and Nationals with more than a half-dozen other big league stops as a coach, scout and everything in between. He's done the same for national baseball teams, donning a Team USA jersey as a coach at the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006 before later coaching in Italy and then managing China at the 2013 and '17 Classics. He's coached in baseball hotspots like Venezuela and Colombia and he's taught clinics wherever a bat, ball and eager youngsters could be found.

Quite frankly, spin a globe and chances are good that your finger will land on a place where McLaren has brought the game.

"I've been doing clinics all over the world: Belarus, Netherlands, Ireland," McLaren told MLB.com recently from Poland, where he'll manage the Polish national team in the European Baseball Championships B Pool* next week. "I'd say I'm an international-guru type."

*Think of the B pool as a kind of "Triple-A" of the European Baseball Championships, where teams hope to move up. The best teams play in the A Pool (Netherlands, Italy, etc.). Finish at the bottom of the B Pool and you'll relegated to the C Pool, the lowest level of the tournament.

Now 74 years old, McLaren -- who has spent his recent winters skippering the Arabia Wolves in Baseball United, helping spread the game to yet another corner of the globe -- admits that his "career is winding down." He has more miles (and frequent flier miles) in the rearview than up ahead, but that won't stop him from doing what he's always wanted: spending his days on the ball field, sharing his decades of knowledge with players who may just be picking it up.

"This will be my last calling in international baseball," McLaren said about his Poland post. "When I can't travel like I always have, I'll shut her down. But as long as I feel strong and I've got the fire to continue to spread the word of baseball, I'm going to do it."

"I've been to close to 30 countries through baseball, and the opportunities and the doors that baseball opened for me are incredible," McLaren added in his Texas drawl, his voice as languid as a ballgame on a warm summer night. "This is actually giving back to the game that's given me everything."

Though it was nearly 50 years ago, McLaren easily recalls the summer of 1977 when he first fell in love with the global game.

While working in the Blue Jays organization, Pat Gillick tabbed him to be one of the coaches with the Canadian national team. The trip was supposed to begin in Cuba, with McLaren sending back scouting reports on the island's stars. When that was canceled, McLaren went with the team to Nicaragua for the Intercontinental Cup. The man who had pledged himself to the game as a schoolboy and spent seven years in the Astros Minor League system now found a new way to love the game.

"We went to Nicaragua a little bit early, and it was just so gratifying," McLaren said. "The enthusiasm of the fans and seeing all the different countries."

Ever since then, he's seen baseball as something bigger than just a competition with winners and losers.

"I've always thought that baseball brings people together," McLaren said.

He points to his experience coaching in Venezuela during a time of student uprisings. The streets were filled with protestors during the day, but when it was time for the first pitch?

"Everybody went to the game and had a beer and cheered for their teams," McLaren said. "And then they'd go back to protesting after the game."

He mentions another moment when he was coaching with the Cardenales de Lara, one that reveals how baseball really can unite the most disparate of individuals.

"We had a military guy that would stay for four innings every night, four innings exactly," McLaren said. "He'd walk back after the bottom of the fourth inning and he would say, 'Good luck, McLaren,' and he would shake my hand. Several years later, Hugo Chavez was the president of Venezuela and he would walk by me every night and call my name and wish me luck. Turns out, he's another guy that loved baseball."

But where Venezuela and the U.S. are baseball-mad nations, McLaren's most important work has come at the new frontiers, where baseball is still growing. He sees himself more as a teacher passing down the game's habits, routines and philosophies to the next generation.

"I told my players in China and I told my players here [in Poland], 'You guys are going to be the next wave of coaches after you finish playing,'" McLaren said. "That's the way it's been working out. Some of the guys I had in China are now coaching."

He's in the middle of that project in Poland, where McLaren has taken over for Dennis Cook this summer while Cook manages in the Cape Cod League. The national team will host nations like Slovakia, Norway and Ireland in Wroclaw for the B Pool next week, hoping to show that the push they've made over the past few years is paying off. That they're at home hosting the B pool, rather than having played in the A pool last fall with European powers like the Netherlands and Italy, is thanks to a tight, 10-9, loss to Lithuania at the Qualifiers in 2024. (That contest led to the benches clearing after the final out was made. Think these games don't mean something? )

But part of McLaren's job is to look out for the future -- something that looks a little brighter after the U-18 team won gold in their B pool championship last year before a rude awakening back in the A pool earlier this summer. Sometimes that means going back to the basics, the ones many young players in the U.S. learned the first time they ever laced up spikes and hit the field.

"The number one thing we always encourage is have fun and have enthusiasm, enjoy playing the game," McLaren said. "That's what we emphasize -- and it's worked. The guys enjoy being out there together."

Just as Poland's neighbors to the west, the Czech Republic, took 20 years of sustained developmental growth to reach the World Baseball Classic, McLaren knows that the job is bigger than just a few tournaments. The first goals are smaller: get the players out on the field as often as possible, make sure they're getting the best coaching available.

"We take it step by step," McLaren said. "It seems like each year we come back [to Poland] our players are a little bit stronger, a little bit more competitive because they've been playing a little bit more."

He points to 23-year-old shortstop Hubert Zgórzyński, who hit .350 with a home run at the '24 Qualifier and was one of three Polish national team players that McLaren took with him to Dubai.

"He's a pure athlete," McLaren said. "I just I wish at 16 he had the opportunity [to play baseball.] He didn't start playing baseball until he was like 18 years old. He could play soccer. He could play basketball. He's an athlete, and athletes find a way of succeeding. He's getting better and better, and he's gaining more confidence."

Zgórzyński, who is currently playing in Germany's Deutsche Baseball Liga -- one of the better leagues across Europe -- could still go the U.S. to finish his college education. That's something that most baseball programs across the continent are trying to do with as many of their young players as possible.

"We've had a couple of them go to college in the United States, and that's really, really gratifying," McLaren said. "This is what we're all about: Just try to make these kids better and give them an opportunity."

With Poland being McLaren's likely last stop on his international tour, you could forgive him if he were solely focused on winning next week, if that were the only goal to measure success. But after 50 years in international baseball, McLaren isn't changing. His goals for Poland are the same that he brought with him to China over a decade ago.

"The first time I was with the China team, I told them, 'Will we ever win the World Baseball Classic? Probably not,'" McLaren remembered. "You've got to be optimistic, but you've got to face reality, too. I said, 'I have a simple goal for us and it's this: Get better every day. Get more confidence, believe in yourself, refine your skills, but work on having fun.

"That was my message, and that's what I have here in Poland, too: Get better every day."