The day had been hectic.

Four hours prior to first pitch on May 17, Tony Mansolino went from being a third base coach to an interim manager, tasked with the potentially impossible responsibility of turning an underachieving group back into a competitive team.

As he walked into his postgame press conference, one of his last duties at the end of a very long day, he stopped abruptly.

“Wait, how do I do this?” he asked the Orioles’ public relations employee who was escorting him into the room.

Because even though he’s been in baseball his entire life, this is all new to him. And he’s not afraid to ask for help, even if some think that makes him seem inadequate for the job.

“I think anybody who manages in the big leagues for the first time needs help,” he said. “There is a spotlight put on this stuff. I’m not naive to think I can do it all by myself. I think anybody who sits in this seat for the first time in their life and thinks they can do this by themselves probably isn’t the right guy to do this.”

Becoming a major league manager like this, by taking over for Brandon Hyde, the guy who gave him his big league chance, was never his goal. But a lifetime around the game, his family and friends say, has prepared him for this role more than he may realize.

A ‘clubhouse rat’

Before the Orioles faced the Red Sox in a doubleheader at Fenway Park Saturday, Mansolino and his two sons, Jackson, 10, and Maddox, 7, took a trip inside the Green Monster. Surrounded by the signatures of some of the best baseball players of all time, the three were focused on finding one name: Doug Mansolino.

Some decades ago — when, they aren’t sure — Doug, Mansolino’s father and Jackson and Maddox’s grandpa, made the same trek to the storied left-field wall. Doug Mansolino served as a major league coach for the White Sox, Brewers, Tigers and Astros (he also has extensive experience in the minor leagues and is currently infield coordinator for the Braves’ farm system.)

Like Jackson and Maddox, Tony Mansolino spent most of his childhood running around major league clubhouses and shagging fly balls in the outfield.

“Heck, I think when my wife was pregnant he was in this game,” Doug Mansolino said. “He’s always been in this game, it’s in his blood. It’s what he’s always wanted to do. ... They were what we called clubhouse rats, they ran around the clubhouse like rats. The unique part about it is they learn very quickly how to act around professional players.”

He grew so accustomed to being around major leaguers that he was only starstruck once, when he met Hall of Famer George Brett, his father’s favorite player. The young Mansolino went mute, leading Brett to ask Doug Mansolino whether his son could even talk.

“I think it grows you up a little bit,” Tony Mansolino said of being around star players as a kid. “It strangely makes you comfortable in a really uncomfortable place and strangely normalizes it. ... When I see other coaches’ kids, we are all kind of the same.”

Like his father, Mansolino fell in love with the game and earned a baseball scholarship to Vanderbilt University, which set him up to be drafted in the 26th round by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

After four years of minor league ball, Mansolino called his father. He was done playing, he told him, and he wanted to be a coach.

“I said, ‘OK, it’s a tough road ahead; in the minor leagues you don’t make a lot of money initially.’ I said, ‘Do you need any help?’” Doug Mansolino recalled. “And he said, ‘No, I’m going to do this on my own.’ ... I was at the point in my career where I could have made some calls, but he did not want that.”

Tony Mansolino got his first opportunity in the Cleveland organization as a low-A hitting coach. In 2016, he earned his first manager gig and continued his way up until he reached Triple-A in 2019.

Kyle Hudson, who coached under Mansolino at multiple stops, said the message at every level — even for a Triple-A team full of players who had already gotten a taste of the majors — centered on teaching fundamentals and offering players transparency. Mansolino would get into disagreements with people, as is natural in a tense environment, but never left the room without it being settled. And, perhaps most importantly, Hudson said, Mansolino believed in bringing people together, regularly taking his staff out for meals.

“He has a unique ability to hold the players accountable but also keep a really good relationship with his players,” said Hudson, now the Red Sox’s third base coach. “His ability to connect with the players i think is the No. 1 thing.”

Mansolino held on to that trait even as he became a major league coach with the Orioles, joining Hyde’s staff after the 2020 season as a third base coach and infield coordinator. Earlier that same year, Ryan Mountcastle was called up for his major league debut.

The Orioles tried Mountcastle out at different positions, but eventually it was first base that stuck. That meant hours of work with Mansolino starting in the 2021 season. The two grew so tight that last offseason Mountcastle, a self-described warm-weather-only guy, trudged through a snowstorm to visit Mansolino at his offseason home in Nashville. No, not to hit grounders in the backyard. He went simply because he wanted to say hi.

His Uber was slipping and sliding all over the road, Mountcastle recalled, but he made it there in time to make a snowman with Mansolino’s kids.

“He’s been great. I’d say not only a coach but a good friend of mine,” Mountcastle said. “It’s been a long, long process to get where I’m at now, and he was a big part of it.”

Sticking to it

Hudson saw the news on social media and immediately called Mansolino. He knows that his friend gets worked up sometimes — Mansolino has said that he needs to organize and get rid of the clutter in order to relax, and the commotion of his first day didn’t leave any time to do so — but he didn’t show him any signs of distress during their phone call, Hudson said.

This may not have been the way Hudson expected it to happen, but he always believed Mansolino would one day be handed the reigns of a major league team

“He’s going to be a great major league manager, I‘ve felt that since the first year I worked with him back in 2017, that this guy’s going to be in a position to manage a team and to lead a group of men and he’s going to do a really good job with it,” Hudson said.

It was general manager Mike Elias who delivered the news to the team on May 17, with Mansolino standing off to the side. Mansolino didn’t have the words ready then, but a few days later, while in Milwaukee, he pulled the team together.

His message: Stick to it. They were in the middle of what would turn into an eight-game losing streak, but he reminded them to take it one step at at time.

“It was just like ‘Hey, this is crazy. Just keep doing your thing and we’ll figure this out,’” Mountcastle said.

And Mansolino meant every word, because he knows better than most that even a team that seems mathematically eliminated in May can still go on an improbable run.

In 2005, the Houston Chronicle declared on the front page of the June 1 edition that the Astros, at 19-32, were dead. Doug Mansolino was the third base coach on that team, and he remembers walking into manager Phil Garner’s office that day and telling him that they were going to be just fine. The guys in the clubhouse weren’t panicking, he told Garner, and all of their hard work would one day translate back to success.

Doug Mansolino was right. The Astros won 70 games the rest of the way to not only get in the playoffs but make it all the way to the World Series.

It’s a tale that Tony Mansolino lived through and has heard many times since at the dinner table at family gatherings, and one that Doug Mansolino made sure he retold his son again recently. The Orioles, he thinks, can make a similar run.

“Is it possible? Absolutely. In this game, anything is possible,” Doug Mansolino said.

It will take sticking to what the Orioles do best, Doug Mansolino said. In Tony Mansolino’s first 12 games as manager, both his father and his players have noticed that he has done just that.

The biggest change for Mansolino is that he’s busier. That part is the only thing his kids don’t like about having a father as a major league manager, they said.

“He’s the same guy,” Mountcastle said. “He’s cracking jokes and still messing around with the guys.”

Every night, he walks into the coaches room and asks what could they have done better.

“This isn’t Tony Mansolino managing the Baltimore Orioles and making every single decision,” he said. “We’re all sitting there talking and trying to come up with the best solution for the given moment and we will have a reason for everything we do.”

So far, there have been some signs of his inexperience, such as choosing to pitch to Rafael Devers in a tie game in the bottom of the ninth. And overall, the record hasn’t changed that much under Mansolino (The team is 4-8 since he took over). The Orioles finally snapped an eight-game losing streak on May 21 and went on to string together three straight wins for the first time this season, but there’s still a long way to go. Mansolino said his first goal, before even talking about a playoff spot or division title, is to get back to .500 — they are currently 15 games under.

After that first win on May 21, Mansolino’s players grabbed their new manager and threw him into a laundry cart. They shook their beers, drenching Mansolino and then running him through the showers.

It’s a tradition usually reserved for a rookie after a milestone night, such as a first hit or strikeout. But in many ways, that’s exactly what this night was for Mansolino. Everyone knows that he’s new to this — and that this is not an ideal situation for a first-time manager to get his big break. In many ways his life had long pointed toward this, but the win, which they all hoped would be the first of many, was a sigh of relief for all of them.

“He’s given us his support,” Jorge Mateo said. “We’ve been through some challenging times and we wants us to go out there and be aggressive and win some games.”