Hulett a gift to Spokane baseball

In a Sunset- Magazine- quality-of-life sort of way, perhaps it doesn’t speak well of Spokane that it took 108 years of professional baseball for a manager to stay longer than four. But, of course, lifestyle issues have nothing to do with it.

After all, it has always been seasonal work.

Tim Hulett’s summer job is just a little more public than most, playing out as it does in front of the 180,000 or so people who make their way to Avista Stadium to watch the Spokane Indians each year. There have been stretches, however, when we barely had time to learn the name of the guy the parent club parachuted into Spokane before the next year took him to Riverside or Lansing or Surprise, all part of baseball’s organizational hopscotch.

And yet here is Hulett, starting his fifth year as Indians manager tonight, with a sincere sentiment to “do this as long as they’ll have me.”

Some unsolicited advice for his employers with the Texas Rangers: keep having him.

As part of an Indians lineage that includes a couple of guys who managed their way to World Series rings, it isn’t that Hulett has to be a baseball savant. But his temperament, vision, approach, teaching skills and resume make him the right guy at the intersection of Prospect and Suspect here in Developmentville.

Need a resource for that first-round draft pick headed here with his press clippings? That was Hulett, too, 31 years ago, the top selection of the Chicago White Sox.

Someone to mentor an everyman whose want-to will have to overtake his can-do? Hulett was that guy, too – piecing together a major league career that lasted 12 seasons, nearly half of them coming after presuming he’d played out the string.

Teacher? He’s won three state high school titles in the last six years at Evangel Christian in Louisiana. Surrogate dad? Three of his own kids have played pro ball – one, Tug, in the big leagues.

And he can win – one Northwest League pennant, one runner-up finish and 41 wins a year in his first four in Spokane. A .500 summer will make him one of just 12 NWL managers with 200 victories in the short-season era that dates back to 1966.

He’s big on detail, process and professionalism – with a wry view of the big picture, as he shared with Rangers’ infield coordinator Casey Candaele, himself a nine-year major leaguer.

“We look back and laugh, ‘How did we make it?’ ”said Hulett. “These players are great – big, athletic, fast. Even the slow guys are faster than I was.”

But he understands that hard work and happenstance, in equal combinations, both play a role.

For instance, in the summer after his senior year of high school – unable to play shortstop because of a shoulder he injured in football – Hulett hit eight home runs. The same scout happened to be in the bleachers for every one of them.

But when he was the No. 1 pick, he hardly let it color his attitude.

“I was so inexperienced, even a little stupid in that sense,” he said. “If I’d looked to the left or the right and noticed how good some guys were around me, I might have been intimidated.”

If his current players want to hear a story, he’ll be happy to spin one – but he knows it’ll take time.

“Initially, they’re pretty standoffish with the manager,” he said, smiling. “They have this fear, maybe, that I control their futures – which I guess in some cases I do. But midway through the season when they start getting comfortable with me, the wall comes down a little bit.”

He can tell them about being an emergency fill-in in Triple-A two weeks into his pro career and staring down the seams of a Lee Smith fastball. Or about his first full year in the majors, 1985, when he was cruising along hitting about .290 “until I discovered why they call them the ‘dog days’ of August.”

He can point out how a desperate team might find it easier to jack around a young player even if the veterans are struggling worse, and not to give up too soon – he was ready to retire when Baltimore resurrected his career for six more years.

Mostly, he’ll tell them to be ready for anything. He’d been a regular in the White Sox lineup for two seasons when, early in the third, they excised him from their plans.

“You think, ‘Wait, how could this happen?’ ” he said. “Suddenly your career looks like it could end as quickly as it started.

“That’s’ one thing we try to tell guys – take advantage of every opportunity. Because there’s going to be 50 new guys drafted next year, and free agents signed. That means 50 will get released.”

Tim Hulett’s been there. Now he’s here – again – and the fit seems better than ever.