Reagins has come a long way

He used to set up the bat boy and bat girl promotions. He moved boxes and had players sign baseballs for charity. He helped design outfits for mascots.

A decade and a half after he was hired by the Angels as an intern, Tony Reagins, at age 40, became the club’s 10th general manager Tuesday. Reagins, an African American, becomes the third minority general manager in baseball, joining Ken Williams of the Chicago White Sox and Omar Minaya of the New York Mets.

Whereas Williams and Minaya rose through the ranks as scouts, Reagins did so as a marketing assistant and sponsorship services representative. He became the manager of baseball operations in 1998 and director of player development in 2002.

“You never know how things work out,� Reagins said.

Especially because of how his story started.

Reagins lost his father to intestinal cancer when he was 4 years old.

His mother, Polly, raised him and his three older siblings in a three-bedroom house in Indio. Polly was a teacher’s assistant during the day and cleaned houses in the evenings. She took them to the nearby Baptist church every Sunday, but the task of taking care of Tony on most days fell on older brother Danny.

“He’s been a great father,� Tony said. “I mirrored what he did.�

Except play baseball.

Danny, who is four years older, was an infielder for the College of the Desert. Tony didn’t even play baseball at Indio High.

He instead was on the football and basketball teams and, the way he tells it, he was a good enough tailback to get looks from colleges, including Oregon State.

But in practice one day early in his senior season, Reagins was hit hard. He said he spent more than a week in a hospital. Interest from schools waned and his football career never extended past high school.

Had that not happened, “I’m not here,� Reagins said.

Reagins followed his older brother’s educational path, first to the College of the Desert, then to Cal State Fullerton. He graduated with a degree in marketing in 1991 and landed an internship with the Angels.

Angels pitching coach Mike Butcher was a reliever on the team at the time. From time to time, Reagins would ask him to sign a ball or a bat for a promotion or charity.

“Sometimes when you’re preparing yourself for a game, you’re trying to get your mind focused on things,� Butcher said. “He was always respectful of that time and space a player needs to get ready.�

Butcher and Reagins would work closely together years later when Butcher was the roving minor league pitching instructor and Reagins was the head of player development.

By then, Reagins said, he had absorbed what he could about the game. He worked closely with general managers Bill Bavasi and Bill Stoneman, the man he replaces. Bob Fontaine let him scout and John McNamara taught him what to look for in a young catcher. His future brother-in-law, Darrell Miller, showed him how to run a minor league system.

But what made Reagins exceptional was how he communicated with others.

“In terms of his people skills, he’s on the top of my chart,� Stoneman said.

Said brother Danny: “I tell him that if he wasn’t in baseball, he’d be the mayor of Indio. He has that many friends and family that follow him.�

But most of his immediate family has passed on.

Sister Pam, his oldest sibling, died in 2000 of a heart attack at 42. His mother succumbed to breast cancer in June 2002. Months later, the Angels won the World Series.

“Most of his time off, he was by her side,� Danny said.

Helping Tony through that period was the family of his wife, Colleen. (Colleen’s sister, Kelly, is married to Miller, whom he replaced as the director of player development.)

Colleen was the only family member who knew that Tony had been approached by Angels owner Arte Moreno last week about the possibility of replacing Stoneman.

When Danny heard on television Monday night that Stoneman was stepping down, he went online to see if he could learn anything more. There, he saw that his brother probably would take Stoneman’s place.

“I was shaking,� Danny said.

But when Danny called Tony to ask if the news was true, the reply was, “No comment.�

Danny laughed.

Said Danny: “He’s a company man.�

He has been for a long time.

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