Mayne back in saddle

With one decision, Mike Mayne discarded the daily menu of deeds that often made him pause shortly after stirring from a contented sleep since his retirement in 2004.

By agreeing to return to coaching, accepting the job as pitching coach at Fresno State University, the 61-year-old former Orange Coast College baseball head man will have little time to spend with his golf clubs, fishing rod, or the horses stabled near his property in Montana.

Unitil possibly late June, Mayne is, as some of his former players and family members have told him, back where he belongs; back on the diamond and in the dugout, thinking and teaching the game that he loved even before he felt the same for his wife of some 40 years, Patricia.

“Since I’ve been on the field working with these players, it’s as if I was on that field, in that dirt, just yesterday,” said Mayne, who was lured from his Montana home by former OCC assistant coach Mike Batesole, whom Mayne recruited out of Garden Grove High in the early 1980s.

Batesole played collegiately at Oral Roberts, but later was an assistant coach for Mayne at OCC.

“I’m getting more comfortable every day and I don’t think coaching, or the game, will be a problem for me,” Mayne said. “The biggest thing is learning how to juggle eight balls at one time and focusing on the one ball that needs to be focused on at that moment. That’s not something I’ve done for a while.”

What Mayne has done, after coaching the OCC baseball program to 400 wins and a 1980 state title in 15 seasons (from 1977 to 1992), then working for 11 seasons as an assistant with the OCC football program, was enjoy life. In addition to making a daily and most-often impromptu decision about how to spend his day each morning when he woke up, Mayne shared quality time with his wife, his two sons and, his five grandchildren.

But, when Batesole called Mayne a few weeks ago, after Batesole’s then-pitching coach, Ted Silva, had left to take the same job at UC Irvine, Mayne decided the time was right to rekindle his lifelong passion for baseball.

“Batesole called me back in 2003-2004, when I was about ready to retire to ask me if I wanted to go to work with him,” Mayne said of the man he considers a protege. “But, at that time, I had to feel what it was like to not work at all. When he called again [near the end of October], I asked him to give me a few days, though it only took me a few hours to decide.”

Mayne quickly received ringing endorsements from Patricia and his two sons, including Brent, a Costa Mesa High product who caught for 15 seasons in the major leagues. And it wasn’t long before Mayne and his wife were making plans to relocate from their usual winter home in San Jacinto, to Fresno and the fast pace of a 62-game regular-season schedule.

“My wife is my best friend and I think she knew as well as I did, that this was something I needed to do at this point in my life,” Mayne said. “My next call was to my sons, because my biggest concern was how the grandkids would react, because I’ve become so close with all of them. And I got their 100% approval.”

Mayne said Batesole’s proposal carried only a one-season commitment.

“That’s another thing that made it easy to accept,” Mayne said. “Because Batesole told me that If I decided after this season that I didn’t want to come back, I could walk away. But if I felt like I wanted to continue, I could.”

Since stepping down as baseball coach at OCC, Mayne had remained active in the game. He followed Brent’s career faithfully, from the stands as well as the easy chair. He also worked as a scout and roving instructor in the Seattle Mariners organization in 1993 and 94, and he was a catching instructor during spring training for the Oakland A’s in 1996.

“My experience since I stopped coaching [baseball at OCC] has been primarily with good arms,” Mayne said. “So it’s a thrill to be walking in to work with a staff with this kind of ability. I think the expectations for this club are very high. They’ve lost in the regionals to Cal State Fullerton the last two years and what Mike wants to do is break through. We’re just going to take our lunch pail to the ballpark every day, take it one pitch at a time and see what happens.”

Mayne said there is one similarity between his life in Montana and his role in Fresno.

“Certainly working with horses is a lot like working with athletes,” Mayne said. “They don’t really care how much you know, until they know how much you care. It’s kind of that way with athletes a little bit.”

Mayne said he has received many calls from former players and friends in the game, since word of his comeback has spread.

“A lot of them said ‘What are you doing?’ ” Mayne said. But the comment most of them made was, ‘Coach, you’re back where you belong.’ That really made me feel like I’m doing what I need to be doing.”

Fresno State, the two-time defending Western Athletic Conference Tournament champion, opens the season Feb. 22 with the first of a four-game series at UC Davis.

BARRY FAULKNER may be reached at (714) 966-4615 or at barry.faulkner@latimes.com.