Can Hart now pump new life into Braves?

Amateur baseball: 1969 All American at Seminole Junior College as a catcher.

Pro playing career: Played three years in Montreal Expos organization (peaking at Double-A), hit .223 with two home runs.

Coaching stops: Orlando Boone High School (1973-82), Baltimore Orioles (1982-87 in minors, 1988 third base coach in Baltimore). Interim manager for Cleveland Indians in 1989, going 8-11.

Front office experience: Cleveland Indians special assignment scout (1989); Indians director of baseball operations (1990-91); Indians general manager (1991-2001). Texas Rangers general manager (2001-05); Rangers senior advisor (2006-13). Atlanta Braves senior advisor (2013-14); Braves interim GM (2014).

Highlights: Six postseason appearances over a seven-year span (1995-2001) for an Indians franchise that had previously not been to the playoffs since 1954. Two American League pennants with Indians. Twice Executive of the Year (1994 and ’95).

JOHN HART’S HITS AND MISSES AS GM

HITS:

Dec. 10 1991: Indians trade Willie Blair and Ed Taubensee to Houston for Kenny Lofton. In 10 seasons in Cleveland, interrupted by one season in Atlanta, Lofton hit .300 and stole 452 bases.

July 14, 1992: Indians trade minor leaguer Kyle Washington to Baltimore for reliever Jose Mesa. Mesa had 104 career saves in 10 seasons in Cleveland, including a league-leading 46 in 1995.

December 20, 1993: Indians trade Reggie Jefferson, Felix Fermin and cash to Seattle for shortstop Omar Vizquel. Cleveland got 11 seasons of one of the slickest fielding shortstops of all time; his .283 batting average was a bonus.

MISSES:

Nov. 18, 1998: Indians trade third-baseman Brian Giles to Pittsburgh for Ricardo Rincon. Giles was a two-time All Star in Pittsburgh, while Rincon was a serviceable lefthander out of the bullpen.

Jan. 16, 2002: Rangers sign pitcher Chan Ho Park to a five-year, $65 million deal, considered one of the great busts in team lore. Oft-injured, Park went 22-23 in four seasons.

Feb. 16, 2004: More a case of what might have been. Rangers trade Alex Rodriguez to New York Yankees, shedding an onerous contract, for Alfonso Soriano and Joaquin Arias. A much sweeter deal with Boston, that would have delivered pitcher Jon Lester and Manny Ramirez, was nixed by players union.

Cleveland Indians President Mark Shapiro claimed his branch of the John Hart tree in 1992, after a memorable interview in the quaint rot of old Cleveland Stadium.

A Princeton man, just 25 and ready to remake the world, Shapiro was after a job in the player development department. Hart sat behind a worn desk that bore the scars of Bill Veeck’s careless smoking. Because nothing real could grow in that dim room, a plastic plant decorated one corner. A space heater labored in another corner. The place may have reeked of many things, but success was not among them.

“It was amazing,” Shapiro remembers now, “because (Hart) could paint a picture of the organization regardless of the setting we were in that was so vivid, so passionate and so authentic. For a young guy thinking about starting his career — even at a franchise that was maligned at that point, only known for the movie ‘Major League’ — I walked out of there thinking: I can’t imagine a place I’d rather work or people I’d rather work with.”

This is what Hart does above all else, and what he must help do again once more for the Braves: He seeds the clouds and believes it will rain talent.

John Hart has done just about everything in his game except sit on a stool in Costa Rica stitching cowhide into baseballs. Played as high as Double-A ball. Coached at every level. Managed in the bushes, and even for 19 games in the bigs. Grudgingly migrated to management.

But serving as mentor, a paterfamilias to a generation of team builders, is one of his more frequently noted contributions to the craft. The man has spawned more spin-offs than “CSI.”

A brief list of some of the execs Hart had some hand in developing: Shapiro, Pittsburgh GM Neal Huntington, Colorado GM Dan O’Dowd, Texas GM Jon Daniels, Cleveland GM Chris Antonetti, former Arizona and San Diego GM Josh Byrnes, former Dodgers GM and current Mets vice president of player development Paul DePodesta. A John Hart tree? More like an arboretum.

Thirteen days ago Hart stepped out of the shadows of his advisory role with the Braves to become interim general manager after the dismissal of Frank Wren. He, team president John Schuerholz and former manager Bobby Cox make up a three-headed search committee to find someone more permanent.

The search may end with the 66-year-old Hart, at least in the short term. Or could it go just down the hall to Braves assistant John Coppolella, with Hart in the background as a guide. Or extend to any corner of the insular baseball world to which the Braves trio is hardwired. Whatever the solution, Hart’s philosophy on executive-rearing and his reputation as a mentor are likely to play major roles.

Hart explained the bargain he struck at every stop, and one that just may come into play in Atlanta: “I had really smart guys who had skill sets that were completely different than mine that helped me in so many ways. And my obligation was to help them with the baseball acumen, to bring them in and talk to them about players and team building, staff meetings, getting in with managers and coaches the guys who make the decisions.”

His job isn’t finished yet. There are more clouds to seed over Turner Field.

A man for all rooms

Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez didn’t really know Hart before he came onboard during the winter as a Braves advisor. But it takes practically no time to get acquainted.

“One second he can be sitting in front of a TV camera, very articulate, and the next, he can be in your office, a guy’s guy just shooting the breeze. He fits in every room he goes in,” Gonzalez said.

That kind of adaptability springs from a lifetime working both the loading dock and the boardroom of this business.

Raised near Orlando, Fla., Hart grew up in catcher’s gear. He played at an All-American level at Seminole Junior College and lingered in the Montreal minor league system for three years (1969-71). One day he would go on to bring some very big lumber to Cleveland, but he certainly never fit that mold as a player, recording just 20 base hits (two home runs) in more than 750 minor league at-bats. Promotion was not written on such stats, not in a system that included Gary Carter and Barry Foote.

For nearly 10 years, he worked at the foundation level of baseball. Coached high school ball in Orlando and started up a traveling instructional camp for kids. One of his pupils was an 11-year-old infielder named Jonathan Schuerholz, son of the Braves president. The elder Schuerholz today counts Hart his closest friend in baseball.

Not surprising that Hart would cast wide nets for talent. He was the beneficiary of just that kind of approach when Baltimore Orioles scouting director Tom Giordano came south to check out a couple players at Orlando’s Boone High. He noticed the coach, too. Giordano offered Hart a scouting job, to which he said, no, thanks, call me when you have a manager’s position.

“Tom called me back the next year (1982) and said I’ve been thinking about you. We got an opening in Bluefield (W.Va) in rookie ball, pays $4,000 for the summer, and you can stay over in the nun’s quarters,” Hart remembered.

Thus a pro was reborn. A quick climber, Hart made it to the big club’s third-base coaching box in 1988.

Soon, he just knew, a major league managing gig would come open. He expected that only ambition to be fulfilled when, while coaching winter ball in the Dominican Republic, he got a call from then-Cleveland GM Hank Peters requesting a meeting in Miami.

Hart was floored when, instead of the manager’s job, Peters offered him a place in the front office, with the promise of rapid advancement. No, no, no, Hart thought. I’m not front-office material. I want to be a manager.

“(Peters) said, ‘John, no you don’t,” Hart recalled. “He told me, ‘You don’t have the big track record or resume — you’re going to get a manager’s job there’s no question. You’re probably going to get a bad club and you’re probably going to get on that cycle (of hiring and firing).

“This is THE baseball job. You get to pick your players, you get to find your scouts and teach your scouts. You get to put your development program together. You get to hire your staff.”

He eventually arrived in Cleveland in 1989 as a special assignment scout. It was during this time he got to, ever so briefly, scratch his itch to manage when he was hustled to the dugout as an interim manager for the final 19 games of the ’89 season. He was 8-11. He’s known as the manager who once ordered Joe Carter to bunt.

By the end of the ’91 season, true to Peters’ promise, Hart was made general manager. The Tribe had lost 105 games. Here’s the keys. Good luck.

The Cleveland days were the best, not a statement that many can make. While there, he and assistant O’Dowd popularized the idea of signing promising young players to long-term contracts before they hit arbitration (a strategy not coincidentally popular with the Braves last season). His 10 years there were capped by a run of six division titles and two World Series appearances. He is the only worker in the Braves offices who wishes Cleveland could have hit Tom Glavine at least a little bit in 1995.

As good as those times were, his four years (2002-05) as GM in Texas were almost as ugly. No playoffs, just one winning season, a blurry grand design when he first tried to build around Alex Rodriquez and then rebuild everything after trading him to the New York Yankees.

Where he was the toast of Cleveland — he left in advance of an ownership change — he was the butt of criticism in the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex. The area’s most visible columnist, Randy Galloway of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, took to calling Hart “the empty golf shirt.”

“It wasn’t the happiest of times,” Hart said of the Texas years, “but I think far outweighing the arrows that came was the fact that I knew we were building something special there (the Rangers later appeared in two World Series).”

Looking for 10 more wins

In his third major league executive posting, here between the adoration in Cleveland and the animus in Texas, Hart is back in position to influence the course of a franchise.

As when he went to the Indians, the Braves are looking forward to a move to a new stadium, and a new well of revenue. Unlike that situation in Cleveland, Hart says, the Braves are not in need of drastic, institutional renewal.

“The challenge is to turn it around so there’s 10, 11 more wins in a season as you go through the short term,” Hart said. “Here you’ve got to keep an eye on the short term and still pay attention to what’s going to happen in 2017.”

One way or another, Hart is going to be a looming presence in the Braves’ retooling. “He keeps saying that (he’s not interested in full-time general managership), but more he says that, more I think he’s trying to convince himself,” said Schuerholz, who wouldn’t mind erasing the interim part of Hart’s title.

“I’ve thrown myself into this,” said Hart, the nearly scratch golfer whose game has been neglected lately.

“I’ve created a life I enjoy,” he said, referring to the less stressful life of a MLB Network analyst and part-time advisor. “But along with it I’m equally as passionate about what I’m doing now. I’m having a blast, having a lot of fun, talking to a lot of good people.”

So, what title will he be bringing back home to Orlando, say around the start of spring training?

“I don’t know. Stay tuned,” Hart said with a general manager’s brand of guile.