Boone Hopes to Teach Royals How to Win : Baseball: Former Angel catcher who managed in the Oakland A’s organization is hired by Kansas City to replace Hal McRae.

Two years of managing in the minors taught Bob Boone about losing. He was hired Friday to teach the Kansas City Royals to win.

Boone, a major league catcher for 19 years, was chosen to succeed Hal McRae who was fired the day after the baseball season was canceled.

“I waited a long time for this,” said Boone, a Villa Park resident. “This has been put on hold for a long, long time, maybe because I played too long.”

His managing experience came in the Oakland Athletics’ organization, where he had a 125-161 record before joining Davey Johnson’s coaching staff in Cincinnati last season.

“I had a tremendous time at Tacoma,” Boone said. “I learned how to lose, which is not an easy thing to do.”

The experience demonstrated how rewarding managing can be.

“I think the best thing was the players that had an opportunity to be touched by me and go on to be major leaguers,” he said. “I’m very proud that I had the opportunity to touch those players. It really touches me to be able to put something in their brain and get them over the hump of getting to the big leagues.”

The Royals were looking for a manager-teacher as they cut their $40-million payroll with a game plan of rushing their top minor-league prospects to the majors.

“What a teacher needs is a student,” Boone said. “What a student needs is to know that they want to learn about what you know. The key is getting the player to want to know what you’ve got. The key is establishing a relationship.”

General Manager Herk Robinson termed it an exhaustive search that started with 20 names. Boone was one of four people interviewed along with third base coaches Tony Muser of the Cubs and Ron Gardenhire of the Twins and Cardinals hitting coach Chris Chambliss.

Boone played nine years in Philadelphia and seven with the Angels before finishing his career in 1990 with the Royals.

He held the record for most games caught at 2,225 before it was broken by Carlton Fisk. He batted .254 and won seven Gold Glove awards.

Boone played in four All-Star games, six playoffs and the World Series in which the Phillies defeated the Royals.

“This is one of the toughest jobs to get, there’s only 28 of them,” he said. “I hear managers say all the time that they’re going to get fired. My goal is to never get fired. I’m going to do that by doing the job that I said I would do.”

His son, Bret, is a second baseman with the Reds and part of major league baseball’s first three-generation family. Boone and his father, Ray, were the first father-son combination to each hit 100 home runs.