Pope: Johnson working his way up managerial ladder
Longtime Warner Robins football head coach Robert Davis said Mark Johnson, the Demons’ starting quarterback in 1993, probably would have been a pretty good signal-caller in college. But there was no chance that was going to happen, especially with Johnson being picked in the first round of the 1994 Major League Baseball draft.
Johnson, whom Davis called one of the toughest competitors he ever coached, was the 26th player picked that year by the Chicago White Sox. He went on to play professionally for 17 seasons.
The only other Middle Georgia players I can recall being drafted in the first round are Jones County’s Rondell White by the Montreal Expos in 1990 and Kal Daniels, who played at Northside and at Middle Georgia College and was a first-round pick in 1982 by the Cincinnati Reds.
Johnson spent parts of eight seasons in the major leagues, primarily as a backup catcher, with the White Sox, Oakland, Milwaukee and St. Louis. His statistics aren’t overwhelming as he appeared in just 332 major league games with a .218 batting average, 16 home runs and 83 RBI. But he apparently was taking notes along the way for his future.
After retiring from playing following the 2011 season, he moved into the managerial ranks with the Chicago Cubs organization. He managed two years at Boise, Idaho, with the Cubs’ Single-A short-season team before being named the manager at Kane County (Geneva, Illinois), where he spent the 2013 and 2014 campaigns. He was named Baseball America’s minor league manager of the year in 2014 after guiding Kane County to a 91-49 record and a Midwest League championship with an undefeated seven-game sweep through the playoffs. One of his players on that Kane County team was former Mercer second baseman Chesney Young.
This season, Johnson is in a new uniform as the manager of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, the Cubs’ high Single-A team in the Carolina League. It’s just another step in his quest to one day to be on the bench for a major league team, but he doesn’t have a timetable for getting to that level. Current Chicago manager Joe Madden is 61, so maybe the Cubs will be looking for a new manager sometime during the next decade, and Johnson would appear to be a good candidate.
Johnson credits his father, former Warner Robins police chief George Johnson and Davis for helping to formulate his management style. He says he learned discipline and organization from his father and motivation from Davis.
“Coach Davis had an incredible way to inspire and get the best out of every player he coached; practicing and playing with a bottomless heart. He made us all champions in some respect,” Johnson said.
Johnson also had the benefit of playing with the Cardinals in his final season in the big leagues under Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa and got to see first hand how he managed.
Johnson said right now is the perfect time to be with the Cubs organization, whose major league club many experts feel will be in the hunt for a trip to the World Series next fall. Johnson said the Cubs have a great front office, an outstanding scouting system and one of the best minor league operations in baseball. Those elements would appear to be the perfect recipe for big-time success on the baseball diamond.
Johnson said he enjoys the minor league environment, which gives him the opportunity to teach more than managers have at the major league level, which requires more fine tuning than teaching.
“I get joy out of seeing guys get better,” Johnson said.
He still calls Warner Robins home, and following the baseball campaign, he returns to the International City to spend the offseason.
Incidentally, this season under Johnson’s tutelage, Myrtle Beach has the best record in the Carolina League and is in first place in the Southern Division.
Contact Bobby Pope at bobbypope428@gmail.com
This story was originally published May 12, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Pope: Johnson working his way up managerial ladder."