Howard Megdal

Special for USA TODAY Sports

Brian Snitker, unlikely caretaker manager and perhaps more for the Atlanta Braves, and his wife Ronnie took a chartered flight to New York last week - a business trip for Snitker, whose Braves have improved significantly since he took over for his good friend Fredi Gonzalez last month.

But it represented a vacation of sorts for Ronnie, who'd been in full-time grandmother mode for the twin babies of Snitker's daughter, Erin.

“A lot of it hit her when we were on the flight,” Snitker said last week, sitting behind the visiting manager's desk at Citi Field. “She got kind of emotional, seeing all the stewardesses on the plane. My daughter had twins in August, so she's been busy babysitting them. Her plate's been pretty full since I got this. And then last night, she finally got a chance to relax, and it really hit her.”

It's an adjustment for them both, one Snitker had given up on ever having to make. He's been a Brave for nearly 40 years, first as a player, then as a coach and manager at virtually every level except the major leagues. Every year since 1977 — the season after Hank Aaron retired, a full decade before Tom Glavine made his Braves debut — Snitker has been part of the Atlanta Braves. And so he believes he has insight into not only the way a team wins, but specifically the way the Atlanta Braves do it.

“We talk about a Braves Way,” Snitker said. “And that encompasses doing things the right way. Carrying yourself the right way. Respecting the game. How you wear your uniform. How you're expected to play on the field. So when guys get here, the coaches are guys who have been here—guys like Terry Pendleton, Eddie Perez—guys who were here when we were putting all those flags up.”

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In Snitker, the Braves also have a man whose entire life has been an apprenticeship for the months and years to come in Atlanta. No one is pretending the Braves are in anything but a rebuilding phase. And so while it may be counterintuitive to have a 60-year-old in charge of that effort, this is a 60-year-old who's done little over the past 30 years that hasn't involved working at making young baseball players better.

Gonzalez was fired after getting off to a 9-28 start. The Braves are 15-19 under Snitker after their season-high six-game winning streak was snapped Wednesday in a 3-0 loss at Miami.

“In the case of myself, really, and Brian, we spent so long in the minor leagues, and that was all you did,” Mets manager Terry Collins said. “Your job was to get the guys on that team better. I used to have an old general manager who told me, 'Don't worry about wins and losses, worry about making sure three or four of your guys moved to the next level and performed.

“So it's easier for us. We've managed for a long time. And you see guys put into this position with very little managerial experience. It's hard, it's pretty stressful. But when you've been through all the tribulations of the minor leagues—you're short players, you have guys up and down, once you get up here, it just makes it easier, the nature of what you're dealing with.”

Then there's the surprise nature of the job for Snitker. He'd decided he was ready about 10 years ago, right around turning 50, but then the call didn't come, and he returned to Class AAA after serving as Atlanta's third-base coach from 2006-2013.

“But after going back to Triple-A, I just kind of put it out of my mind,” Snitker recalled. “My time had come and gone, it wasn't going to identify me by any stretch. So I was good with it. I wanted to get back to the major leagues as a coach, but I just never thought I'd be a manager.”

There is a joy in the present evident in what Snitker says and does, something required of a manager who needs to look past the team's record and focus on the little victories of a pitcher improving the command of his third-best pitch, or a hitter learning how to hit the grounder to the right side of the infield to advance a runner from second to third. And there is joy in grasping his wife's hand on a chartered flight, more than two decades after losing loved ones, and living with the fear of losing Ronnie, too.

“I remember a year when I went through a lot of personal issues,” Snitker said, referring to the summer of 1993. “My dad had a massive heart attack and died. Two weeks after that, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. That summer put a lot of things in perspective for me. And I think I changed as a baseball manager. Life's too short for me to be beating players over the head every day. You have to enjoy every day because you're never guaranteed tomorrow.”

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That's the essence of the title “interim manager”, too, and yet it is hard to ignore that his Braves just went into New York and swept Collins' Mets and then split a pair in Miamii. It didn't come as a complete surprise to the eternally sunny Snitker, though, who described himself as someone who “comes to the park every day believing today's the day we're going to start a 10-game winning streak.”

“I talked to Brian today,” Collins said. “He brought up some things that we've all gone through. But he's a little bit calmer about them. Because what are the expectations right now? It's just about getting better. If that happens, you've done your job. If your players play better, the wins will come. And that's experience guys coming from the minor leagues to the big leagues can apply.”

Experience, yes, but also a mindset. Snitker understands that losing is part of the process the Braves have engaged right now. And yet, a man who has described the best part of his jobs in the minors as going through July, the hottest days and a game every day, doesn't seem to mind. Not when his entire working life has come without needing to write a resume or go to a job interview.

“I couldn't have been more proud the other day when we won in, what was it, 12 or 13 innings,” Snitker said of a 13-inning, 9-8 win over the similarly rebuilding Reds that lasted 5 hours, 18 minutes. “We loaded the bases twice in that game with nobody out, and finally scored. The character that the team showed, how they didn't get down, stuck with it and won that game. It would've been easy to quit.

“I always tell the guys, when you fight through the bad, there's always good on the other end of the bad, if you take ownership of what's going on, and handle it, you'll be rewarded on the other side of it.”

Megdal reported from New York.

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