Howe starts new season in family game.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

Abaseball guy will tell you that the game is in his blood, and mean it figuratively, but for Matt Howe, that's no hyperbole, and you can take it literally.

When he was born in 1976, his father, Art, was already a major-league infielder, who'd been with the Pittsburgh Pirates before being traded to the Houston Astros.

When Matt was in grade school in Houston, he'd run around the Astrodome with Jose Cruz Jr. and Nolan Ryan's kids.

By the time he was a teenager, his dad was managing the Astros, and young guys were coming up, Craig Biggio and then Jeff Bagwell, talented, hard-nosed players who would become the identity of that franchise and who, along the way, would be kind to a kid who'd never forget them for that.

By the time Matt was in college, lettering three years in baseball at Texas Christian, his dad was managing Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi and the Oakland A's, and it was Oakland that drafted Matt in the 29th round and assigned him, back in 1999, to Southern Oregon in the Northwest League.

There's never been a year in the life of Matt Howe in which his dad wasn't in baseball, or in which Matt himself wasn't playing baseball, and that involvement continues now as Matt, 29, joins the Eugene Emeralds as the hitting coach for the season that begins Monday in Boise.

Howe's playing career as an infielder ended after last season in the independent Northern League, after eight years in professional baseball, 700 minor-league games, 90 home runs and two ankle surgeries, the last a major reconstruction that was the beginning of the end.

He's a belated addition to the Emeralds staff, and has arrived in Eugene with his wife, Maggie, and his 15-month-old daughter, Averi, to begin the next chapter of the story of his life, which has been baseball.

"I just loved it when I was growing up, as long as I can remember," he said Thursday, in a dugout at Civic Stadium.

Those memories are rich; being a kid at the ballpark in Houston, where he grew up, or in Arlington, when his father was the hitting coach for the Texas Rangers.

"I was just a little elementary school kid, getting to run around with the big-leaguers," he said. "It was a lot of fun."

And he was grown up, a pro, when he got to play with the A's in a major-league spring training game against the Milwaukee Brewers four years ago, his father managing Oakland then (in a year the A's would win 103 games) and sitting a few feet away from the on-deck circle, and that's a never-forget memory, too.

He grew up, of course, as "Art Howe's kid," but said that never pressured him much, if at all.

Nor was there much question about Matt Howe getting into coaching once he was done playing; he's thought about it for years, and would be open to managing one day, even though he's seen the pressures as his father dealt with them at Houston, Oakland and, most recently, with the New York Mets, which fired him in 2004 after two seasons.

"Managing's a tough job," Howe said. "All the scrutiny comes down to you. ... He did a good job of not bringing it home. He'd leave it at the ballpark and try not to let it bother him when he came home. I always admired his ability to do that, and that's what I'm going to try to carry over into my career."

His father was noted, too, for his calm demeanor as a manager - analysts would deem it a strength or a weakness, depending on the team's record at the time - and it's a trait his son wants to emulate.

"I think it's kind of a waste to always be yelling at your players, because then when you're really upset with something, it doesn't even register with them," Howe said. "It's a good thing to have an even keel, and not to jump everyone every time they make a mistake. ... That's something I take from him."

That, and a feel for baseball that comes from a lifetime of talks about the game. "And I'll continue to have questions," Matt Howe said, "and I'll be calling him."

Figures. See, baseball isn't just the family business, it's in the DNA.