KEIZER — Before a game recently, Tom Trebelhorn grabbed a brown marking pen and crouched in front of his regal-looking desk, a recent acquisition by the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes’ front office.

He grinned as he touched up a few nicks and scratches on the cherry veneer.

“They’re very proud of the new desk,” Trebelhorn said of his club, the Class A short-season affiliate of the San Francisco Giants.

Trebelhorn, 62, who spent seven years managing in the major leagues with the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago Cubs, emphasized that he was grateful for the furniture upgrade, no small matter in the minor leagues.

Life is different these days for Trebelhorn, whose seven seasons of big-league experience are the most among current minor-league managers. Long gone are the chartered airplane flights, luxury hotels and television cameras that define a major-league existence.

After games these days, Trebelhorn sometimes has only one reporter to speak with — from the weekly Keizertimes, circulation 3,500.

Travel with the team is by bus only.

“I’m not making as much money as I once made, but probably in an hour-by-hour audit of my day, it’s more enjoyable,” said Trebelhorn, whose team was 18-23 overall entering Saturday after winning the Northwest League last season. “It’s a simpler, less-affected existence.”

The Northwest League, which consists of eight teams in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia, is the same league in which Trebelhorn made his professional playing and coaching debuts four decades ago. Trebelhorn, in his third season managing the Volcanoes, found his gleaming new desk after an eight-hour overnight ride from Boise, Idaho, earlier this summer.

His office — if it could be called that — is a cinder-block room so cramped that an electrical transformer is used as the base of a table. The room doubles as the coaching staff’s locker room.

The Volcanoes’ roster is made up mostly of 21-, 22- and 23-year-olds, usually college draft picks in their first or second year of professional baseball. On the road, they sleep two to a room in moderately priced hotels, receiving $25 per day for food. (Trebelhorn and his coaches receive $5 extra.)

And they play a lot of baseball: 76 games in 80 days, from mid-June to early September.

“These kids, they’re all here because they want to be here,” Trebelhorn said. “I often tell them, if you don’t want to be here and you want a uniform, UPS is hiring.”

The minor leagues, though, are also a place to groom coaches. An aspiring manager could work his way up the minors, land a spot on a big-league coaching staff, and use that as a springboard to a major-league managerial position.

Not many big-league managers who are fired or do not have their contract renewed return to minor-league managerial jobs, as Trebelhorn did. Of the more than 200 minor-league clubs, only four besides the Volcanoes have managers who previously managed in the majors, according to Minor League Baseball.

Trebelhorn, who was 471-461 in his seven seasons as a big-league manager, has managed as many major-league games as those four managers combined. His best year came in 1987, his first full season with the Brewers, when his team won 91 games and Baseball America named him the American League manager of the year.

Trebelhorn, whose contract with the Brewers was not renewed after the 1991 season, managed the Cubs for the strike-shortened 1994 season. He later worked for 12 years for the Baltimore Orioles, most recently as a bench coach in the 2007 season, after which his contract was not renewed.

“I think my nonrenewals are up to eight,” Trebelhorn said with a smile. “But always, when it happens, the fine press always calls it a firing. But it’s not. Nonrenewed a few times, fired never.”

Before those major-league stints, Trebelhorn played baseball not far from where he currently works. He grew up in Portland, a 45-minute drive north of Salem-Keizer, and played catcher at Portland State University.

In 1970, he made his professional debut in Oregon for the California Angels’ Northwest League affiliate in Bend, playing five seasons between Class A and AA and compiling a .241 career average before turning to coaching. In 1975, he was named the manager of another Northwest League team, the Boise A’s.

Trebelhorn took a moment to reflect earlier this season when the Volcanoes played at Boise and he strolled past what was formerly the Idanha Hotel in the city’s downtown.

“I walked by there and I thought to myself, 35 years ago, I had my first press conference as a professional baseball manager — 1975, June of 1975,” he said. “I thought, man alive, that’s a while back. And here I am, doing the same thing.”

In those days, Trebelhorn was hardly certain he could make a career out of baseball. So he got his teaching certificate, and in the offseason he worked in Portland as a high school history teacher.

Trebelhorn now lives in Arizona, but he still has family in Portland, and he owns a beach house on the Oregon Coast.

Trebelhorn’s players say they consider themselves fortunate to play for someone who managed in the major leagues.

“He never talks negative to you — if there something negative, he’ll always bring out a positive,” said Shane Kaufman, a 24-year-old pitcher for the Volcanoes. “The only time I’ve ever seen him mad is at an umpire.”

Such exchanges have not gone unnoticed. In the clubhouse hangs a photograph of Trebelhorn in a full-throated argument with an umpire: “New job is filled with joy and relaxation,” its caption reads. “I have found serenity in the Northwest League.”

Trebelhorn said he would probably consider another major-league position only if one of his former players were to become a manager and wanted him as an assistant. But he does not plan to stick around here forever, either, saying that a younger manager would be able to connect better with the players than someone old enough to be their grandfather. (He is befuddled by the rap music blasting in the cramped clubhouse.)

But he is still enjoying his job, taking pleasure in helping not only his players but also his coaches. Trebelhorn said he has particularly enjoyed working with his young assistant coach, a 30-year-old former Giants prospect named Derin McMains.

“I’m trying to grab all the knowledge and wisdom from Treb that I can,” McMains said.

Above all else, Trebelhorn is enjoying the twilight of a baseball career that has stretched 40 years. Reflecting on that as he sat at his new desk, Trebelhorn recalled a criticism from a reporter after he was named the Brewers’ manager.

“The quote was, ‘Then there’s the Milwaukee Brewers, and the new manager better not let his high-school lesson plans get dusty,’ ” Trebelhorn said. “Well, the lesson plans are dusty. The teaching certificate expired. And I have no complaints. I’ve been so lucky.”