SUWANEE, Ga. — Inside the Mexican restaurant, the pop-music hits played at just the right level, brightening the mood while allowing for conversation. Outside was the sort of weather — about 50 degrees — for which we New Yorkers would kill nowadays.
In this setting, Brian McCann made for a picture of relaxation. Who wouldn’t?
But this reflected more than the calm before the storm, the Yankees’ catcher said. He is days away from reporting to spring training and beginning his second year as a Bronx baseball player. And, he insisted, he couldn’t be happier with his workplace or his bosses — or with the five-year, $85 million contract he signed with the Yankees in December 2013.
“This was the best decision I’ve made,” McCann told The Post on Wednesday. “Just to be able to lace ’em up for this organization is amazing.”
The soon-to-be 31-year-old grew up not far from here, attending Duluth High School, and intends to raise his family here — he has a 2-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter. He established his All-Star bona fides with the nearby Braves, who drafted him (in 2002) and developed him and accepted that he would use his free agency to find a deep-pocketed American League employer that would give him at-bats at designated hitter when he wasn’t behind the plate.
So when McCann struggled mightily to begin his Yankees tenure, he seemed to be suffering the same ennui exhibited by many big names transitioning to the heightened Bronx scrutiny.
“I think it’s typical with all of our guys, unless you’re coming from the Red Sox, like [Jacoby] Ellsbury or Johnny Damon. They were used to that,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said this week. “I think our experiences have been, for players coming outside of the Northeast environment in New York, it doesn’t matter who you are. There’s definitely a settling-in period.”
Terry Pendleton, McCann’s former hitting coach with the Braves, raised the stakes on this story line. He said he thought McCann would not settle in, ever. Last July, Pendleton told The Post’s Dan Martin, “New York is not Brian. … He’ll never be comfortable with that.”
“We talked” after that interview, McCann said of he and Pendleton. “That whole thing was out of left field. It couldn’t have been farther than the truth.”
This marks a sensitive topic for McCann because he takes pride in not offering excuses for his underperformance. He did look more comfortable at the plate in the second half of 2014, increasing his power — he posed a slash line of .239/.294/.377 before the All-Star Game and .221/.274/.453 after it — and finished the season with 23 homers and a line of .232/.286/.406.
“I didn’t play as well as I should have,” he said. “I didn’t get off to a good start. I had some mechanical flaws in my swing, and it took me four months to get it ironed out. It really did.”
Learning the AL’s pitchers, too — he mentioned Tampa Bay’s Alex Cobb as particularly challenging — also accounted for his poor results, he said, and, of course, there were the opponents’ defensive shifts against him.
Here is as close as McCann got to acknowledging a New York learning curve: “On a Tuesday night in Atlanta, when you’re playing the San Diego Padres, there’s 15,000 people in the stands,” he said. “New York, it’s sold out every night, and it’s a different brand of baseball. Man, it was amazing. Everything I experienced this year was amazing. I didn’t play the way I wanted to, but yeah, it was definitely an adjustment, for sure.”
Now, he knows the terrain in Tampa, where the Yankees train, and in New York. He knows his manager Joe Girardi, his pitching coach Larry Rothschild and most of his teammates. He knows the league’s pitching, by and large.
He knows the clubhouse’s vibe will change thanks to the retirement of Derek Jeter and the return of Alex Rodriguez from his yearlong suspension.
Without Jeter, “It’s going to be different,” McCann said. “It was a treat to watch him go about his business every day. I got more of an appreciation of what he does.”
And with A-Rod, “I’m excited,” McCann said. “I’ll get to talk to one of the better players to ever play the game. I’m excited to meet him and get to know him.”
The Yankees pursued McCann partly because of his reputation as a team leader. Common sense says he will help fill the void left by Jeter’s departure.
“Leadership, to me, it’s guys having certain qualities,” McCann said. “It’s guys that show up every night that will do anything and everything for the guy next to him. I feel like we have a lot of guys that do that. … If something needs to be said, it’s going to get said.”
As for how much he personally will say, and do, on this front, “You just kind of let it evolve,” he said. “I think you just be yourself, and however that comes across to people, it comes across. I try to be the same person every day. I try to show up and play hard every single night and get the respect of your teammates.”
McCann’s relaxation, his happiness, will soon be put to the test. With every word, every smile, he emits a simple message: Let’s go.
“I love our team, I really do,” McCann said. “I think a lot of us are going to have bounce-back years offensively. I like our pitching staff, I like our bullpen, and that’s it. I think our defense now, you can argue that it’s one of the best. So I like where we’re at, headed into spring.”