PITTSBURGH >> Gene Lamont was out golfing with his good friend and fellow baseball lifer Jim Leyland last month when word started getting out that Don Kelly, their former utility player from their days with the Tigers, was being named manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Lamont said to Leyland: “You know, Donnie needs to hire me, or somebody like me.”

Turns out, Kelly was on the same page. When Leyland called Kelly later that day to suggest that Lamont could be a good addition to the coaching staff of a first-time manager, Kelly told Leyland that he had just been discussing the very same idea with wife Carrie.

And, so, on May 16, Kelly made it official, hiring Lamont officially as an adviser, and also as his bench coach, a week after he was promoted to replace fired manager Derek Shelton.

It marked Lamont’s first time in a major-league uniform since 2017, his last year with the Tigers under former manager Brad Ausmus.

“I had to think about it. I hadn’t been on the field for six or seven years, there’s my grandkids,” Lamont said over the phone recently. “But I wanted to help Donnie. And I really wanted to go back. Everybody talks about how the game changed, and I wanted to go back (and see), and it’s worked out fine.

“I just watch the games and talk to Donnie. It’s been interesting. It’s been fun, just to get back in there. You kind of wonder if you’ll really get into the games, and I really have. It’s been enjoyable.”

Lamont is 78 and this year marks the 60th anniversary of his introduction to professional baseball, when the Tigers made him the 13th overall pick in the 1965 amateur draft. A catcher, Lamont went on to play five seasons in the majors, all with the Tigers, before retiring after 1975 and turning to coaching in a long journey that’s taken him to the major-league staff with five different organizations, including the Tigers, with whom he was the bench coach and a base coach under Leyland from 2006-13 and Ausmus from 2014-17.

Tuesday marks Lamont’s return to Detroit, when the Pirates visit Comerica Park for a three-game series.

It’ll be his first time working in the visiting dugout at Comerica Park in more than two decades.

“It was the first name that came to my mind,” Kelly said during a conversation with The News in his PNC Park office earlier this month. “He was all on board right away.”

Kelly had never been a manager at any level before getting the Pirates job. He was a scout for the Tigers, then worked on now-Tigers manager AJ Hinch’s staff in Houston for a year in 2019, before moving on to Pittsburgh, where he’d been the bench coach for five-plus seasons.

Lamont brings with him a wealth of experience, including two stints as a manager of the Chicago White Sox from 1992-95 and of the Pirates from 1997-2000.

“Gene’s the guy that watches the game and gives him opinions. Gene’s gonna be a very calming influence on him, I think,” said Leyland, who had Lamont on his coaching staffs in Pittsburgh and Detroit and gave him one of the few shoutouts in his Hall of Fame speech in Cooperstown, New York, last summer. “That’s probably the best thing.

“Gene might be the most well-rounded baseball guy. He’s going to be a calming influence.

“I’m so happy. Gene’s really happy. He loves it.”

Lamont has been out of baseball for a few years. He worked as a scout and front-office adviser for the Kansas City Royals until 2021, after he left the Tigers following Ausmus’ dismissal in 2017.

Since returning to the dugout in Pittsburgh, Kelly has heavily leaned on Lamont’s advice, especially once when Kelly, already three ejections into his major-league career, was heading out of the dugout to argue again until Lamont put his left hand on Kelly’s shoulder. Kelly retreated.

“Gene is a very steady character,” said Andy Dirks, a former Tigers outfielder and current TV and radio broadcaster. “Leyland was the big personality … and you had Gene Lamont, who was just a mainstay, the same energy every day, a very calm demeanor, which kind of balances out a more fiery management style. … It’s good to have that balance. … Gene was always a step ahead of the game. As a manager, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment, but you’ve also gotta forecast the future, and Lamont was very good at that. He was four steps ahead.

“That’s what you want out of a bench coach.”

That’s important for any manager to have, but especially a manager getting his sea legs, like Kelly.

“You’re in a different chair now,” Leyland said of the transition from a coach to a manager.

Lamont kept his typically low profile in Detroit, with his most memorable moment (because it was so visible) coming when Prince Fielder was thrown out at home in Game 2 of the 2012 World Series in San Francisco, when Lamont was third base coach. When reporters waited for Lamont afterward, he acknowledged, “If I had to do it over, I would have held him.”

There weren’t many regrettable moments as a Tigers coach for Lamont, who was in Detroit during arguably the greatest stretch of sustained success in franchise history, including two World Series appearances (but only one win). For the record, he said he believes the 2012 Tigers team was the most talented of the bunch. There also haven’t been many regrettable moments in Lamont’s long professional baseball career, which began as an 18-year-old who, in an unusual move by management, started with three weeks at Triple-A Toledo. As a manager, he won two division titles with the White Sox and was the American League manager of the year in 1993.

He came close to getting a third crack as manager in 2011, but the Red Sox instead (and regrettably) hired Bobby Valentine. Lamont’s managing days are long over, but his coaching — and mentoring — days, it turns out, are not.

“I was retired, but I watched a lot of games and tried to coach and manage (along with them), so I might as well come back,” said Lamont, who seen the all-pitch, no-hit Pirates go 17-18 since Kelly took over. “There’s more information out there (now). Well, I don’t know if there’s more information, but it’s surely more readily accessible. I think some of it probably helps, some of it probably doesn’t. But I’d use anything I could to help win a game, that’s the bottom line.”

Some things, even 60 years later, never change.