Robert Lawrence Baty II, who rose to head of facilities and maintenance at the Berkeley Public Library after 22 years on the job, died May 14 in hospice care. He was an audiophile, an Oakland A's fan, and the manager of a Berkeley recreational baseball team called the Ozone Rangers.

The Central Library at 2090 Kittredge Street has been part of Berkeley since 1893. Someone has to know every branch in the system, every aging fixture, every call to make when something fails after hours. For 22 years, the person who ran that department — facilities and maintenance — was Robert Lawrence Baty II. He died May 14 in hospice care, at 77.

An obituary published Sunday by Berkeleyside, written by his brother Will Baty and sister-in-law Mary Pierce, describes a man who took real pride in the institution: who kept its buildings standing, made his colleagues into lasting friends, and did the unglamorous work that public libraries depend on without announcement. He was proud of the library and its buildings, his family wrote.

Born Oct. 7, 1948, in San Fernando, Baty's first paying job was at Goodman's Record Store in Porterville during high school — a beginning that shaped him. He earned a bachelor's degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a master's in history, with an emphasis in Russian history, from UC Santa Barbara, before settling in Berkeley, buying a house, and spending more than two decades inside the library system.

Outside work, he was a devoted audiophile: Rolling Stones and Miles Davis, Cream and Pat Metheny, Weather Report and Frank Zappa, with one of the earliest subscriptions to Rolling Stone and decades of Downbeat. He managed a recreational baseball team in the City of Berkeley Baseball League called the Ozone Rangers — a group that became, by his family's account, something closer to a lasting fellowship. He was a lifelong Oakland A's fan.

Baty spent his final years in Santa Rosa, in the care of his brother, through five years with Alzheimer's disease.

A full obituary, written by his family, was published by Berkeleyside on June 29.