Bruce Bochy is inadvertently teaching Giants fans the difference between jealousy and envy.
Envy — a painful feeling of wanting what someone else has — is what Bochy returning to the World Series with another team should induce.
Being jealous — feeling threatened or scared of losing something to someone else — doesn’t quite apply in this case.
Sure, Bochy hoisting a Commissioner’s Trophy in red and blue instead of orange and black can be jarring. But it shouldn’t be hard for Giants fans to cheer on Bochy and the Rangers as they begin Game 1 of the World Series Friday night.
No hard feelings, no need to rewrite history. Only fond memories of Bochy and the Golden Era of three titles he helped bring to the franchise, and excitement that he gets to continue building on his Hall of Fame legacy.
As Game 1 of the World Series between the Rangers and Diamondbacks begins Friday night in Texas, the Bay Area will be watching one of their favorites on a familiar stage wearing unfamiliar colors. It might not feel right, but should be way more sweet than bitter.
Amid the troubling optics of Bochy surging through the postseason as the Giants searched for their next manager, thoughts naturally crept into Giants fans’ heads. How could we have let that guy go? That should be us. It became easy to forget exactly how things ended in San Francisco.
Endings are rarely easy, but Bochy’s time in 2019 was up. Bochy didn’t get pushed out by a philosophically different new regime — as Brian Sabean recently hinted at. He wasn’t sacked spitefully.
In Bochy’s last three years, the Giants went 214-272 (.440). They finished fifth, fourth and third place and still had the 28th ranked farm system — elevated from last because of Joey Bart.
A long rebuild was in its infancy. Bochy wasn’t the right manager, at that stage of his career, to see it through.
Just as the Giants needed a change, Bochy needed a break. He told me in August that stepping down began three years of physically putting himself back together. He got two new hips, back surgery and a knee procedure down. That’s all in addition to his 2015 heart procedure and subsequent operations to treat heart arrhythmia.
He turned 64 during spring training in 2019, after spending a season under Zaidi, and announced his retirement, which would include a farewell tour.
“In my mind, it’s time,” Bochy said.
The circumstances surrounding Bochy’s retirement don’t need to be recast as something they weren’t. The Giants didn’t make some massive mistake by letting him go. It wasn’t some dereliction of duty or act of malpractice. Although many speculated Bochy would manage again after 2019, he clearly needed time away from the game — with his family and in physical therapy centers. There is no alternate reality where Bochy stays and the Giants return to World Series contention like the Rangers right now.
Yet four years later, by all accounts miraculously, there’s Bochy in the vaunted visitor’s clubhouse in Houston, getting showered by champagne and saying “I can’t say I’ve ever seen a team with more heart.”
Ouch.
There still can be some queasiness. Just the sheer unprecedented nature of a Bay Area sports icon immediately having success elsewhere might be tough to stomach. Who’s the last legend to leave the Bay and win? Joe Montana’s Chiefs made only an AFC Championship run. Rickey Henderson won a World Series in 1993, but his peak was undoubtedly in Oakland.
Stephen Curry isn’t going anywhere. Buster Posey bought the team before lacing up other threads. It took Dusty Baker two decades away from San Francisco to finally capture a ring.
Bochy might be the first to “win the breakup.” It happens. Ask New England Patriots fans about watching Tom Brady win his seventh Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or Cleveland Cavaliers die-hards about LeBron James in Miami and Los Angeles.
But for the opportunity for sourness to exist, there had to have been an indelible mark left in the first place. The Rangers in the World Series is a chance to celebrate Bochy, not be salty. It’s not a reflection of the Giants’ organization’s missteps, but another example of Bochy’s nearly unparalleled propensity to navigate October baseball.
This was never going to happen in San Francisco after Bochy met the end of the road in 2019. The Rangers’ magical run required a serendipitous pairing in Bochy and his former pitcher Chris Young, oil-money spending and a shocking postseason run through the AL’s top two seeds.
All that plus Bochy’s steady hand, of course. Had he stayed with the Bay Area, his wisdom would’ve been wasted, the end of his career faded. Nobody would’ve been happy.
Now, at least a Giants legend can add onto his ironclad legacy. The Giants didn’t lose something they could’ve had, they’re simply watching an old friend on the precipice of achieving the same thing they want.
