What a thrill for Bruce Bochy.
A year after his return to the dugout, the longtime San Diegan raised his fourth World Series trophy Wednesday night in Phoenix after his relentless Texas Rangers knocked off the Arizona Diamondbacks, 5-0, in Game 5.
“I know how blessed I am,” Bochy said, thanking his players.
What a bummer for Padres fans that former chairman Ron Fowler’s pleas two years ago fell short as Padres leaders Peter Seidler and A.J. Preller were searching for a new manager.
“Ron Fowler wanted Bruce Bochy very, very badly,” Bochy’s agent, Tony Attanasio, said Wednesday.
Said Fowler, who’d stepped down as Executive Chairman a year earlier: “Tony knew that I could only make a recommendation to the Padres as I no longer had a management role; and I did strongly recommend to A.J. and Peter, in separate calls, that they interview ‘Boch.’ Don’t believe they ever contacted him.
“And, as they say, the rest is history.”
Bob Melvin got the job, led the Padres to the 2022 League Championship Series and fell short of the playoffs this year.
Melvin, who had a stormy relationship with Preller, was hired last week as manager of Giants last week even though he still had a year left on his contract.
Say Bochy in fact had returned to the Padres, who went to the 1984 World Series with him as a backup catcher and reached the1998 World Series with him four years after they launched his managerial career.
Attanasio said he believes Bochy would’ve pushed the right buttons of star-laden Padres teams.
“I think he’d have got a little bit more out of them, when they needed to put it out,” said the agent.
“Melvin is a wonderful guy, knows baseball very well,” he said. “But, he’s a calm, mellow, almost laissez faire-type guy; where Boch is calm and he’s mellow — but you don’t piss him off.”
It’s all speculative, of course.
And, even if Preller had sought to hire him, Bochy may not have been comfortable with working for Preller.
“Things happen for the best,” said Attanasio, who said Preller and Bochy had a very brief chat.
Bochy and his former Padres pitcher Chris Young held each other in great respect, dating to their only season together with the Padres in 2006.
Young became the Rangers’ top baseball executive late in August 2022. A few months later, following Texas’ sixth consecutive losing season, one that topped 100 defeats, Young began to search for a new manager.
Bochy was coming off his third season as a Giants scout.
Was he ready to manage again?
Fowler had sounded him out in 2019, after his managerial run with the Giants had ended. “‘Boch’ indicated on a call that he was looking to take at least a year off,” Fowler said.
Could Young persuade him to jump back in?
Young and Rangers owner Ray Davis went to Bochy’s home in Nashville to make their pitch.
The former Padres ace didn’t hold back.
“What this team and this organization needs is you,” Young said, per Attanasio. “You are the thing that’s missing. We have to get that. We need it badly. We want you back in the game. You have to come back in the game.
“And if you have to come back in the game, it has to be with us.”
Attanasio said Bochy hit it off with Davis because “they came up the hard way.”
The energy tycoon all but begged Bochy to take the job.
“Is there anything you can ask of me that would make it OK for you to take this job in Texas?’ ” Davis said.
Bochy replied: “Well, yeah. There’s a big ditch that’s out in front of my property. It runs about 85 to 95 feet and about 15 feet deep. Could you do something about that?”
Bochy got filler for his ditch.
Davis and the Rangers got the first World Series trophy for a franchise whose Texas tenure began in 1972 following 11 years in Washington, D.C. as the Senators.
History echoed.
The Giants had been without a World Series title throughout their San Diego tenure that began in 1958 until Bochy’s fourth Giants team won the trophy in 2010.
When Bochy moved on, top Padres leaders did not appear to fully appreciate him before another team hired him.
Backed by Padres owner John Moores, CEO Sandy Alderson famously invited Bochy to see if the grass was greener elsewhere, roll around in it, a few weeks after the 2006 Padres lost a first-round playoff series to a Cardinals team managed by Tony La Russa, whom Alderson had hired many years earlier with the A’s.
Turned out, the grass was rather lush.
The Giants, Cubs and Diamondbacks all offered Bochy a managerial job, said Attanasio.
Bochy had enjoyed a strong relationship with Kevin Towers, the Padres’ GM and would mesh well with Giants baseball executive Brian Sabean.
Predictably, Young kept the streak intact.
When the final out was recorded Wednesday and Bochy hugged Will Venable, a former Padres outfielder whom Bochy hired as his associate manager, a topic emerged that no doubt will make Bochy uncomfortable.
Does Bochy now stand as the best postseason manager in MLB history, given that only Joe Torre owns as many World Series titles in the wild-card era from his run with the Yankees?
Bochy’s postseason win rate, in 57 games: .606.
Torre’s postseason win rate, in 142 games: .592.
Bochy pulled into a tie with Hall of Famers Torre and Walter Alston with his fourth World Series title.
He trails only Hall of Famers Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel, who each won seven World Series titles, and Connie Mack, who won five. Wednesday’s victory moved him past two more Hall of Famers in Sparky Anderson, whose Big Red Machine enthralled Bochy, and Miller Huggins.
He joined Hall of Famer Bill McKechnie as the only manager to take different franchises to the World Series title.
But as with McCarthy, Stengel and Mack, there were no playoff rounds when McKechnie was managing the 1925 Pirates and 1940 Reds.
The posteason has become a season unto itself. The victory Wednesday was the Rangers’ 13th since the 162-game season end. It came on the first night of November.
Less quantifiable are the traits Bochy brings to the job. Attanasio ticked off a several of them he deemed helpful.
“First of all it’s his honesty,” he said.
“His size,” he added, referring to Bochy’s 6-foot-4, 240-pound frame.
“His voice,” said the agent, a nod to a gravelly baritone.
“His knowledge of the game,” he said. “And, when he says something, he means it.”
Back to the bright numbers: Bochy has raised four of the 29 World Series trophies (17.2 percent) since the wild card debuted. In his past 11 years of managing, the stiff-gaited, creaky, 68-year-old former catcher has been the last manager standing four times (.364).
Among managers, he’s the Mr. October and November of an era in which the season has become increasingly backloaded.
As for his regular-season acumen, here’s a final stat going into a critical Padres’ offseason.
Number of West title the Padres have won since Bochy’s final San Diego team edged the Dodgers for the crown in 2006?
Zero.
