Giant veterans determined to challenge odds, send Bruce Bochy on a positive note



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Editor's note: Tim Flannery is a Giants analyst for NBC Sports Bay Area. Before joining the stand, he was a coach with Bruce Bochy's staff for 16 years, including eight years as a third base coach for the Giants. Flannery won three World Series titles in San Francisco before retiring after the 2014 championship season. He shares his thoughts after hearing about Bochy's imminent retirement.

Today, I learned that Bruce Bochy would retire after this season with the Giants. I am delighted for him. This man has never had a break since taking office in 1989, in the minor leagues of San Diego. He won all four years in the miners, then was named director of the major league in 1995 with the Padres.

After this season, he will have spent 25 years in the majors. It's amazing. Along the way, he went to four world series as a "skipper", winning three of them as a giant. He was elected manager of the year and made everyone better around him to play and coach for him.

It's an incredible race that will take him to the Hall of Fame. He has shown perseverance, hard work, great interpersonal skills and never be prepared in advance. He was flawless in his love of competition, of victory and his absolute hatred for losing.

He did not care if he had a team of low-budget players and last place in the league. He always honestly thought that he had a chance to beat you. He never thought that he was helpless. That was and it's his strength. It also meant that the players he had that day on this team are playing beyond their abilities. He believed in them, so they believed it too.

Being a great league manager, the demands seem to never go away. Players, agents, wickets, media, fans: it is a pressure cooker that does not take doubt and that takes you years of your life. It can be so unhealthy, but Boch has always had the perfect makeup to handle it all. In the middle of the storm, Boch has always made the right decisions – not always the most popular – but the good ones that would improve the team in the long run.

During my 16 years of coaching for him, I never questioned the sign he had set for me to deliver. I have never questioned a gesture that he did. I trusted him because I knew he was smarter than everyone else. I have seen it over and over again.

In this demanding game of the big league of baseball, so many requests are modified. So many people become different. Personalities can be exhausted by the relentless schedule, requirements. Managing you will do it because of everything you need to be and pressure to win. Boch would never throw a player under the bus, he always covered him. He would never put his finger on the finger, he would take their faults and turn away his eyes to take the blame.

He did not care.

He was and is a player manager. Do not handle for the fan, who sees everything from a distance. He protected his boys.

Twenty-five years ago, the players were different. 25 years ago, the game was different. You have evolved as a coach or manager, or you have been spit out. He dealt with all the problems, all the personalities, all the pressures, all the types of teams and all kinds of front-offices. Its durability is incomparable.

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After winning our first world series in Texas in 2010, we had taken our flight back to the west late at night. The World Series trophy was with us first class, and Boch caught me and took me to the galley and told me very special things.

Then he said, "Look at this trophy, there is nothing else I need now."

I knew him well enough to know that he was full of sister, he wanted another and another. Although it will be his last year as a leader – with a team supposed not to win – I would be more scared to play against Boch and his team now than ever before.

Why?

I can promise you this: it will not go quietly in the night. He will not make it his retirement tour. He will not leave any stone unturned and will not finish his race without playing every last card left in his hand.

Congratulations, my friend, let them go and burn everything. You have taught us all that miracles happen only to those who believe in them.

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