SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — One by one they stopped off to catch up, steal a hug, pay their respects to the big man with the low rumble. Corey Seager, Josh Smith, Kyle Higashioka, Travis Jankowski, Wyatt Langford. Most lingered a little. A five-minute conversation between Skip Schumaker and the larger-than-life figure ended with a fist bump. “Good to see you guys,” he said. Good to see you, Bruce ...

San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy waves after speaking during a postgame ceremony honoring Bochy at Oracle Park in San Francisco on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2019.

Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group/TNS

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — One by one they stopped off to catch up, steal a hug, pay their respects to the big man with the low rumble. Corey Seager, Josh Smith, Kyle Higashioka, Travis Jankowski, Wyatt Langford. Most lingered a little. A five-minute conversation between Skip Schumaker and the larger-than-life figure ended with a fist bump.

“Good to see you guys,” he said.

Good to see you, Bruce Bochy.

The Rangers have moved on without their only manager to win a World Series, but if he’s no longer one of them, he remains the same. Also the best manager any Ranger ever had.

He works for the Giants these days, the same organization where he won his first three World Series titles. He’s a senior advisor to Buster Posey, his old catcher, now the team president. Bochy flew in from Nashville, Tenn., this week and will remain with the club through its opening series in San Francisco.

This summer he’ll fly out to the West Coast once a month and join the club any time the Giants are on the East Coast. Visit the affiliates. Maybe take a closer look at a player the club might be interested in.

But, in April and May, you can probably find him at his sister’s place on Amelia Island, outside Jacksonville, Fla., casting for redfish.

Life is ...

“Different,” he said, looking out from the Giants’ dugout. “Really nice. I’ve had a lot of time with the family, grandkids. I’m not preoccupied all the time. They’ve got my full attention now, for sure.

“I’m in a good place, a really good spot.”

Certainly a different place from where he was last fall when I asked if he wanted to come back. He told me then that he did. Their mid-September run, when they climbed to within two games of first after a listless summer, got his juices going. He loves that feeling. Called himself “a competitive S.O.B.” back then.

But, after the Rangers swooned again, and after meeting with Ray Davis and Chris Young — the man who talked him off the couch to lead an organization that had wandered the wilderness for the better part of six decades — he thought better of it. The Rangers had Schumaker, a bright, young, ready replacement coveted across baseball. At 70, his back and knees hurting, spirit sapped, Bochy was “pretty beat up,” as he put it Saturday.

On top of everything else, his wife, Kim, wanted him to come home, and he owed her for all the time spent away from his family. On the drive back to Nashville from Texas, he told her it was the perfect time to walk away.

And that’s how a Hall of Fame career ended.

Even if he can’t bring himself to say it.

“I’ll say I’m not looking to manage again,” he said.

Anything more than that carries the dread of finality. Besides, what would he do if he went cold turkey on baseball? You can only wet so many lines, drink so much bourbon, hit so many golf balls.

Speaking of which: He got himself a golf simulator because his 8-year-old grandchild, Braxton, wants to play with Papa, as do his sons. He’s probably a 10-handicap, up from 8, but, as previously noted, he remains a competitive S.O.B. He was taking 500 swings a night on the simulator until his back stiffened and his family suspended his privileges.

He’s in a better place now than he was the last time he was out of a job. He spent three years away from the game after his exit from the Giants. An eternity. He couldn’t stand it.

Which is why the last three years managing the Rangers meant so much.

“Three wonderful years,” he said. “Being a part of their first World Series win in the first year. It was just incredible how it all happened. The relationships I built with the team, with the clubhouse guys, with the staff, with everybody.

“Those are the things that stay with you forever.”

Seeing his former players Saturday brought it all back. If the last two years weren’t so good, they don’t take anything away from the greatest season in Rangers history.

Nothing changes who he was and remains to the players who paid their respects, either.

“I’m so appreciative of what they did for me and the team,” Bochy said.

“They’re just good people.”

Besides the personal side of it, here was the other thing about getting up off the couch and coming back:

The chance to prove he was as good as he ever was.

“I think that’s what made me feel so good,” he said, “to be three years out, then come back and win a championship. Before that, I was like, ‘Where am I in this game? Where do I fit?’ You win three with one team and now you’ve done it with another. It validates everything. Makes me that much prouder how it worked out.”

Pause.

“I still had it in me.”

A Commissioner’s Trophy and a championship banner stand as evidence of his time in Texas, brief as it was. It went so fast, it apparently makes it easy for some to forget. A sportswriter who covered the Giants watched Seager and Bochy embrace before Saturday’s game and wondered aloud about the connection before catching himself. Back in Texas, where the debt can never be repaid, no one would make the same mistake.

____