With a father like Bruce Bochy, who needs enemies?
According to a story from Mark Townsend of Yahoo Sports, the manager of the defending World Series champions San Francisco Giants cut his own flesh and blood Brett Bochy, from big league camp in a way that would make Joe Jackson smile.
That was the unfortunate case for the younger Bochy on Thursday night, though his father did take a different route to informing him than he would for any of his other players. According to Andrew Baggerly of Comcast Sports Net San Francisco, he actually did it in a face-to-face meeting over dinner, which may or may not have added to the awkwardness, but it certainly didn’t take away from the disappointment.
“He was disappointed I didn’t bring him in (the office) to cut him,” the manager said, smiling. “Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow to make him feel better.”
However, as things turn out, there really was a good reason why Bruce Bochy elected to go that route aside from being a good father attempting to brace his son for the ‘bad news’ (which is he’ll be reassigned to Giants minor league camp). The skipper actually a full plate ahead of him on Friday as San Francisco had elected to cut an additional 20 players that day. Bochy was concerned he may not have time to get around to all of them, so he took advantage of the situation to work ahead a little bit.
The younger Bochy, didn’t have any realistic expectations of making the team due to durability issues that have followed him throughout spring training and his career. He sported a 6.75 ERA in minimal appearances but his father was proud of his son nonetheless.
“You spend so much time away from your kids when you’re in baseball, and here he was every day,” Bruce Bochy said. “Just watching him pitch, go through the drills … he worked hard to get here and to this point, so I was very proud of him.”
Guess who’s sending his dad to a retirement home the first chance he gets?