SAN FRANCISCO -- Giants manager Bruce Bochy has collaborated on a book which is sure to delight baseball purists and could dismay the game's acolytes of analytics. "Bochy Ball!" features a photo of Bochy on the cover and his name in the book's title. As he insisted Friday, however, it's not exclusively about him.
"I'm proud to say that the book focuses on the chemistry and continuity that runs from the top to the bottom in the Giants' organization," Bochy said. "It's really a book about chemistry -- what it is, why it matters, how we try to bring it about."
Written by best-selling business authors Drs. Kevin and Jackie Freiberg, "Bochy Ball!" uses Bochy in particular and the Giants in general as examples of how interpersonal relationships can prompt success in the boardroom as well as the dugout. Players, coaches and front-office executives formed the variety of Giants figures interviewed by the Freibergs.
Hence the book's full title: "Bochy Ball! The Chemistry of Winning and Losing in Baseball, Business and Life."
"Hopefully, everybody will take something from it," Bochy said. "In baseball, so much is talking about sabermetrics and analytics, but it's about the intangible side of the game, too -- not just in baseball, but also in business. That's what we're hoping to accomplish, that it's not just focusing on numbers. It talks about how important the intangibles are."
Bochy said he and Kevin Freiberg are longtime friends. But after the Giants began winning World Series and Freiberg mentioned the possibility of doing a book, Bochy said he wasn't ready to package his thoughts and Giants experiences into a writing project -- at least not yet.
Finally, after the 2014 World Series, Bochy began feeling more receptive to a baseball/business juxtaposition. Doing the book, Bochy said, "took between two and 20 years, depending on how you look at it."
Since achievement often proves elusive in the business world as well as in the baseball realm, the Freibergs mentioned the abysmal 2017 season in the book and pointed out what could be learned from it.
After all, losing has its lessons, too.
"You hope [the book] gets people thinking about how important chemistry is for a team," said Bochy, who wrote a short but popular book about his favorite walking trails in San Francisco and other baseball locales. "Sure it's hard to measure, but what I do know is that you can't lose the heart of baseball to the business of baseball. You've got to have the numbers, but you also have to have the 'gut' feel."