Bochy primed for managing by father's guidance

Bruce Bochy
Hometown: Melbourne, Fla.

Bruce Bochy was born an Army brat in France, where his dad was stationed at the time. Most of his formative years were spent in Florida, though.

He graduated from Melbourne High School, where he was a baseball teammate of Darrell Hammond of "Saturday Night Live" fame. He then stayed local by attending Brevard Community College and Florida State University.

It was his father who helped get him on the baseball path.

"He coached me," Bochy says. The first Major League game he attended was at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., when he was 10 years old. He sat next to his dad, who talked to him about the mental side of the game.

His dad always had a game on the radio at home and would talk about what players should have done: who threw to the wrong base, who came off the base early -- the intricate things that a manager would say.

His dad passed away in 1990, five years before Bochy became a manager.