SAN FRANCISCO -- About 15 minutes before Farhan Zaidi sat down at a podium to wrap up his first season as the Giants' president of baseball operations, retiring manager Bruce Bochy walked into the ballpark. Bochy is headed for Napa to relax and catch his breath for a few days, but first he had a bit more packing to do.
Before disappearing into the clubhouse, Bochy stood in the hallway for a moment and excitedly talked about Sunday's postgame ceremony. He said he was stunned when the likes of Angel Pagan, Marco Scutaro and Tim Lincecum walked through the center field wall.
"I had no idea any of that was going to happen," Bochy said.
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As Zaidi sat in a chair by the mound and watched all that go down Sunday, he thought of the future, not the past. Zaidi has spent the last year zeroing in on the qualities he wants in his first hand-picked Giants manager. The emotional ceremony reinforced a lot of what he already believed.
"To me the number one quality is just relationship building, probably most importantly in terms of the players," Zaidi said. "I think what we saw on Sunday was a real reflection of what Boch was able to build in terms of his connection with the players and having all those guys come back to honor him. That's a real reflection of the success that the organization had over his time here, is the trust and the relationships that he built with players."
Zaidi said the ceremony reminded him that the most important task is finding a leader who gets his players to put the team above the individual. It's something he has seen in the past while working with other highly-celebrated managers, and he noted Tuesday that, in addition to Bochy, he is close with Los Angeles Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts and Oakland A's manager Bob Melvin, thought to be two of the best in the game.
The search to find the right leader kicks into high gear this week. Hensley Meulens and Ron Wotus will interview with Zaidi as the two internal candidates. Six to eight others are expected to be external candidates, and Zaidi said he would lean towards experience and men who have done the job at least once before.
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Neither Meulens nor Wotus has that on his résumé, but both have managed at other levels and served as big league bench coaches. Zaidi has gotten to know them over the past year, and the fact that both got interviews shows that they excelled in another area that's important.
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It's not just about managing your players, it's about managing up, too.
"The flip side of that is having a relationship with the front office and being able to work with them," Zaidi said. "I think in the modern game having a manager that can have productive and trusting relationships in both avenues is really important, and I think you see that with some of the best managers in the game now."