How Bruce Bochy got friend Tim Flannery back into coaching with Giants

When Bruce Bochy was about to take the Giants' managerial job ahead of the 2007 season, he called an old friend.

Tim Flannery had worked as Bochy's third-base coach in San Diego from 1996 through 2002, but hadn't coached since.

"I was walking my dog with my wife," Flannery recalled to NBC Sports Bay Area in "Toast to Boch," a one-hour TV special saluting the retiring Giants manager. "I was out of the you game, and you said, 'You got one more ride left in ya?' You sent me [episodes of the 1985 miniseries] "Lonesome Dove," a couple old farmers kicking pigs around, right? You said, 'I need ya.' I left everything to come up here. My wife looked at me and said, 'You're going again?' [I said,] 'Boch says they're trying to win up here.'"

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They didn't just try. Flannery, who played with Bochy for five seasons in San Diego, once again served as his third-base coach in San Francisco and coached the Giants through their most successful period since the franchise moved to the Bay Area.

The Giants won three World Series, their first in San Francisco, from 2010 through 2014. After two losses in the Fall Classic playing and coaching alongside Bochy in San Diego in 1984 and 1998, Flannery and Bochy finally lifted the Commissioner's Trophy as Giants.

"You're the only manager I worked for -- 15 years," the current NBC Sports Bay Area analyst said. "You took me to five World Series -- two as a player. We won three. You took me to three All-Star Games. I never would've gone to those places without you. I can't thank you enough."