Ned Yost Looks Back at Touching Moment With Bochy

SAN FRANCISCO - A few minutes after his team lost the 2014 World Series in a heartbreaking way, Royals manager Ned Yost walked over to the visiting clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium and quietly slipped into Bruce Bochy's office. With champagne still flying through the air and players getting deep into their celebrations, Yost and Bochy shook hands and had a brief conversation.  

The show of class and sportsmanship meant a lot to the winning side. That moment meant even more to Yost. 

"I've still got that picture hanging in my office," he said recently. "I don't have many pictures that I put up, but there's that one of me and him shaking hands afterward. That one is special to me. It was a hard time because he was trying to celebrate, but I just wanted to tell him congratulations."

Yost's Royals will face Bochy's Giants today in Cactus League action, and it will almost certainly be the final matchup between their teams. Bochy has announced his intention to retire, and neither team is favored to reach the postseason. 

That 2014 matchup was a memorable one, though, and it still leaves Yost shaking his head. A day after Bochy announced that 2019 would be his last season, Yost, at an MLB event, recalled thinking he had gotten the better of Bochy. 

"I just remember him sending Bumgarner out in Game 7 and I just thought, ‘Okay, we're going to kill him.' And it just didn't turn out that way," Yost said. "Even to send Bumgarner out there in the ninth, it was like, ‘whoa,' but it worked out perfectly."

Yost and the Royals would win the next year, getting their own moment in the sun. But on that cold October night in Kansas City, Yost watched Bumgarner get out of a jam in the ninth. He watched Bochy celebrate, and then he went over to congratulate a manager he says is a surefire Hall of Famer. 

"I just have the ultimate respect for him. I've always admired him, his longevity, and what he has been able to do," Yost said. "The one solace I can find, as tough as it was to lose a World Series, especially when you're 90 feet away, is just that I lost it to my boyhood team and to a manager who I probably have more respect for than any other present manager in the game. 

"He's right behind Bobby Cox for me. He's accomplished everything that every manager looks to accomplish."

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