This one question will hound the Texas Rangers throughout the entire 2025 season

Connie Mack managed big league baseball games until he was 87, meaning Bruce Bochy has plenty of years remaining to manage the Texas Rangers.

The man is only 69 years old.

Rangers’ pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to Surprise, Ariz. for the start of 2025 spring training on Feb. 12; Bochy will be there. No one is sure if he will be there next year.

He doesn’t know. Neither does the man who convinced him to come out of retirement.

“I think about it constantly. I do,” Rangers general manager Chris Young said Saturday, during the team’s annual Fan Fest at Globe Life Mall. “More than anything, not just what he means to our team, I love working with him. I love showing up to the ball park every day and going into his office, and having conversations with him. Talking about life, baseball, the team, and we laugh every single day.

“I couldn’t have a better relationship with Boch’. I also want to respectful to him in terms of what the future looks like. That’s his decision. If Boch’ wants to be back, he will be back. If he’s had enough, then we’re going to get him an office upstairs and let him come sit by me and hang out and we’ll have those laughs that we share, just in a different environment.”

Bochy’s future with the Rangers is entirely up to him, and this situation is fluid. He is in the final year of his original three-year contract that he signed when he came out of retirement after the 2022 season. He’s not apt to be fired, and there will be no Ron Washington scenario where Bochy quits in the final month.

Bochy’s status will be one of those issues that’s not an issue throughout the entire 2024 season.

Whatever he decides, his legacy both in Major League Baseball and the Texas Rangers is secure. He would potentially retire with one of the most unique resumes in the history of the game.

Between his tenures in San Diego, San Francisco and now currently in Texas he has managed 27 seasons, and he has four World Series rings; three with the Giants. Having ended World Series droughts both in San Francisco and in Arlington, he is forever perfect to those fan bases.

Lost in his array of impressive managerial achievements are two obscure details: according to the data compiled by ProBaseballReference, Bochy is not a winning manager. His career winning percentage is .498, and he has 13 losing seasons in his 27 years of managing.

To last this long despite that much losing speaks to the man’s not managerial but people skills. You would need a GPS to find someone who doesn’t like and respect Bruce Bochy.

As of today, he sounds like a man who wants to keep going. It will entirely depend on whether he believes the Rangers can be competitive in 2026.

“This is why I am here. I did the retirement thing. I enjoyed that, the first year, I missed the game,” Bochy said on Saturday.

After 13 years with the Giants, Bochy retired at the conclusion of the 2019 season. He came out retirement only after Chris Young, who pitched for Bochy with the Padres in 2006, called and asked him.

“For me to be back in it, I’m lucky. It’s a great blessing to be back in what I love to do,” Bochy said. “I can’t wait for spring training. There is nothing like hitting the field the first day.”

Bochy may like to play golf and fish, but he’s a baseball lifer. He has learned how to manage not just the game, but the energy required for a season that requires at least eight months.

Even though he will celebrate his 70th birthday on April 16, that will not make him the oldest guy to manage a game.

Connie Mack managed until he was 87. Jack McKeon managed when he was 80. Casey Stengel lasted until he was 74. Both Chuck Dressen and Felipe Alou went until they were 71.

Most recently, Tony LaRussa retired when he was 77 because of health concerns.

Dusty Baker retired after 26 seasons of managing, when he left the Houston Astros in November of 2023 at the age of 74.

“You see a lot of your friends dying, and you haven’t even really enjoyed your life away from the game,” Baker said in his retirement press conference.

This is a trade that so many people in these types of professions make, for a variety of reasons. Near the top of the list is they don’t know what else to do with their time. It is all they know.

Bochy came back to the game after a three year break because he loves it, and he has the energy required to do the job.

The Rangers will patiently wait to see if he wants to keep going.