Old baseball hands to match wits in World Series updated 4:54 a.m. The longer it goes, the messier this World Series is likely to get. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing. Detroit skipper Jim Leyland smokes cigarettes to relieve tension, though a Michigan state law passed more than two years ago bans him from doing so inside the Tigers' home, Comerica Park. So opening the series in San Francisco might actually be a little easier on his nerves, provided he works out a way to sneak the occasional smoke in the visiting dugout hallway or somewhere else at AT&T Park. Otherwise, he's likely to chew through a lot of nails. Meanwhile, the go-to stress reliever for his Giants counterpart, Bruce Bochy, is dipping tobacco. He usually puts the tins away once the day-to-day pressure of the season eases. But as soon as his ballclub hits a bad period or stumbles on a tough road trip early the following spring, Bochy reaches for the dip again. So imagine how many plugs of chew the strain of the postseason is going to mean. "The triggers for me are at the ballpark," Bochy said recently. The last five years I quit during the winter. I made it deep into spring training this year. A weakness for tobacco isn't the only thing the two have in common, of course. They might do some damage to Major League Baseball's campaign to clean up the league as far as tobacco is concerned - dip is already banned in the minors and Congress is pushing to halt its use in big league games, too - but the suits in charge would be hard-pressed to find two managers whose crusty demeanors honor the game's traditions much better. Leyland, 67, is a baseball lifer who signed with the Tigers organization as an 18-year-old catcher in 1963 and went on to hit a scintillating career .222 in the minors. He endured eating in truck stops and being stranded on two-lane highways alongside buses with flat tires at 4 o'clock in the morning - all without complaint. But eventually, he realized his only chance to stay in the game was on the bench. Close friend Tony La Russa gave Leyland a hand up by giving him the third-base coaching job in Chicago, where La Russa began building his reputation as a baseball genius. Leyland's ascension took longer and involved more detours. But back when both men were making names for themselves managing in the dungeon of Double-A baseball, it was La Russa who was throwing around compliments at his friend like confetti. And when then-Chicago White Sox general manager Roland Hemond quizzed his newly minted manager about hiring coaches, there was only one name on the list. Pittsburgh scooped up Leyland in 1985, the first of his four managerial stints. Despite great teams, he didn't hoist a World Series trophy above his head until the deep-pocketed Florida Marlins gave Leyland the chance in 1997 and the first words out of his mouth reminded everyone how long the road had been. "This is for all the minor league managers, the guys in the instructional leagues," he said that night in Miami. I'm a Double-A backup, flunky catcher. So don't give up guys. Bochy, 57, knows how that story goes. He, too, was a catcher, though he made it to the bigs before running out of steam as a player. A career .239 hitter, he played in exactly one World Series game, with San Diego in 1984. He went on to manage the club he played for - usually hamstrung by low budgets - but made it back to the World Series with the Padres in 1998, only to get swept by the Yankees. Eventually he moved to San Francisco and wound up with a squad of grinders like him. He got his ring in 2010, and right after the Giants beat St. Louis in Game 7 on Monday to punch their ticket back to the World Series, the comparisons were rolled out. Like Leyland, Bochy rarely provides great sound bites for public consumption. A writer once likened him to "a two-by-four when TV cameras are on," but don't be fooled - the Giants' sometimes-zany behavior is a reflection of the guy who leads them. You won't get the sense how much either man has endured, let alone sacrificed, to hang around the game each loved - not unless the camera catches one or the other hiding in a corner, nervously puffing away, or pulling a plug out of a tin.