SAN FRANCISCO — Brian Sabean lives across the street from AT&T Park, where he works as the general manager of the San Francisco Giants. He has had the job since 1996, before any of his contemporaries had theirs. It is hard to get away.

Sabean, 58, copes by walking every day, sometimes along the Embarcadero, sometimes at the ballpark, usually for an hour or so. He carries his cellphone but tries to take calls only from his family. He thinks about baseball but mostly wants to escape.

At the World Series, detaching is not so easy. Four hours before Saturday’s game, Sabean could still feel the sting of the Giants’ Game 3 loss. As he walked the lower concourse at the ballpark, past the foghorn and the garlic fries stand and the whiffle ball field, he spotted a reporter and marveled aloud, without breaking stride, about the strength of the Kansas City Royals’ bullpen. The job, as usual, was all-consuming.

“I never really understood, till you do this a while — and this is my 18th year — that when you think it’s getting easier, it’s actually getting harder to do the job,” Sabean had said before Game 2 in Kansas City. “Because you’re always trying to do something bigger and better. You’re always trying to reinvent yourself, reinvent the organization. It keeps you fresh.”