Scottsdale, Ariz. --

After practicing hypnotherapy for three decades, AlVera Paxson received an extraordinary referral from Giants manager Bruce Bochy last summer. In an Associated Press interview, he explained how a single visit to Paxson's Scottsdale office relieved him of a 36-year addiction to smokeless tobacco.

A stream of people from the Bay Area started seeking Paxson's help. One man, she said, flew to Arizona from Thailand. A Canadian came, saying a friend had clipped the article and showed it to him.

"Many of them will tell me, 'If I could just find a way of thanking him,' " Paxson said. "... They respect him and respect who he is. They're grateful that he's willing to talk about it, because so many people have hang-ups about it and they're closed off to this kind of therapy."

In his understated way, Bochy might become MLB's best advocate for giving up the dip and chaw, so ingrained in baseball's history that it was once distributed freely in clubhouses by industry promoters. It has been banned in the minors for 19 years, and the new collective bargaining agreement requires major-leaguers to hide the habit. No dipping or chewing the stuff during interviews. No more keeping the little canisters in back pockets, like a standard accessory of the baseball uniform.

"I never did it during interviews," Bochy said the other day in the Giants' dugout. "At least, I don't think I did, but there could have been times I craved it too much and did it anyway."

He had tried to quit many times. Joe Garagiola Sr., the former catcher and beloved broadcaster, used to visit spring training sites with a man whose years of using smokeless tobacco had required the removal of one side of his face. The scare tactic, plus some targeted nagging by Garagiola, motivated Bochy. The motivation wouldn't last.

Sores would appear in his mouth, producing the same effect. "You'd get nervous about it, and you'd start kicking yourself for ever starting," he said.

Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn, who played for Bochy in San Diego, developed oral cancer in 2010 and cited a 30-year dipping habit as the cause. He recently underwent a second round of surgery to remove the recurring malignancy. That news gave Bochy more motivation.

Bochy and Bill Hayes, the Giants' bullpen coach and a fellow dipper, once tried chewing hard licorice sticks because someone had recommended them to Hayes as a substitute and cure. "The stuff just tore my mouth up," Bochy said.

Hayes always provided dip for Bochy when he needed a supply. "My go-to guy," Bochy called him. Then one day last year, he turned to Hayes and heard him say: "I don't do that anymore."

Paxson teaches her clients to say that, Bochy said. He became her fourth client connected to the Giants. Hayes had been referred by clubhouse manager Mike Murphy, whose wife, Carole, had quit smoking with Paxson's help.

In a telling indictment of old-school baseball culture, Murphy says he started dipping as a teenager, when he was a bat boy. He went to Paxson three years ago and stopped for good.

Bochy went in early April, during the first regular-season visit to the Diamondbacks. He was skeptical about being able to quit at the beginning of a season, but he didn't want to wait.

"I just remember sitting in the chair, and she was talking to me," he said. "There wasn't something swinging in front of me. She just puts you in this relaxed state of mind, very calm, but she makes sure you don't go to sleep."

Paxson's mother worked for a tobacco company, and though she does other forms of hypnotherapy, she has emphasized tobacco addiction from the beginning of her career. Before hypnosis, she explains the contents of processed tobacco and shows clients a jar filled with sludge made of tar and nicotine.

"It's the ugliest-looking crud that you put in your body," Bochy said.

When his session ended, Paxson asked the manager how long he thought he had been in the chair. "I guessed at least a half-hour," he said, "and she said, 'It's been three hours, a little more than three hours.' "

When he first spoke publicly about the therapy in August, Bochy had been off the dip for four months. He admitted then that he felt some temptations, but not enough to restart a ritual that began with a dip the minute he arrived at the park.

Bochy believed that the dip relaxed him and made him more aware of everything happening in a game. After the hypnotherapy, he said, he realized that the dip probably created the need to relax.

"Now, I'm not dipping, and I'm fine, I'm comfortable," he said. He has recommended Paxson's therapy to people who contacted him in the past seven months, from players to scouts he hasn't met.

He hasn't seen Paxson since their one, $300 session. He would like to stop by and say hello before spring training ends.

That could be difficult. Paxson is rather busy these days.