“Sometimes I wonder if he goes home and sleeps,” Hatcher said. “I think he sits there and notes down everything he’s going to do the next day. He’s so far ahead of everybody.”

It is not simply strategy and drills. Scioscia holds a lively team meeting before every spring training practice, often giving players off-field assignments to foster team bonding. In one well-worn tale from 2000, pitchers Scott Schoeneweis and Jarrod Washburn attended an ostrich festival in Chandler, Ariz., then brought a live ostrich into the clubhouse. A terrified teammate, Ramon Ortiz, leapt into his locker, howling in Spanish about the biggest chicken he had ever seen.

Black still laughs at the memory, and has tried to do similar things with the Padres. After they traded for Casey Kelly, a pitcher who could have played quarterback at Tennessee, Black blocked out one morning for a football competition, with passing drills for every player who had been a high school quarterback.

“The morning team-building stuff, I’ve incorporated from my time with Mike,” Black said. “And I think just the trying to be consistent, trying to be steady like Mike is on a daily basis, that’s what I try to do. Blend all the information we get, but still understand that it’s baseball, it’s a player’s game. Those are the things that Mike really believed in.”

For that approach, Scioscia demands respect in return. In 2004, he suspended his second-best run producer, the combustible Jose Guillen, who erupted after being removed from a game in the pennant race.

Guillen did not play as the Angels were swept from the playoffs, but Scioscia was vindicated. The Angels traded Guillen for two useful players, won another division title and firmly established the manager’s authority.

“When we got players from other places, it was easy for them to buy in,” Roenicke said. “Because players would say, ‘Hey, this is what he likes, you do it and you’ll never have a problem,’ and so they buy into it fast.”