He doesn't want to quit.
So he won't.
That's because Cox isn't sprinting into retirement for good on his wobbly legs after managing in the major leagues for nearly three decades, no matter how much he keeps saying he will.
"A lot of us won't believe it until spring training rolls around and somebody else is in the clubhouse," said Atlanta Braves outfielder Matt Diaz, speaking for the wise.
With that in mind, there were several telling moments long after Cox twisted in his usual corner of the home dugout as the Braves dropped another thriller to the San Francisco Giants in the National League Division Series along the way to elimination in four games.
First, the crowd wouldn't stop chanting, "Bob-by, Bob-by, Bob-by" at the end, and the famously humble Cox was forced to make a U-turn in the tunnel leading from the dugout to the clubhouse and return to the dugout steps for a little wave.
The chants grew louder, so Cox had to leave the dugout and stand a few yards away while swirling his cap in the air.
Then the unusual happened. Likely, it was the unprecedented.
Everybody among the Giants' contingent stopped their victory celebration in the middle of the field to turn and applaud the opposing manager. They also wouldn't stop. Cox had to move out even farther from the dugout to acknowledge, not only the noisy folks in the stands who switched from their tomahawk chopping and chanting to hugging Cox with cheers, but to thank the Giants for their gesture.
"I grew up watching TBS, and I've seen what Bobby Cox has done over the years," said Brian Wilson, the Giants' splendid reliever, who is from the New England area, where the Boston Red Sox ruled everything but Wilson's heart. "Bobby Cox is THE guy. Applauding him the way that we did, that's what classy baseball teams would do in this situation. That's what every team would do."
What Cox did following that crowd thing and that Giants thing was the bigger story. In fact, there were two scenes of note.
Let's start with the second one, featuring Cox speaking easily to reporters about this and that after the Braves' 3-2 loss supposedly ended his managerial career that included 25 years in Atlanta. Four minutes into Cox being Cox, with his typically pleasant but controlled answers, somebody asked the 69-year-old baseball icon if he had already addressed his players in the postgame clubhouse?
"The best I could. Told them I was really proud of them," Cox said, before developing a lump in his throat the size of a batting doughnut. He leaned back in his chair. Just like that, he evolved into a guy that nobody ever has seen during his 51 years in various capacities in the game. He was a guy overcome with emotion. He tried to speak, but he couldn't, with his pause lasting four, six -- all the way up to 17 seconds.
Finally, with that lump increasing by the moment, Cox said slightly above a whisper, "A grown man shouldn't do this."
He was referring to fighting back tears. I think.
I mean, this could have been a subconscious thing, with Cox referring to a manager saying he was retiring when he really wanted to stick around until somebody ripped the uniform and the pair of spikes from his cold, dead body.
For instance: What are you going to do now, Bobby?
"I don't know," Cox said, searching for words that never came -- at least, not easily. "I'm going to try to come out here (to the ballpark to watch Braves games). I'm not sure yet. We still have family and guests in our house, and I'm not sure."
He's not sure ... he wants to retire.
Which brings me to the one-on-one conversation I had with Cox before the game in the dugout. With uniform and spikes in place, and with batting practice happening across the way, he was as happy as ever.
I thought I knew Cox well after covering him for most of his Atlanta stay, but I didn't know any of this. He mentioned that he was a star quarterback in high school in Fresno, Calif., and that he was recruited by the likes of USC, Cal-Berkeley and Stanford before choosing baseball. He said he consistently led his prep team to victories over the one of Daryle Lamonica, the former Notre Dame and Oakland Raiders standout. He said the only thing he dislikes as much in sports as pro football ("Too many players celebrating instead of just playing,") is the American League ("Games take too long.").
Cox was having a blast, all right, talking, laughing, kicking his spikes against the floor of the dugout, while greeting everybody passing by with the look of an old man feeling much younger in that uniform and those spikes.
Later, not so much. Which brings me to the first of those aforementioned scenes. It occurred when Braves players, coaches and team personnel gathered in the clubhouse after the game's final out.
Chipper Jones couldn't believe what he saw. There, standing before everybody, was a tongue-tied Cox, who kept trying and failing to keep the tears from flowing.
"There wasn't a dry eye in the place," said Jones, the Braves' future Hall of Fame third baseman, who was around for much of the record 14 consecutive division titles that Cox won with the Braves from the early 1990s into the turn of the century. And, despite suffering a season-ending knee injury down the stretch of the Braves' frantic search this year to make the playoffs, Jones traveled with the team. He watched the Cox tributes from city to city -- culminating with a massive and touching one during the Braves' last weekend of the regular season.
Now it came to this for Cox, and this was it.
Well, Cox keeps saying as much.
"Bobby always has been pretty sure about what he's going to say, and he's always been matter of fact," Jones said, recalling his thoughts as Cox stood before his team for the last time. "But you know (tonight), he couldn't get it out. It's still hard to believe now that it's over ..."
It's not over for Cox, though.
Just watch.
