Bobby Cox looks forward to the next chapter in his life

“It came off just like it normally does,” Cox said. “Stacked in a pile against my door where I threw it.”

Life without it will take some adjustment, for him and everybody else. But he’ll do what managers do. He’ll lead the way.

As emotional as Cox’s last game was, his cap-tip to the fans, his final walk into the tunnel and his last speech to his players, there’s another side to this, too. Now he has some time to relax and enjoy with family, friends and his dog Sassy.

It’s why he seemed to loosen up during the 2010 season. Cox is looking forward to the best part of retirement: the breather.

Maybe for the first time in his 25 years as manager of the Braves, the ever-upbeat Cox used words like “anxiety” and “stress” when talking about his job Wednesday. He alluded to the long hours.

“Even after the season, managers and GMs, we used to go on vacations all the time, but that doesn’t happen much anymore,” Cox said. “[GM] Frank [Wren] will be in the office every day programming for next year.”

When asked about his new role as a consultant for the Braves, Cox said he wasn’t sure yet what it would entail. But here’s what it won’t: “I really don’t want to be too organized anymore on a time schedule,” Cox said. “I’ve been that way for a long time, half a century.”

Cox has never been one to seek the spotlight. But on the day he was originally scheduled to have his own farewell news conference, he had no problems sharing the stage with Fredi Gonzalez, who was announced as the Braves new manager shortly after Cox’s session. Earlier that afternoon, Cox had gotten a photographer to snap a shot of Gonzalez sitting in Cox’s old office chair.

He sounded like a man ready to turn over the reins.

“We haven’t won a lot in the last couple years,” Cox said. “We’ve come close. Fredi is younger, he’s got more ideas, better ideas maybe, and can get this team going again.”

Cox will finish as the fourth winningest manager in baseball history with 2,504 wins. He made the postseason a record 16 times, 15 times with the Braves and once with Toronto.

While others might point to 15 trips to the postseason with the Braves and only one World Series championship, the legacy Cox wants to remembered for has little to do with wins and losses.

“Just treating people properly,” Cox said.

And of his accomplishments?

“I’ve been in the right place at the right time, I think,” he said. “I did give everything I had during those days, believe me. Probably a little too much.”

Even in his private conversations with longtime friend and former Braves general manager John Schuerholz, Cox has never dwelled on regrets about winning “only” one World Series.

“He doesn’t give any merit to those criticisms at all,” said Schuerholz, the team president. “His honest private conversations about that are that it’s hard to win one year. You have to have good players, good health and a measure of good luck.”

Endings have always been the hard part on Cox, win or lose on the last game of the season.

“Even when you win, it feels empty the next day that you don’t have a ballgame,” Cox said. “Your routine’s been broken.”

His routine now will include more golf, maybe more morning coffee -- “I might stretch it to three cups,” he said -- and some traveling with his wife, Pam. And he’ll allow himself this: When spring training rolls around, he’ll go back down to Braves camp in Florida, this time just chipping in where he can.

“I would worry about myself, if I had to miss spring training,” Cox said.