At 61 years old, Bill Buckner is trying to find out how much he misses professional baseball.

What better way to find out than to become a manager back in Massachusetts.

“Hopefully I’ll remember how to get my pants on,” said Buckner with a chuckle from Boise, Idaho. “It’s time to do it. I’m excited because baseball is what I love to do. I’ve been very fortunate in that my life, my world, has just been in baseball. So we’ll see how this gig works out.”

This gig is a two-year stint as the manager of the Brockton Rox, the local independent Can-Am League team. He will move here in early May and begin grooming hitters and pitchers who for an assortment of reasons are not associated with any of the 30 MLB teams’ minor league franchises.

“The idea of helping guys get signed, to help guys live the dream of playing baseball” motivates him, plus he wants to satisfy an itch he still has to return to the game, especially now that his children are old enough to not need him around during the summer.

“I’ve always wanted to manage and I think this is a good opportunity, plus it’s not for a full season, the seven to eight months, it would be in the minor leagues,” said Buckner.

Buckner arrives in the Boston area as the furthest thing from a man of mystery. His error at first base for the Red Sox in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series turned him into a symbol for nearly any negative association a Red Sox fan wanted to entertain, all the way until the franchise finally won a World Series, after an 86-year wait, in 2004. Three years later, the Sox repeated as champs, and at the following home opener, Buckner was there to throw out the first pitch.

While the casual fan may have thought the moment brought closure to the Buckner stigma, Buckner did not.

“I don’t know about that putting ’86 behind me, I had put it behind me much earlier,” said Buckner. “I’m grateful to the current Red Sox ownership group, they are really first class and I thoroughly enjoyed that day. But as far as 1986 is concerned, in my mind, that was done a couple of weeks after the 1986 season ended.

“Personally, I was done with it. Obviously, not everyone else was.”

Everyone understands that Buckner’s name and 1986 will never fully part but what will be interesting to discover is if two world championships will keep those stuck in the past out of his field of vision, hearing and overall experience.

“If they’re not over it, too bad for them,” said Buckner. “I’m really happy they won in 2004 and 2007. Other than being happy for the players who won then, it didn’t mean anything to me. If I played for that team, that would have been different and it would have been great.

“I played in two World Series, one in the American League, and one time in the National League. I would have liked to be the guy who hit the game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth but that’s not the way it always happened.

“That’s life. If you can’t accept that, that’s too bad.”