How big of a deal is Terry Francona in Cleveland?

Well, here’s one for you: After the Guardians’ 2-1 win over the Rays in the wild-card playoff opener last Friday, he was motoring his scooter from Progressive Field to his home, not far away on Fourth Street downtown.

Francona uses the scooter a lot, even in the bowels of a stadium, because he’s still recovering from foot issues that sidelined him for large chunks of the 2020 and ’21 seasons. He also had an ice pack on his ankle as he rode, so he was trying to concentrate on his route when the oddest thing happened.

He was nearly flashed.

Well. Sort of.

In the postgame hub-bub a woman exiting the stadium was so enthralled encountering the Guardians manager that she yelled, “You’re the greatest!” and began to lift up her shirt.

“I’m like, hey, man, I don’t want … I don’t want this on camera!” Francona recalled the next day.

What the woman wanted to reveal was what was under that shirt — another shirt, this one with a picture of none other than Terry Francona. “In Tito We Trust” was also stenciled on there.

“But I didn’t know that,” Francona said, in his wry way that has defined so many October press gatherings.

The woman, a high school softball coach named Lacey Reichert, later said on Twitter, “I did prep him by saying, ‘I’m not flashing you.’ ”

So, yes. Francona is pretty big in Northeast Ohio, and should be, because he has been a pretty big figure in the sport for the better part of two decades, a fixture in the firmament of managers and a likely member of Cooperstown whenever he leaves the dugout for good, even if he never does end the Cleveland championship drought that extends to 1948.

He has also been one of the great Yankee October foils, a role he was destined to fill as the skipper of the 2004 Red Sox anyway but one he backed up by winning another title in Boston in 2007, then pushing and keeping the Guardians relevant ever since showing up at Progressive Field in 2013.

You can trace that back to the postgame postmortem 18 years ago following Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS. The Yankees had just thrashed the Sox 19-8 to take a 3-0 lead in the series. The room was hushed; would Francona’s mood be funereal? Dejected? Angry? Beaten?

It was none of the above.

“All we have to do,” Francona said, sounding as chipper as the first day of spring trainig, “is win one game tomorrow, not four. Win one game, then worry about the game after that.”

It wasn’t exactly stolen from the Rockne Collection, but the Sox embraced that mantra and … well, we all know what happened from there.

What makes Francona’s career arc so intriguing is just how different his situations have been. The Sox were a veteran-laden ballclub, much of the team’s foundation predating Francona’s arrival. Francona knew enough to let those Sox find their way, and they did. Twice.

Cleveland is an entirely different universe. The Sox of the early and mid-2000s went head-to-head with the Yankees accumulating star power, flexing their big-market muscles. The Guardians make no pretense of who they are. Once in a while they can coax a star like Jose Ramirez to stay long term but mostly it is a place where drafting and developing is key.

“Baseball is always just baseball,” Francona says, dismissing the notion that managing geezers and kids is that much different, but even he concedes that you have to approach things differently in baseball Mayberry: More cajoling, more confidence-building, more teaching, more hands-on guidance.

“We’ve tried to balance teaching; not beating them over the head when they make a mistake, but trying to teach,” Francona said. “We’ve asked them to allow us to do that, and they have been great about it. There’s a lot of good things, but one is when you tell them something once, they get it. That really helps.”

Of course they get it. They know who’s talking. There was some concern that Francona’s health issues might force him out of the game but he came back this year, the Guardians stayed above sea level for a few months and then took it upon themselves to seize the AL Central in September.

They may wind up being a little short against the Yankees. But it won’t be for lack of preparation, and it won’t be because they were outfoxed. Since serving a four-year apprenticeship with some awful Phillies teams Francona has won 57 percent of the games he’s managed. Cleveland will be fine as long as he’s there. So will baseball.