Feeding the Monster

by Seth Mnookin

  *During this same stretch, Pedro Martinez, despite being eight-and-a-half years younger, failed to make 30 starts in a season on four separate occasions.

  *After signing a two-year, $10 million deal following the 2003 season, Kim was maddeningly ineffective in 2004. On March 30, 2005, the Sox essentially gave Kim to the Colorado Rockies, while effectively agreeing to pay about $5.7 million of the $6 million he was still owed. Speaking of Kim’s difficulties in Boston, Epstein said, “This is a disappointing end to the saga. It remains to this day a mystery for us.”

  †Early in the 2005 season, the following hand-written sign was tacked on a bulletin board in the Red Sox clubhouse: “1918 + 24 Manny + 34 Ortiz + 33 Varitek - 5 Nomar = 2004.”

  ‡In 2001, the Herald’s Jeff Horrigan was doing an interview with Martinez for Sports Illustrated for Kids. Horrigan asked Martinez his favorite color. “Green.” Favorite book? “Whatever.” Favorite actress? “Sandra Bullock.” Secret ambition? “I would like to fuck Sandra Bullock,” Martinez replied with a grin. Horrigan explained that likely wasn’t an appropriate response for a children’s magazine and asked the question again. Martinez dutifully amended his answer: “I would like to sleep with Sandra Bullock.”

  *Part of the impetus for that deal, Lucchino admitted, was that there were rumors he was on his way out of town in the wake of the Red Sox’s failed pursuit of Alex Rodriguez. “That’s why this makes sense,” Lucchino had said at the time. “I hope this puts to rest that notion.”

  Chapter 38

  The Defending Champs

  APRIL, 11, 2005 marked three years and 10 days since John Henry had greeted fans as they entered Fenway Park on Opening Day of his first season as the Red Sox principal owner. And although this year he wouldn’t personally welcome the 33,702 ticketed fans who made their way into the park for Boston’s 2005 home opener, no one minded. On this day, for the first time since World War I, the Red Sox would be officially crowned baseball’s champions.

  That day’s ceremony began around two fifteen, as members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops played the opening fanfare of Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” made famous by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. With each resounding chord, a pennant was unfurled vertically down the Green Monster, until there were five in all, one for each of the Red Sox’s World Series victories: 1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918. Then, with the final, climactic flourish, an enormous, Wall-encompassing banner flapped down over the other five. It read, simply, 2004 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS.

  Across the field, the Red Sox dugout was as full as it had ever been. The 2005 team was all there, as were some returning members of the ’04 squad, including playoff heroes Derek Lowe and Dave Roberts. Theo Epstein sat off to one side, trying to avoid the cameras. As Lowe looked out onto the field he’d called home for so many years, he turned to his old teammate, catcher Jason Varitek. “You’re lucky,” said Lowe, now a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. “You get to play here for the next four years. There’s nothing like it.” Trot Nixon, the second-longest tenured player on the team, said, “I was just taking it all in—as slow as possible.” Johnny Pesky, who’s spent more hours in the Red Sox clubhouse than any person, ever, fought back tears.

  The rest of the ceremony was heavy on signature Charles Steinberg–orchestrated moments. As New England’s James Taylor sang “America the Beautiful,” 19 Army and Marine soldiers who’d been injured in the war in Iraq marched from the left field wall to the Red Sox dugout. Before the ring ceremony began, an impressive assemblage of Red Sox players from the decades past formed a greeting line. Hall of Fame second baseman Bobby Doerr, who last played a game on the Fenway grass in 1951, was there, as was everyone from Dom DiMaggio and Jim Lonborg to Fred Lynn, Oil Can Boyd, and Carl Yastrzemski. The retired players formed a column through which the 2004 team would pass on the way to accept their rings. Lowe and Roberts received some of the loudest cheers of the day.

  Then, just before three o’clock, the 85-year-old Pesky and the 65-year-old Yastrzemski made their way to the center-field flagpole, surrounded by members of the ’04 team. The two men had played a combined 4,337 regular-season games during their 31 years as uniformed members of the Boston Red Sox. Together, they raised Boston’s official World Series banner. Celtics great Bill Russell, Bruins legend Bobby Orr, and New England Patriots Tedy Bruschi and Richard Seymour threw out the ceremonial first pitches. Bruschi was making his first public appearance since suffering an offseason stroke; he hugged fellow University of Arizona alum Terry Francona for almost a full minute before skipping off the field.

  The ring ceremony and the raising of the World Series banner would have been enough to satisfy almost every Red Sox fan, but still to come was that day’s matchup with the Yankees. Tim Wakefield, appropriately, was pitching. It was Wakefield’s 200th Fenway appearance, the second highest total for a pitcher in team history, and he’d turned in dominant performances against New York for several years. (His 2004 record against New York was 1-0 with a 1.83 earned run average over three starts.) On this day, he continued his mastery of the Red Sox’s rivals, pitching seven innings of five-hit ball. The Red Sox had no such trouble with Mike Mussina, and at the end of the day, Boston had won, 8–1. In his box above home plate, John Henry looked at Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino. “Can’t ask for much more than this,” Henry said. “It’s gonna be a fun year.”

  The next two months didn’t feel like much fun. On June 11, the Red Sox were a mediocre 32-29, four games behind the Baltimore Orioles, who were surprising everyone. After joining the team in mid-April, Schilling had been put back on the disabled list following three awful starts. Keith Foulke had also been struggling, and the Boston bullpen, meant to be one of the team’s strengths, was a mess. What’s more, the Sox were just five games into an 18-game stretch during which 15 of their matches would be against National League opponents, and the team had historically done badly in interleague play. The fact that the Yankees were doing even worse—at 30-31, they were off to their poorest start of the Joe Torre era—provided some consolation, but then the Yankees were soon to play seven straight games against last place teams: four versus Tampa Bay and three versus the Mets.

  Instead of faltering, the Red Sox reeled off 12 wins in their next 13 games, sweeping series from Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, while the Yankees dropped six of their seven games versus the Devil Rays and Mets. On June 26, the 44-30 Sox had vaulted over the Orioles and were six-and-a-half games in front of the 38-37 Yankees. The New York tabloids began excoriating the “bumbling Bombers” and wondering whom owner George Steinbrenner would fire. In Boston, Dan Shaughnessy began his June 26 Boston Globe column with these words: “It’s OK to say it. Don’t worry about jinxing them. The 2005 Red Sox are going to win the American League East. By a landslide…. Stop worrying about the Yankees, Orioles, and Jays. It’s not even going to be close.” In the mid-July All-Star Game, the Red Sox featured four of the American League’s nine starting players: center fielder Johnny Damon, designated hitter David Ortiz, left fielder Manny Ramirez, and catcher Jason Varitek.

  Despite, or perhaps because of, the team’s success, the all-for-one ethos that had been so contagious in 2004 had been replaced with a me-first attitude that seemed to pervade every aspect of the club. First baseman Kevin Millar and third baseman Bill Mueller had begun complaining whenever there was the slightest hint that they might be rested for one of the team’s bench players, while Jay Payton moaned about serving as a backup. (At different points, all three players’ agents had asked the club to explore possible trades.) Members of the team blamed manager Terry Francona when pitchers Mike Timlin and Matt Clement were initially left off the American League’s All-Star roster despite the fact that Francona had no control over the selections.* After Keith Foulke went on the disabled list and Curt Schilling was named the team’s closer, Johnny Damon blasted the move in the press. “Mike Timlin definitely deserves that spot,” Damon said, wh
ile another player, speaking anonymously, said it was a “slap in the face” to the rest of the pitching staff that Schilling was made the closer. And in early July, Payton, frustrated over his lack of playing time, planned an in-game tirade against Francona in an effort to secure a trade. By the middle of the season, Francona, who’d enthusiastically told John Henry during spring training that he was more excited about working with this club than any in his career, became so dispirited by the constant whining and complaining that Theo Epstein asked Henry to give the manager a pep talk.

  “They became the biggest bunch of prima donnas ever assembled,” says one Red Sox executive. “It’s a problem with a veteran team, especially one that’s had some success. And winning the World Series makes it worse.” In America, professional athletes are constantly taught they don’t need to obey the rules that apply to the rest of society. The team takes care of travel arrangements. Business managers and agents deal with money and investments. Restaurants and stores lobby for the right to give away free products. And, of course, women are available virtually around the clock. After the Red Sox won the World Series, the special treatment accorded to members of the team became even more pronounced. Everyone, from Schilling to the rarely used Kevin Youkilis to laidback pitcher Bronson Arroyo, was treated like a god. For some, this provided all the impetus needed to indulge their more selfish natures.

  Take the case of Kevin Millar. In mid-December, Millar—in the midst of doing his personal victory tour of paid mall appearances and signings—had announced that he was unwilling to platoon with Doug Mientkiewicz in 2005. “Can’t have us both back,” Millar said. “I’ve already expressed that to Theo…. I’m not going to platoon behind Doug Mientkiewicz, to be honest with you. I’ve proven myself here.” Millar had been, to be sure, a solid addition to the Red Sox’s offense, hitting 25 home runs in 2003 and batting almost .300 in 2004. However, he was atrocious defensively, and just two years earlier had been on his way to Japan. Among American League first basemen who qualified for the batting title* in 2004, he’d had the second fewest home runs and runs batted in. Still, Millar got his wish, if only because none of the teams Boston contacted were interested in trading for him, and before the season started, Mientkiewicz was shipped to the New York Mets. None of this stopped Millar from rolling into camp overweight and out of shape.

  Throughout the first half of the season, as Millar went from being a solid addition to the team to one of the worst players in all of baseball to hold onto his starting job, he became ever-more truculent and entitled. When, on May 1, the Sox offered a minor league contract to 36-year-old John Olerud, a veteran first baseman known for his strong fielding, Millar took it as an affront. Because he was such an integral part of the social fabric of the club, his unhappiness affected a disproportionate number of people on the team. As Terry Francona had pithily put it in the offseason, “Millar is a great team player—as long as he’s playing.”

  “For most of the nights for the past two years, Millar has been the worst guy [out on the field],” says one member of the team’s front office. “Worse than [second baseman Mark] Bellhorn, who’s incredibly underrated defensively. But for all his talk about ‘Cowboy Up,’ you know, team first, he bitches and moans when it looks like ‘team first’ might mean he needs to ride the pine.” Indeed, from late May, when John Olerud was first promoted to the Red Sox, through mid-July, Olerud had gotten only 53 at-bats, while Millar had gotten 104. In addition to being far superior defensively, by July 15, Olerud had a higher batting average (.321 to .273), a higher on base percentage (.383 to .355), and a higher slugging percentage (.472 to .386). Yet it was Millar who needed to be coddled and Olerud who was philosophical about the situation. “You want to do as good a job as best you can,” he said on June 27, “and hopefully…you’ll be a starter. I think you try to make the best of the opportunities you have, given the role that you have.”

  For players like Millar—and Mueller and Payton—the anxiety over playing time wasn’t only about ego or recognition; it was also about money. The 33-year-old Millar, 34-year-old Mueller, and 32-year-old Payton all had guaranteed contracts that expired at the end of the 2005 season. All three had been made wealthy by baseball, but they’d earned nowhere near the amount of money players like Garciaparra and Martinez had made when they headed into the last years of their contracts. At the conclusion of the 2004 season. Garciaparra had earned $45 million from baseball contracts. Martinez had made $95 million. In contrast, Payton’s baseball earnings would total around $8 million at the end of the 2005 season, Millar’s around $11 million, Mueller’s around $15 million. That is, without a doubt, a lot of money. But to a baseball player whose employment opportunities and earning power shrink dramatically after his playing days are over, it might feel not quite enough to guarantee a lifetime of comfortable living. If Payton was perceived by other teams as nothing more than a role player or if Millar spent half the year on the bench, how much could they reasonably expect to make in their next contract?

  Money and playing time weren’t the team’s only distractions. Early in the season, a series of snapshots in which a Red Sox pitcher was shown snuggling with a Northeastern University student were posted on several Red Sox fansites. In one of the more widely circulated pictures, the buxom blond, in a revealing sleeveless top and tight jeans, is curled in the married pitcher’s lap. A pair of bunk beds is visible in the background; the picture was taken in one of Northeastern’s freshman dormitories. A teammate of the featured pitcher soon called the girl and asked her to remove the pictures from her online photo album, which she did.* But the player’s brief spell of online infamy was a sign of what was to come. For the rest of the season, snapshots of Red Sox players showing off their World Series rings, or hugging a half-dozen girls at once, or licking a young coed’s face, made regular appearances in various online scrapbooks.†

  The Red Sox still managed to enter the last week of July in first place, with a one-and-a-half game lead over the Yankees. In spite of these mini soap operas and the pitching woes of both Schilling and Foulke, the team seemed to be cruising, and was poised to lead the American League in offense for the third straight year. Dan Shaughnessy, it seemed, had been right. What could sidetrack them now?

  *Francona, as the manager of the American League pennant winner, got to coach the All-Star Game; however, unlike managers in years past, Francona had almost no latitude to choose players. This change was put into effect after Yankees manager Joe Torre larded the All-Star team with his players during the Yankees’ late-1990s run. Clement was eventually given a spot on the team when Toronto Blue Jays starter Roy Halladay dropped out due to an injury.

  *To qualify for the batting title, a player must have an average of 3.1 plate appearances for every one of the team’s games. Over the course of a normal 162-game season, that comes out to just over 500 plate appearances.

  *In early 2006, the pictures were again posted in the girl’s online photo album.

  †Later in the season, Derek Lowe received some unwanted attention when news of his affair with a TV sports reporter broke. One day when the Red Sox pitcher who’d been in the widely disseminated online photographs came to the ballpark, a teammate had left at the player’s locker a copy of the Herald, opened to the same gossip column that had written anonymously about the pitcher’s online photos. This time, there was a full item about Lowe, his paramour, and his wife’s reaction. “Come on D-Lowe,” the pitcher muttered. “You got to keep yourself out of the gossip columns.”

  Chapter 39

  The Manny Sagas,

  Part 2

  ON TUESDAY, JULY 26,Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci published a two-paragraph, 142-word piece in his weekly baseball roundup. “Manny Ramirez wants out of Boston,” Verducci wrote. “Again. The Red Sox left fielder has asked to be traded for at least the third time in the past four seasons.” Verducci, who didn’t attribute his scoop to any particular source, stated that Ramirez was upset with “his lack of privacy off the field
” but that the Sox “have no intention of trading Ramirez…not during the season, anyway.” The story, which was published five days before the annual trade deadline, generated some attention, but a late-July, unsourced story about an often-unhappy All-Star requesting a move didn’t qualify as earth-shattering news. After all of the various trade rumors involving Ramirez over the past several years, it made sense there’d be at least some discussion of his status while he could still be freely swapped.*

  It had been a peculiar season for Ramirez. A year earlier, he had appeared as outgoing and happy as he had been at any point in his career, and he’d made a concerted effort to be available to the media. After winning the World Series MVP award, he giddily told the press, “I never thought I’d get to be part of a World Series winner, but it’s fun, let me tell you. Before we went to spring training, I told my wife…I’m going to be the MVP of something. And I did.” Two-thousand five had not been nearly as upbeat. Before the season began, he skipped the team’s congratulatory trip to the White House because, he said, his grandmother was sick. (He later said this was not the same grandmother whose illness had caused him to be late to the 2001 All-Star Game.) In early April, he announced he’d retire at 36, after his contract ran out following the 2008 season. “No más,” he said. “I’m gone. I’m tired.” He was certainly playing like it: After entering the season with a career .316 batting average, he dipped as low as .224 on May 27. And it wasn’t mere slumping, something that happens to even the very best hitters. Ramirez seemed to be sleepwalking through games. Speaking on ESPN Radio, Peter Gammons said he found Ramirez “as distracted as any time I can remember him. He just doesn’t seem to be into the games at all. There was a time when he was a dominant offensive force at the end of games.” That time, it seemed, was gone.