Francona: The Red Sox Years

by Terry Francona

  “It was a difficult interview,” Francona said. “Every time I started to say something meaningful, the waiter would come by and ruin my momentum. You get a feeling of how things are going right away in a situation like that. I knew I wasn’t going to be their manager.”

  The White Sox hired Marlins coach Ozzie Guillen and two years later won the 2005 World Series.

  The day after the Sox fired Grady Little, Francona met with Jim Beattie and Mike Flanagan, co-general managers of the Baltimore Orioles. Flanagan and Beattie had already interviewed local favorites Eddie Murray, Rich Dauer, Rick Dempsey, and Sam Perlozzo. The Oriole GMs began the Francona interview by asking him how he’d feel about inheriting the coaching staff left behind by Mike Hargrove. This didn’t sit well with Francona. He’d been “assigned” to Jerry Narron in Texas. He believed a manager should have input into the naming of a coaching staff. It sounded as if the Orioles just wanted to change managers and stick with the same losing culture. The Baltimore interview did not go well. It got worse when the Orioles had him meet with the Baltimore-Washington media after the session.

  Oriole beat reporters quickly asked about Francona’s four sub-.500 seasons in Philadelphia.

  “Philadelphia may not want to hear this, but it’s almost like having a mulligan,” he answered. “I had my chance to make my mistakes, to learn from them, and to gain confidence, just like a player does.”

  Francona was right about folks in Philadelphia not wanting to hear about his “mulligan.” His phone lit up on the drive back to Yardley.

  “I kind of put my foot in my mouth on that one,” he admitted. “What I meant was that you learn from your mistakes, but it didn’t come out that way. I knew I really misspoke.”

  He wasn’t going to make the same mistake when the Red Sox called. He knew his name had been bounced around in Boston since before the start of the World Series. He also knew the Sox were strongly considering Angel pitching coach Bud Black—the same Bud Black who had accompanied him from the Sheraton Boston on his first visit to Fenway Park when the two were teammates with the Indians in 1988.

  Black had already spoken with Epstein about the Boston job, but wasn’t sure he wanted to move his family to the East Coast. He’d had numerous conversations with Francona about the Sox job when Theo called Francona.

  It was awkward. Francona had been urging his friend to pursue the coveted Sox job, but now they were calling him. He called Black to explain the conflict. Black told him to go for it.

  “I was in a good situation with the Angels,” said Black, who was named manager of the San Diego Padres in 2007. “The timing wasn’t right for me personally or professionally. When you make that step, you have to be ready, and I wasn’t ready.”

  “I knew if he interviewed with Boston, he’d get it because he’s a sharp guy,” said Francona. “In my mind, part of the reason he took himself out of it was because the Red Sox called me.”

  Only young Theo Epstein seemed to see Francona’s time in Philadelphia as a potential building block to a long managerial career.

  “I was working in the National League [with the Padres] when Tito got the job with the Phillies,” said Epstein. “I remember thinking, Holy shit, that guy got the job really young. He must be really good. And then watching those teams play, I remember thinking, Boy, they really fucked that one up. But when we had our manager search, I thought there must have been something there to make them hire him in the first place. I wondered if it just couldn’t come out in Philadelphia or if it might come out now because he had failed. I called Billy Beane about him, and Billy was really strong in his endorsement for Tito, so we brought him in. He fit a lot of the criteria we were looking for. We wanted someone with experience and someone who was open to fresh ideas and could relate to the contemporary player.”

  Francona was the only candidate on Epstein’s list who had major league managerial experience. With Black out of the running, the Red Sox list was pared to Francona, Angels bench coach Joe Maddon, Dodgers third-base coach Glen Hoffman (a former Red Sox infielder), and Rangers first-base coach DeMarlo Hale, a minority candidate who’d been a manager in the Red Sox minor league system for seven years. Selig insisted that teams grant at least one interview to minority candidates for any managerial position, and the John Henry Red Sox were particularly beholden to the commissioner; he’d delivered the team to Henry in a backroom deal in 2001.

  Francona knew he wasn’t going to manage the Orioles or the White Sox, but this was a much better job opportunity. The Sox were a high-payroll team, ready to win. They’d just gotten to within five outs of making the World Series, and they were going after another starter, a closer, and maybe another superstar or two. They filled their ballpark for every game, and the fans followed their team with the same passion as fans in Philadelphia. Best of all, the Sox had a GM and owner who were not obsessed with hiring a “big name” candidate.

  “Do your homework” is a way of life for Terry Francona. It’s the way he was raised by Tito and Birdie. He was not a superior student—baseball always took priority over books—but he was never less than prepared in any situation. He was smart enough to know that it didn’t take Ivy League brainpower to be on time or to prepare more thoroughly than the next guy.

  He did his homework before coming to Boston for his interview. He sat down and composed his baseball manifesto, nine pages of notes on how he felt about managing. He wrote about the respect he felt for everyone who played the game. He wrote about being on time and busting your ass. He wrote about the little things you notice when you watch players when they don’t know you are watching. He got his hands on a Red Sox press guide that featured photographs of every person who worked in the front office. He already knew what Theo Epstein looked like, but he was going to be meeting a lot of people, and he knew how good it makes people feel when you remember their names.

  In addition, he called old friend Mark Shapiro in Cleveland. Shapiro knew Epstein well.

  “Don’t try to bullshit him,” said Shapiro. “He’ll tie you in knots.”

  Twenty-nine-year-old Theo and his 32-year-old assistant Josh Byrnes were waiting for Francona at Fenway on Thursday morning, November 6. Byrnes had been Cleveland’s scouting director when he was only 27, and he had come to the Red Sox from the Rockies.

  Epstein and Byrnes had already interviewed Hoffman, so they were prepared when Francona sat down in the third-floor conference room near the Red Sox executive offices. In addition to Beane’s tout, the Sox had a strong recommendation from Lee Thomas, who had hired Francona in Philadelphia and most recently had served as a special assistant to Epstein. Thomas resigned from the Red Sox before the Francona interview, but he’d had only good things to say about Francona. He explained that the 1997–2000 Phillies were rebuilding. He told Epstein that Francona did a good job in a difficult situation.

  Early in the interview, Theo handed Francona a multiple-choice quiz. It was not a joke. He told the candidate to take his time filling it out, adding, “There’s no right answer.”

  Some of the questions were amusing. Option D for the question “What’s most important?” was “Making sure your uniform looks good in the dugout.”

  “We threw in a couple of disarming ones,” said Epstein. “Some were Sophie’s Choice questions, and some were off-color.”

  “It was to show things that were a priority versus things that were not a priority,” reasoned Francona. “Like, how you look in your uniform versus how you feel if someone doesn’t run out a ball. How would you react? Theo said not to worry about the answers, but they formed the interview a little from that. He’d look at the answer and say, ‘This seems like it is important to you—can you elaborate?’ That was how the interview started, and I thought it was a really good way to do it. There was no awkwardness. I had already committed to the answers.”

  Epstein and Byrnes gave him a chance to explain and defend his multiple-choice responses. They talked for about two hours, which gave Francona a chance to spi
ll all the content from his nine pages of notes. It went well. He got more comfortable as the afternoon went on.

  “As we went through the interview it was really clear that Tito was a perfect candidate,” said Epstein. “In part, because of what he went through in Philadelphia, but also because of the incredibly important characteristics and endearing qualities that he had. Those things were allowed to come out because of his experience in Philadelphia.”

  It was no secret that Francona had a well-earned reputation as a players’ manager. Tobacco-spitting hardball old-schoolers scoff at the notion of a manager who gets along with his players. Dick Williams certainly never worried about hurting anyone’s feelings. Tito Francona played 15 years in the bigs in an era when managers never bothered to explain anything to ballplayers. But the days of “my way or the highway” went out with Billy Martin and Earl Weaver. The evolution of free agency and multimillion-dollar, long-term, guaranteed contracts changed how managers go about their business. Big league managers of the 21st century need to major in communication and minor in psychology. The ballplayers acquired the hammer long before 2003. Epstein and Byrnes were young and smart enough to embrace and celebrate new-school managerial styles, but they needed to know that Francona would not be a pushover.

  Yes, he told them. He’d played cards with his ballplayers in Philadelphia. He got along well with Curt Schilling, Scott Rolen, Doug Glanville, Pat Burrell, Rico Brogna, and Wayne Gomes, among others. He’d given Bobby Abreu a day off when fans were demanding to see Abreu in the lineup. He’d rested Rolen on Scott Rolen Bobblehead Day at Veterans Stadium. But he’d also challenged six-foot-seven, 250-pound pitcher Bobby Munoz to a fight in front of the whole team after Munoz embarrassed a young catcher. He’d tried to send Abreu home when Abreu was repeatedly late. (Management balked at the punishment.)

  Theo already knew many of the stories. Thanks to Thomas, he knew a lot about things that went on behind closed doors in the old Phillies clubhouse.

  Francona made no apologies for his Philadelphia years. No mulligan this time. He told the Red Sox that he would care about his players more than anyone else. He would respect them more than anyone else. In return, he would ask more of them than anyone else.

  “When you get fired, your self-esteem takes a hit,” he said. “They wanted to know if I’d learned anything from all that. I told them that of course I had learned, but it only reinforced to me how I felt about things. As a manager, I think you’re supposed to take responsibility and shield people that need it. I kind of wore it a little bit, but I thought that was my job.”

  Next up was game simulation. Moving to a room with a big-screen television and a brown leather couch, Francona was electronically transported to the seventh inning of a 2003 game between the Angels and the A’s. Pretend you are managing the A’s, they told him. Barry Zito is on the mound and is at 105 pitches (the magic number that turned Pedro Martinez into a pumpkin). The Angels have X, Y, Z due up, and you have A, B, C in your bullpen.

  They told him he had two minutes to make a decision on what to do with Zito.

  “Bring in Keith Foulke,” said Francona.

  Theo checked the simulation. Foulke was not available.

  “I told you Macha was a dumb-ass,” teased Francona.

  They all laughed. Then Theo checked the roster and realized that Foulke had been on the disabled list during the game in question.

  “It was fun, but a little crazy,” Francona remembered. “I remember telling them, ‘We can do this, but this isn’t how I’m going to manage.’ You can’t just throw a bunch of stats at a situation. I am always prepared, but I can’t be prepared in a situation where you’re just throwing a bunch of numbers at me. What they had there was good, but it wasn’t perfect.”

  In the middle of the afternoon, Sox CEO Larry Lucchino met with Francona. It was an important meeting. There’s been considerable debate and confusion about the governance of the Red Sox since Henry’s group bought the team in December 2001, and the balance of power shifted several times in Henry’s first decade of ownership, but Lucchino has been the single steady force. A graduate of Princeton, Lucchino came into baseball with his mentor, trial attorney Edward Bennett Williams, when Williams purchased the Baltimore Orioles in August 1979. Ever the advocate—“Larry is always someone’s lawyer,” Charles Steinberg said—Lucchino had made a fair share of enemies in three-plus decades running baseball teams. He was the top advocate for Grady Little when Little became the Sox ownership’s first managerial hire in 2002, and his stamp of approval was crucial if Francona was going to succeed Little in 2004.

  “I only spent a half-hour with Larry that first day,” said Francona, who had talked to his friend Bill Giles about Lucchino. “For the most part, he wanted to talk about the psychological aspect of baseball. He kept asking me to assign a percentage to the psychological side of the game, as opposed to the physical side. I hesitated and said, ‘I’m not sure I can give you a number,’ but that was not an acceptable answer. He wanted a number. I’m not even sure what number I gave him, but I know that’s most of what we talked about that day.

  “It was intense and challenging, and it was long. But I knew they were serious, and I appreciated that.”

  “He kind of blew us away,” said Epstein. “It was a fantastic interview.”

  After six hours (twice as long as his session in Baltimore), Francona’s first Boston interview was over, but the day was hardly done. The “new” Red Sox wanted to see how their managerial candidate handled the media. A Boston manager spends more than an hour of each game day answering questions for local and national media outlets. There’s a formal session three hours before each game, a thorough Q-and-A after each game, and assorted one-on-ones with the flagship radio and television rights holders. A team publicist sorts through additional special requests. The manager becomes the face of the franchise, no small role in a baseball-crazed market like Boston. Media skill ranks right behind game strategy and player relationships.

  Francona was well equipped to deal with the voluminous and sometimes bloodthirsty Boston baseball news media. He’d grown up in big league clubhouses. He’d managed in Philadelphia, perhaps the only market more vicious than Boston. He’d spent a year managing Michael Jordan, making him no doubt the only minor league skipper trailed by Tom Brokaw, Ted Koppel, and Hard Copy. Besides his experience, Francona was anecdotal, self-deprecating, funny, and polite.

  Meeting local media when you don’t yet have the job is awkward, but Francona was comfortable.

  “I think the Red Sox are going to interview a lot of tremendous people,” he told the assembled reporters. “But I think I can be an asset to this ball club. In Philadelphia I was very young, and I was learning on the run. I had a goal back then to be a major league manager. Now I have a goal to be a successful major league manager. Because of the situations I’ve been in in the past, I think that’s possible.”

  When he was asked about working with the Moneyball A’s, he gave a very un-Grady-Little-like response: “Some of the things I believed and maybe used in layman’s terms got explained to me a little bit better. Some people taught me how to make it more applicable, and for that I’m grateful.”

  After the session, he went to dinner at the Atlantic Fish Company with Epstein, Byrnes, and Jed Hoyer.

  “Jed ate his ass off that night,” said Francona. “I swear, the whole night, all I saw was the top of his head.”

  The diminutive Hoyer went on to become general manager of the Padres and Cubs.

  Dining with the young baseball executives who held his future in their hands, Francona threw back a few beers . . . just a few. He’d heard of instances where a candidate had a few too many beers and got a little silly. This was not the time for that. He was auditioning, and everything was a test.

  “It went great,” said Epstein. “He was the guy, clearly, for us. We just had to go through a bit of a process.”

  “When I left Boston that night, I really wanted the job,” remem
bered Francona.

  The Sox were impressed, but the search was only beginning. Maddon and Hale were still on tap to be interviewed, and Hoffman was under consideration.

  “I came in after Tito,” said DeMarlo Hale, who would eventually join the Sox as part of Francona’s staff in 2006. “I definitely got the sense that Tito was the front-runner. I knew I wasn’t ready. You could sort of tell by the way everybody was talking, even the Red Sox players.”

  Francona had claimed the inside track. He knew he was the front-runner when the Sox invited him back to work in their offices for a day. And then again for another day. It was a little strange. The Sox were still interviewing candidates, still had no manager, but Francona kept flying to Hanscom Field in Bedford, where he’d be picked up by traveling secretary Jack McCormick (the same guy who made sure the A’s were delayed getting out of Boston a month earlier) for a day of work in the third-floor baseball operations offices near the New England Sports Network (NESN) studio, the club’s television station. While the managerial search was allegedly ongoing, Francona returned to Boston multiple times.

  He got comfortable. He played more simulation baseball (“Diamond Mind”) against 32-year-old “baseball operations assistant” Brian O’Halloran.

  “It was basically a computer version of Strat-O-Matic,” said O’Halloran.

  In a light moment, Epstein told Francona he could have the job if he consistently beat O’Halloran. Francona knew Theo wasn’t serious, but the comment encouraged Francona to bend the rules in the pretend baseball games.

  O’Halloran had worked as an unpaid intern under Epstein in San Diego. He had graduated from Colby, had an MBA from UCLA, and spoke fluent Russian, but he did not play baseball after high school.

  Alone in the office shared by Josh Byrnes and Jed Hoyer, Francona and O’Halloran sat side by side in front of a computer and started a three-game series between the 2003 Red Sox and the 2003 A’s. O’Halloran managed the Sox. Francona took the A’s. O’Halloran manipulated the controls, following Francona’s instructions when it was time for the A’s “manager” to make decisions. O’Halloran’s Red Sox routed the A’s, 6–1, in Game 1. When the Sox went out to an early lead off Barry Zito in Game, 2, Francona went to his imaginary bullpen and summoned Rich Harden.