“As much of a shock as Theo leaving was, that time is a little blurry for me because I was getting ready for the knee surgery, and nobody really knew what was going on with the ball club.”
While Epstein toured the world with Pearl Jam, never losing touch with the Sox front office, the Sox were run by a committee of general managers. Jed Hoyer and Ben Cherington were named co-general managers, but there was no attempt to hide the considerable input of veteran Bill Lajoie. Another voice in the chorus was Jeremy Kapstein, a “Lucchino guy” with a reservoir of baseball experience. Sox fans know Kapstein as the man who sits directly behind home plate at every Red Sox home game. Wearing large yellow headphones and a blue windbreaker (no matter how hot it gets), Kapstein gets more television time than Katie Couric. What most fans don’t know is that he once ran the San Diego Padres, was married to the daughter of McDonald’s visionary Ray Kroc, and served as baseball’s most powerful player agent during the seismically shifting 1970s. Jeremy Kapstein, then known as Jerry Kapstein, was the man who advised Sox stars Carlton Fisk, Fred Lynn, and Rick Burleson to play hardball with Tom Yawkey after the magical season of 1975. Kapstein was the Scott Boras of his day. He has served as an adviser to Lucchino since the “new owners” bought the Red Sox in 2001.
When Francona had knee replacement surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital on November 21, 2005, one of his first visitors was Jeremy Kapstein.
“It was the strangest thing,” said Francona. “Jeremy was under the impression that he was the next general manager. I was just a day out of surgery, coming out of anesthesia, with the pain pump going, and Jeremy is sitting by my bed telling me how it’s going to be. He was telling me I’d have a special cell phone to get in touch with him. I was in kind of a haze, and the next thing I know he’s handing me a cell phone, and the guy on the other end says, ‘Hey, Terry, it’s Keith Jackson!’ It was Keith Jackson, the old football announcer. I didn’t know what that was about, but after Jeremy left, I called Jed Hoyer and said, ‘Get your ass over here! I just had Jeremy Kapstein in my room, and he thinks he’s going to be the next general manager.’”
O’Halloran and Hoyer went directly to Mass General and told Francona that, to the best of their knowledge, Kapstein was not going to take over as general manager.
The next day, on November 24, in a deal that Kapstein and Lajoie pushed over the objections of some of Epstein’s operatives, the Red Sox acquired Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell, and reliever Guillermo Mota for hotshot shortstop prospect Hanley Ramirez, pitcher Anibal Sanchez, Jesus Delgado, and Harvey Garcia. The trade was announced while Theo was en route to South America to join Pearl Jam.
Theo breathed a sigh of relief when he learned that Jon Lester was not in the deal, jokingly telling a reporter that he would have “resigned” if the Sox traded Lester. Ramirez, Sanchez, and Delgado were all holdovers from the Dan Duquette regime.
“I was still in the hospital in a complete haze,” said Francona. “We knew Hanley was going to be really good, but I don’t think any of us thought he was ready to be that player yet. He got much better, quicker than we anticipated. Hanley was a little temperamental. I didn’t see him play much. He’d played in a couple of split-squad games in spring training, but I’d traveled those days and didn’t see him. I would come back and Millsie would say, ‘You got to see this guy. This guy is a man.’ I knew I was thrilled to get Beckett. I was thrilled anytime we got pitching. In my opinion, that’s how you win.”
Lowell was the supposed throw-in. In order to give up Beckett, the Marlins insisted that the Sox take Lowell and the remaining two years of his (four-year, $32 million) contract. The acquisition of Lowell meant switching Kevin Youkilis from third base to first base.
Damon signed a four-year deal ($52 million) with the Yankees the week before Christmas. To replace Damon, the Sox traded for Cleveland center fielder Coco Crisp. Admitting they failed on Edgar Renteria, they traded the shortstop to the Braves (eating a big chunk of Renteria’s salary) and acquired slick-fielding Alex Gonzalez.
On January 20, 2006, Theo officially returned as general manager. The degree to which he actually left has always been in doubt. He never lost touch with temporary co-general managers Cherington and Hoyer, and there was a sense that he never really went away.
Henry lobbied hard for Epstein’s return, and future Sox problems would be rooted in concessions made at that time. When Theo returned from his self-imposed sabbatical, he had more power and independence. He isolated baseball operations from the rest of the organization. Moving forward, there would be far less “interference” from Lucchino. Baseball operations became its own country in the basement offices of Fenway.
During spring training, Epstein sent Bronson Arroyo to the Reds for Wily Mo Pena, a deal that would fail badly for Boston. Arroyo went on to pitch the next seven seasons in Cincinnati without missing a single turn in the rotation, a streak of more than 320 consecutive starts. Pena clubbed 16 homers for the Red Sox over parts of two seasons and was playing for the independent league Bridgeport Bluefish by 2010.
“Theo really struggled with that on a lot of different fronts,” said the manager. “Bronson was everybody’s favorite guy, and he had signed his new contract when Theo wasn’t here. It wasn’t a talent-for-talent deal. He thought Wily Mo could be the guy. I knew how hard this one was for him. It was really tough. I just didn’t know if Wily Mo could play or not. I don’t think anyone knew if he could do it. He’ll tease you because of what he can do, but there’s a lot of swing-and-miss in there. And Bronson, for me, was a perfect guy to have. Like when the Yankees had Ramiro Mendoza. A guy who can throw 90 to 100 innings out of the bullpen. I thought that’s what Bronson was for us. But he was making too much money to do that anymore.
“I think we both knew it might end up how it did, but I knew Theo really wanted to do it. I just told him, ‘Theo, if you make the deal, I’ll back you.’”
In mid-March the Sox announced a new three-year contract for their manager. Francona was bumped to $1.5 million per season, still a long way from the $5.5 million Torre was making in New York.
Toward the end of spring training, Francona called 22-year-old Jon Lester into his office and told the kid he’d be starting the season at Triple A Pawtucket. A standout southpaw at Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma, Washington, Lester was the second-round Sox pick in the 2002 draft, and he moved steadily, if not that quickly, through the system. The organization’s top concern was that Lester tended to be a five-inning starter because he threw too many pitches in the early innings. He made 26 starts at Double A in 2005.
“Like a lot of young kids, I had those unreal expectations that I was going to make the team,” said Lester. “Tito sat me down and told me to soak it in and be realistic with myself and make the most of my time in the big league camp. It’s not something you want to hear, but I think it helped me. It relaxed the tensions I had going in. He made sure I knew there was nothing to prove. I wanted him to know the type of person I am and when the time comes, you can call me up.”
There was a big decision to make at the start of the season. It was clear to everyone, including the manager, that it was time to pass the closer torch to Papelbon. Francona knew he had to talk with Foulke.
Foulke was one of the more unusual personalities in Boston sports. He had as much to do with the championship of 2004 as any player. Schilling went into the books as the personification of guts and glory. Damon, Millar, Ortiz, and Ramirez served well in their role as Idiots. But the presence of Foulke was the biggest difference between the 2003 near-miss team and the 2004 champs. Foulke was the difference between heartbreak and history. He saved 32 games in the 2004 season, then made 11 postseason appearances, compiling an ERA of 0.64 and allowing a single run over 14 innings. He pitched in all four World Series games. He easily could have been named World Series MVP instead of Manny.
For all of that, he was never embraced. Foulke was a quiet man and not much fun. Francona had seen him up close when the two were in Oak
land in 2003. He knew what the Sox were getting. When Francona was in managerial limbo in the autumn of 2003, working in the Sox offices though he had not yet been named skipper, the Sox asked him about acquiring Foulke, and he said, “If I’m going to be manager, I want you to sign him. If I’m not, I don’t want you to sign him.”
Knee trouble diminished Foulke’s effectiveness in 2005. He saved only 15 games, spent 50 games on the disabled list, and went through a second arthroscopic procedure after the Sox were swept out of the playoffs.
“He was quiet, and he wouldn’t let you get close to him, but he loved to pitch,” said Francona. “He was unflappable. He had that changeup, so even if he didn’t have his great stuff, he could get the job done, and that’s what he did in ’04. What happened after that was disappointing. He got bitter, and he didn’t handle things real well. He got a little stubborn. He was kind of a smart-ass. That was his way of dealing with things, but he’d take the ball every day, and as a manager, you love that. He’d never turn the ball down.”
Francona had fallen in love with rookie Papelbon’s talent and attitude in the spring of 2005 when the big kid knocked down Sammy Sosa in a spring training game after Jay Payton had been hit by an Oriole pitcher. Papelbon was obviously the next closer. Forced into the bullpen in September 2005, he pitched 17 and a third innings, allowing just two earned runs, striking out 15 and walking only four.
Papelbon was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and drafted in the fourth round in 2003. He pitched only a few games at Bishop Kenny High School in Jacksonville, Florida, and was playing first base at Mississippi State when coaches noticed that his throws across the infield to third were pretty impressive. Epstein liked him as a starter. Francona saw the perfect closer. The kid could throw 100 miles per hour and certainly had a closer’s mentality.
“When I got drafted by this team, I was part of a Nation,” Papelbon said in the spring of 2006. “I want to be part of something special here, and I want to be part of a team in a city where when you go out there, you’re expected to win. That’s the only way I know how to play. That’s how I compete. If I don’t do good, go ahead and boo me. It doesn’t really get to me.”
Papelbon worked a perfect one-two-three eighth inning in the Red Sox 2006 opening day win in Texas. After Papelbon was lifted, Foulke was hit hard in a non-save situation in the bottom of the ninth. Francona made up his mind that it was time to award the closer’s role to the big kid from Mississippi State.
Francona believed that the casual hour of late-afternoon batting practice was one of the best times to deliver important messages to players. The manager’s physical limitations made the batting practice counseling personally challenging, but it was worth the discomfort.
“It took me forever to get dressed, but I found the right mix of layers,” said Francona. “It was important to me to be out there. I needed to work, and I didn’t want to just sit around. I wanted to hit fungoes, and I wanted to try to throw batting practice. I wanted to be a working coach. I found that it was my time to visit with players when it was quiet—especially in Boston where there was so much media around.”
While the Sox were taking batting practice before the third game of the season in Texas, Francona sidled up to Foulke near a protective screen behind second base.
“Hey, Foulkie,” said the manager. “I just want you to know that if we get a save situation tonight, I’m going with Pap.”
“Okay,” said Foulke, always a man of few words.
A few hours later, with the Sox leading 2–1 in the bottom of the ninth, Francona summoned Papelbon from the bullpen. Papelbon needed just 11 pitches (two strikeouts) to retire the Rangers in order for the save. A closer was born.
When Francona met with the frothing press, they wanted to know if this meant that Papelbon was the new closer. Bumping Foulke, a World Series hero making $7.5 million, was a big story.
“This is by no means an indictment of Foulke,” said Francona. “I think he’s gonna be brilliant.”
The manager was reminded that his move made it look like Papelbon was the new closer.
“I don’t care what it looks like,” he snapped. “I just told you the truth and how I feel. We won, and that’s what we set out to do. It’s a long year. I don’t think Foulke is the guy we need yet, and I think he’s going to get there.”
The episode was a perfect demonstration of Francona’s managerial nuance and accountability. Francona, the ex-player and the son of a major leaguer, never wanted to rip or embarrass a player. There was no getting called to the woodshed when Terry Francona was in charge.
“I wasn’t a big fan of bringing guys into the office, especially a guy like Foulke,” said Francona. “He would view it as being brought into the principal’s office. I’d always stand behind the screen during batting practice and talk to guys. I got a lot done out there. This wasn’t something I’d decided in one day. Foulke deserved respect, and I owed it to him to let him know ahead of time. Of course, word travels fast. About ten minutes after I talked to Foulkie, I had Schilling in my face saying, ‘Are you crazy?’ I just felt that telling the guy was the right thing to do.”
Why say something contrary to the media?
“I think that’s the right way to do it,” said Francona. “I don’t think you need to anoint the next guy and say he’s going to the Hall of Fame. It was pretty obvious to me how good Pap was, but I had a lot of respect for what Foulke did for us. I don’t care what it looks like—I’m going to do what I’m going to do. I’d rather have a person from the media think I’m dumb or arrogant or argumentative. This happened a lot. I would say I didn’t see something. I’d rather they think I’m stupid than put an indictment out on one of our players. In the Pap situation, I had nowhere to go but to kill Foulke, and I didn’t want to do that. I can’t tell you how many times we’d leave the interview room and Pam [Pam Ganley, then a public relations assistant] would say, ‘You just watched that,’ and I’d say, ‘What do you want me to do, kill our player?’ I can live with someone thinking I’m a little slow if it helps us. It was better. I felt like it worked.”
He was good at the media game, and the Red Sox knew it. Still, there were times when he could be testy, particularly with non-baseball reporters. Francona had a couple of media pet peeves. He hated it when someone’s cell phone went off during an interview session. And he would get almost violent when he was addressed as “coach.”
“Coach?”
This is a baseball thing. In every other sport the head coach is “coach.” In Little League, high school, and college baseball, the head coach is the coach. But in professional baseball the top guy is the “manager,” and the coaches are the guys who work below the manager. This is why most major league managers would rather be addressed as “moron” than as “coach.” The salutation of “coach” strips them of their hard-earned stripes and also indicates that the person asking the question doesn’t know anything about baseball.
The legendary Peter Gammons, a Hall of Fame sportswriter who has covered the Red Sox since the late 1960s, would never address a manager as “coach.” In June 2006, Gammons was stricken by a brain aneurysm while driving near his home on Cape Cod. While Gammons lay unconscious after surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, his wife Gloria was surprised to see the manager of the Red Sox standing in the corridor outside his room after a home victory over the Mets. It was just a small measure of respect for someone who’d done so much for baseball and the Red Sox.
The Sox infield was in good shape for most of 2006. Youkilis proved to be a natural at first base. Lowell, coming off a horrible year at the plate in 2005, found his Fenway stroke and proved that he was more than a throw-in from the Beckett deal. Mark Loretta held down second base, and Gonzalez was sensational at short.
“Gonzo in 2006 had the best defensive shortstop year I’ve ever seen,” said the manager. “Mikey Lowell told me in spring training that I was in for a treat, and he was right. Every week we saw something we’d never seen bef
ore. That’s a nice feeling when the ball is hit to shortstop and you know it’s an out. There was no play he couldn’t make. He had a reputation as moody, but he wasn’t moody. He just didn’t talk to anybody.”
Josh Beckett was another matter. Beckett spent much of his first year in the American League trying to throw fastballs past hitters. Too often the talented sluggers of the AL East were able to track his fastball and hit it out of the ballpark. Beckett gave up 36 homers and compiled an ERA of 5.01 (“Embarrassing,” said Beckett) in his first year in the Junior Circuit.
“He was pretty much what I expected,” said Francona. “He’s stubborn, and I knew that someday we were going to like that about him. He was throwing 95, but it would be on a straight plane level. There’s things you can get away with that you can’t when you’re pitching against the Yankees. Some of those lineups are difficult to navigate through. Beckett had that personality. I always thought he was at his best when he was in the clubhouse and being a smart aleck and arrogant. When he’d get quiet, he wasn’t as good. I always liked it when he’d come into the dugout from a one-two-three first inning and start yelling. He did that just to get himself going and to get the rest of us going. He was a guy that kind of took charge of the staff, which I liked.”
Francona: The Red Sox Years Page 19