It was just after 6:00 AM in Boston when Pedroia singled on an 0–1 pitch to christen the 2008 major league season. Matsuzaka got the start and lasted five innings. The Red Sox trailed, 4–3, in the ninth when rookie Brandon Moss—who was starting in right field because Drew (who had homered in both Japan exhibitions) came up lame after pregame sprints—tied the game with his first major league homer. Manny hit a game-winning two-run double in the tenth and was rewarded with a million yen and a Ricoh color copier. Okajima got the win. Everybody was happy, including the commissioner, who’d made the flight to Tokyo several days after the Sox landed.
“I’m sure the sports bars in Boston were filled for this one, even though it started at six in the morning,” gushed Selig. “When I left my hotel today, I had to pinch myself. I thought I was in Boston. Everybody in the lobby waiting to come to the game had Red Sox paraphernalia on. It is remarkable. This is part of the internationalization of the sport, and to have the World Champion Red Sox here is really exciting. This is the ultimate.”
Game 2 was not as much fun. The A’s beat the Red Sox, 5–1, and when it was over, both managers were required to publicly thank the fans. It was custom. Francona’s speech to the Tokyo Dome crowd was brief and uncomfortable. He knew his bosses were watching.
“When I talked with the media after that second game, I could see Larry standing off to the side,” said Francona. “He wanted to see if I said something negative about the trip.”
“The whole spring was fucked up,” Francona said later. “We had guys going to Japan who pitched games that count. A couple starters had to be ready quicker than others. Beckett hurt his back and didn’t come with us. It was harder than you can imagine. There were rules coming out the yin-yang. Then you play two games that don’t count, then two that count, then you’re going back to the States to play more games that don’t count. I was all fucked up. It was good for baseball, but I was grumpy as shit.”
The nine-hour flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles didn’t make anyone less grumpy. And the circus was only beginning.
Four days after their final game in Tokyo—which had been a regular-season major league contest—the Sox were playing an exhibition against the Los Angeles Dodgers at the ancient Los Angeles Coliseum in front of 115,000 fans. It was the largest crowd in the history of baseball. It was also something of a freak show. Baseball’s Woodstock venue featured 92 rows of seats and a left-field fence that was 190 feet from home plate.
There were no serviceable locker rooms for the Sox at the Coliseum. The Sox gathered at Dodger Stadium after lunch, got into their uniforms, then took a bus to the Coliseum, where they disembarked in the middle of a massive crowd and stood while speeches were made. The players and staff entered the Stadium under the fabled stone arches situated beyond the makeshift right-field fence. The Dodgers, led by old friend Joe Torre, walked alongside the Red Sox.
As they walked down the crumbling stairs of the Coliseum, Torre asked Francona, “How’s your dad?”
“Great,” said Francona. “How many more times do we need to be introduced before we can get on with our season?”
They both laughed.
It was the first baseball game at the Coliseum since September 1961, when John F. Kennedy was president and Sandy Koufax struck out 15 in a 13-inning, 3–2 win over the Cubs. The hideous dimensions of the Coliseum created a rare baseball moment when Ellsbury was thrown out attempting to steal second base on a play in which the tag was applied by center fielder Andruw Jones. A rare 2–8 in your scorebook. The exhibition featured nine ceremonial first pitches, one before each inning. Given the number of non-sports reporters assigned to the hardball festival, it was not surprising after the game when one of the local television reporters addressed Francona as “coach.”
After the cotillion-like game at the Coliseum, the Sox had to play one last exhibition game at Dodger Stadium. Returning to Chavez Ravine inspired a nice memory for Francona. He made his managerial debut at Dodger Stadium with the Phillies in 1997, and Curt Schilling beat the Dodgers for the rookie skipper.
“It looked easy and from there it was sort of downhill,” said Francona.
In the spring finale, Clay Buchholz became the first big league pitcher to pitch spring training games in Florida, Japan, and California.
With the spring training schedule finally over, the Red Sox flew from Los Angeles to San Francisco to resume their regular season in Oakland. Boston beat the A’s two straight. Then it was on to Toronto for another trip through customs and yet another opening day. The Blue Jays swept the Sox, three straight. The Sox made six errors and were outscored 17–6 in the final two games in Canada.
“On that last day in Toronto, one of their guys hit a one-hopper to Mikey Lowell’s left,” said Francona. “Mikey took one step to his left and just fell down. And I was thinking, I’m with you, Mikey.
“All the baseball people were uneasy about that trip. We were set up to have heavy legs, set up for us to get our ass kicked. It just seemed that everything we were trying to do was secondary to this trip. It was stop, start, stop, start. It was a total circus. We had cement in our shoes. It was the worst road trip in the history of the game.”
“It was pretty bad,” said Epstein. “I was always trying to protect the integrity of the baseball operation and our competitiveness. As GM, I’m also part of the broader management team, and I understood where they were coming from. In the end, if we missed the playoffs by a game, all this goodwill would be undone. The only way to successfully market a baseball team is by winning. But we’re the Red Sox. We’re not going to be able to avoid a trip like that. I just wanted us to mitigate the damage. It was what it was.”
“I think it was bad,” said Ortiz. “We had just finished winning the World Series. I know this is business and the team made good money at the time, but any team was going to make good money. That trip got everybody out of control.”
The Franconamen were 3–4, resting in the cellar of the American League East, when they went through customs one last time to get ready for their 2008 home opener at Fenway and yet another series of pregame introductions.
They returned to Yawkey Way to find a new and improved clubhouse, equipped with as much space (the ceiling was raised) and as many amenities as a 97-year-old structure would allow. Architect Janet Marie Smith was at the top of her game, and Henry was still vested in making improvements to the place the Sox had anointed as “America’s Most Beloved Ballpark.”
Bill Buckner, the goat of the 1986 World Series, came back to throw out the ceremonial first pitch for the home opener. It was a cathartic moment for the graying first baseman, and his warm reception was another sign that the angst of eight decades had evaporated. In 2008 Boston was Titletown—proud and unapologetic. Bill Russell, Bobby Orr, Tedy Bruschi, Danny Ainge, and Johnny Bucyk carried the Stanley Cup, a Patriots Lombardi Trophy, one of the Celtics’ 15 championship buckets, and the 2007 Commissioner’s Trophy. The Red Sox were introduced individually and lined up on the baseline for the eighth time in less than three weeks. Tom Werner appeared with Neil Diamond on a video version of “Sweet Caroline,” and Steven Tyler sang “God Bless America.”
Tyler had a moment with the manager before his performance. Spotting the ubiquitous bag of Lancaster, the rocker asked Francona if he could have a pinch.
“Sure, but watch out for this stuff, it’s pretty strong,” said Francona, a big Aerosmith fan.
“Thanks,” said Tyler, no stranger to stimulants and pharmaceuticals. “I’ve done a lot worse.”
Later, there were reports of a green-faced Tyler running through the clubhouse to spit out his chew.
The Red Sox beat the Tigers, 5–0.
The Sox were leading the American League East by a game on May 19 when Lester no-hit the Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park. The manager was among the last to embrace the tall lefty, and a photo of that moment adorns the den of Francona’s home.
Interviewed on live television after his on-field celebration
, Lester said, “He has been like a second dad to me. He cares a lot about his players. It’s not just what they can do on the field.”
“That was a private moment that got played out in public,” said Francona. “A kid grows up in your organization, you feel a little more paternal toward those guys. Then you take what happened to him with the cancer. The whole story was too good to believe.”
Things started to turn ugly with Manny Ramirez less than a month later. Manny was in the final year of his eight-year, $160 million pact. He had shown unusual commitment during the 2007–2008 off-season, working out at Athletes’ Performance Institute in Arizona and arriving at spring training in timely fashion. He skipped the Sox trip to the White House in late February (“I guess his grandmother died again,” quipped President Bush), but for the most part Ramirez was engaging and upbeat with teammates and reporters.
On June 5, the night the Celtics were scheduled to play the Lakers in Game 1 of the NBA Finals at the Boston Garden, Manny slapped Youkilis across the face while the two argued on the top step of the Sox dugout during a 7–1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays. There was a bench-clearing incident in the second inning after Crisp was hit by James Shields, but the intramural spat involving Manny and Youk received far more attention.
“I was going to the bathroom when that happened,” remembered Francona. “I came up the steps, buckling my pants, and I heard something and I said, ‘What the fuck? Can’t a guy even take a piss?’ They were all talking about who hit who and all that. I said, ‘If you guys want to beat each other up, go down the tunnel. Either hit each other down the tunnel where nobody can see you or better yet, just go play.’”
Three weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon at the end of June, Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick was sitting at a computer in a corridor near the visitors’ clubhouse at Houston’s Minute Maid Field, making phone calls and filling out ticket orders for the Sox interleague night game against the Astros. McCormick, a former Boston police officer, had been on the job during Francona’s entire tenure and was one of the manager’s best friends in the Sox entourage.
“Jack only got mad at me once in eight years,” said Francona. “We were playing cards on the plane and we had our table out in the middle of the aisle, and he didn’t see it and he tripped and went face first onto the carpet, and I laughed. He gave me a look, and that was the end of that. I stopped laughing and never had an uncomfortable moment with him again.”
McCormick was unusually fit for a 64-year-old man. He had run the Boston Marathon 17 times.
The road rule of thumb for player tickets is six per player per game—four for family and two for guests. Players who need additional tickets are welcome to dip into the allotment of players who are not using their tickets or make a purchase. Four hours before big league games, it’s common to hear major league ballplayers yelling across the room to teammates, asking, “Are you using your tickets?”
Manny was in no mood for asking teammates for tickets on June 28 when he approached McCormick.
“Jack, I need 16 tickets for tonight,” said Ramirez.
“Okay, Manny. Just borrow them from your teammates and I’ll put them into the computer.”
“No, just do it,” said Manny.
“Manny, you know how it works,” said McCormick. “I can get them, but you have to ask the guys and I’ll take care of it.”
Louder and more angry, Manny insisted, “Just do it.”
Sensing that this was not going well, the six-foot-tall McCormick stood up and faced Ramirez, eyeball to eyeball.
“Manny . . .” he started.
There was no more discussion. Ramirez pushed McCormick violently, and the traveling secretary fell back onto a spring water jug that was on the floor by the entrance to the players’ lounge.
“Just do your job and get my tickets!” Manny yelled as he stood over the fallen club executive.
Farrell, Papelbon, Youkilis, and Alex Cora were the first to get to the scene and push Manny away. Francona heard the ruckus from his office and came out.
“It took me a few seconds to realize that this wasn’t in fun,” Francona said. “There were not a lot of guys around when I got out there, and I saw Jack leaning against a table, kind of dazed. I grabbed Manny and said, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I was hoping he wasn’t going to hit me.”
Francona brought McCormick into his office to hear his version of events. The two met with Don Kalkstein, the Red Sox mental performance coach, who was traveling full-time with the team. After the meeting, Francona called Epstein.
“Theo, we’ve got a bad problem,” said the manager. “We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to send Manny home.”
Manny was not sent home. Ramirez was brought into a meeting with Francona and McCormick and apologized to McCormick. He started in left field the night of the incident and hit a game-winning home run a day later.
“I knew what was going on was wrong,” said Francona. “It didn’t sit well with me. I should have held my ground.”
Red Sox management had little response when the story leaked. Lucchino said it was “an internal matter.” Henry sent an email stating, “Actions have been taken commensurate with what occurred.”
“I don’t think there was any kind of effort to coddle Manny at all, by that point,” said Lucchino. “We were all upset by it. It was outrageous behavior.”
“That was so egregious,” said Epstein years later. “We were constantly walking a tightrope with Manny. We needed to maintain some discipline and some integrity because we had to manage the other 24 players, but we understood that if we asked Manny to live up to everything we expected from the other players, we wouldn’t even get past the opening series of the year. So there was this balancing act. It was a very difficult dance over the years. Tito was right in the same boat with everyone else. There were things we wanted to do over the years, but Tito and the rest of us at times had to bite our tongues and look the other way. It was so hard to do our job in a way that we could be proud of and also create an environment that would allow Manny to play and be productive. It was hardest on Tito.”
Once again, Francona had to go before the media and say things he did not believe. He had to talk about handling things internally. He had to bite his tongue, more than at any time in his tenure as Red Sox manager.
“It was one of the tougher situations for me because it went against something I knew,” he said later. “I knew it was wrong. It made it harder because it was Jack. Jack didn’t want to be the guy that got Manny suspended. He knew how things worked with the Red Sox. He saw how upset I was and told me to settle down, that he would be okay, but it was backwards. Over the years, Jack looked out for Manny as much as anybody. My patience for Manny lessened after that incident. That one really bothered me. I thought we needed to take a stance. I’d always had meetings with our veteran players about this situation, but now it was obvious they were tired of him too.”
Ramirez was fined by the team. McCormick downplayed the incident every time he was asked for a comment.
“The only thing that pissed me off about it was those newspaper reports that I was some frail, 80-year-old man,” McCormick said.
McCormick had a theory about Manny’s motive. A few days before the incident, Houston GM Ed Wade had been attacked by Astros pitcher Shawn Chacon while Wade was explaining Chacon’s demotion to the bullpen. The episode was headline news when the Sox got to Houston. In McCormick’s mind, Ramirez was trying to shove his way out of Boston.
“I don’t know that Manny thinks that far in advance,” countered Francona.
For the first time in Boston, some fans were calling for Manny to be moved.
It got worse for Ramirez in Boston a week after the McCormick episode. Pinch-hitting against Mariano Rivera in the top of the ninth of a tie game at Yankee Stadium, Manny looked at three consecutive strikes, got rung up, then sauntered back to the dugout. He never took the bat off his shoulder. The Sox lost 5–4. For a lot of Sox fans, i
t was the last straw. It looked like Manny had intentionally quit in the at-bat against Rivera.
“Not true,” said Francona. “It was never an issue. I believe it to this day that he was trying there. He had been in the dugout tunnel, getting ready for that at-bat. We didn’t have to drag him up there. He knew Rivera enough, he knew what he could hit and what he couldn’t hit. He didn’t get it and he didn’t swing. Mariano painted three. I’m not going to say Manny lost sleep over it, but he was ready to hit. That was a tough one because I always stuck up for Manny, and the media probably thought I was just doing it again, but in my mind he was ready to hit. That one was never an issue.”
The Sox were still in first place, owning a 57–40 record, when Francona took a Sunday night train from Boston to New York for his second crack at managing in the All-Star Game. Waiting for him in New York was Phyllis Merhige, a Major League Baseball senior vice president who’d known Francona when he was a young ballplayer and she was director of public relations for the American League. For several decades, Merhige has been the moderator of managers’ pre- and postgame press conferences at postseason games and All-Star Games. She was the one who’d been waiting for Francona in the makeshift interview room at Fenway when fans were throwing things at him from the bleachers after the 19–8 loss in Game 3 of the 2004 American League Championship Series. Francona was a favorite of the widely respected Merhige. On the last day of games before the break, Merhige spent the day making arrangements for players and managers from all 30 teams coming to New York. She made sure Francona knew she’d postponed a hairdressing appointment while waiting for him to arrive on the train from Boston Sunday night. Unfortunately, Francona’s train was delayed and he didn’t get to New York until after midnight.
Francona: The Red Sox Years Page 26