The ever-loyal Merhige was there to greet him at the midtown All-Star hotel headquarters.
“Phyllis, your hair looks like shit,” said the manager as he gave Merhige a hug.
Francona selected New York’s Joe Girardi and Detroit’s Jim Leyland as his coaches. He was honored that Leyland accepted his offer. Leyland managed in the minors when Francona played at Triple A, and the Sox manager considered Leyland the gold standard of major league managers. Francona’s favorite memory of the 2008 All-Star experience was sitting in Girardi’s office, swapping stories with Leyland and Farrell while hundreds of media members covered the workout on the Yankee Stadium diamond. Leyland wanted to know more about Pedroia (one of seven Red Sox named to the American League squad), so Francona brought his second baseman into the room to meet with the Tiger manager.
The game, an epic 15-inning joust won by the American League, was an homage to the legacy of Yankee Stadium, which was prepped for the wrecking ball at the end of the 2008 season. Forty-nine Hall of Famers paraded onto the field before the ceremonial first pitch.
“That pregame was one of the most electric moments of my career,” said Francona. “That was humbling. One of the most fun things I’ve ever done.”
During the second inning of the game, one of the Cooperstown boys—Milwaukee Brewer Robin Yount—snuck back into the first-base dugout to meet with Francona. They had been teammates at the end of Francona’s playing career in 1990. Yount had been the Brewer superstar who made sure benchwarmer Francona had a car to drive while he played for Milwaukee. All these years later, Francona was touched that the Hall of Fame shortstop took the time to find him, even if it was in the middle of an inning at the All-Star Game.
Looking at Francona, who’d been the 25th player on the roster when they were teammates, managing an All-Star team in front of 55,632 fans and 49 Hall of Famers at Yankee Stadium, Yount shook his head.
“Tito, I can’t believe it,” said the Brewer legend.
“I just can’t believe it,” Yount said again, still shaking his head.
Then again.
“Yeah, Robin, I know,” Francona said, laughing. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”
The All-Star Game is traditionally difficult to manage, and the task became more challenging after the infamous tie game of 2002 when Joe Torre and Bob Brenly ran out of pitchers. The embarrassment played out at Bud Selig’s hometown yard, Miller Park in Milwaukee. The debacle inspired a rule change stipulating that the winner of the All-Star Game would give its league home-field advantage in that year’s World Series. “This time it counts” was the new slogan.
With Leyland at his side, Francona found himself in a 3–3 tie and running out of pitching in the 13th inning at Yankee Stadium. Concerned MLB officials dispatched Jimmie Lee Solomon—the vice president of MLB’s baseball operations who had been part of Francona’s “shirt-gate” episode in 2007—to ask about available pitching for upcoming innings.
“Tito, how are we looking for pitching?” Solomon asked as he approached the manager from the clubhouse tunnel leading to the dugout.
“Unless you have any pitchers with you, leave me alone and let me figure it out,” snapped Francona.
When Kansas City righty Joakim Soria walked off and waved to his family in the stands after shutting down the NL in the 11th, Francona said, “Don’t be waving to anybody just yet, big boy. You’re going back out there for the 12th.”
Pittsburgh’s Nate McLouth launched a fly to deep right to start the 14th, but J. D. Drew made the catch. Francona walked down to the end of the bench where Derek Jeter was watching.
“It wouldn’t have killed me if that ball went out,” said the manager.
Jeter looked puzzled. He knew that home field in the World Series was on the line. More than a lot of players, Jeter cared.
“Aw, I think we can win the Series on the road,” Francona said with a laugh.
He loved the fact that Jeter stuck around after he was pulled from the game. Many players left the bench, even the ballpark, when they were pulled from All-Star Games. Not Jeter. Not at Yankee Stadium. Not anywhere.
Baltimore’s George Sherrill bailed out Francona by pitching multiple innings. Against Tampa’s wishes, Rays starter Scott Kazmir came on for the 15th. Francona kept looking at his lineup card.
“You can look at that thing all you want,” said Leyland. “There’s no more pitchers on there.”
When the American League came in to hit in the bottom of the 15th, Francona talked to Drew about pitching the 16th inning, but it never came to pass. The AL won it on Michael Young’s sac fly in the bottom of the 15th at 1:38 AM.
Francona and his staff reunited with Sox players in Anaheim after the break. It would be Manny Ramirez’s final trip with the Red Sox.
Manny had switched agents and was working with Scott Boras. Like every team, the Sox were wary of Boras, but he was impossible to avoid. Boras and Manny were looking for a contract extension in the summer of ’08, and there was more controversy at the break when Manny told the Boston Herald, “I want to know what’s my situation. I want no more [times] where they tell you one thing and behind your back they do another thing.”
Henry termed the remarks “personally offensive.”
Manny was a handful on his final Sox trip. He hit a game-tying homer in the first game in Anaheim, but furnished a SportsCenter “Not Top Ten” moment when he flopped badly chasing a fly ball, then started laughing when he realized he was sitting on the baseball. Epstein was in the stands and did not look amused when he saw Manny laughing. Two days later, Manny hit an RBI double, but the Sox lost their third straight to the Angels. After the sweep, while Francona was getting dressed quickly for the trip to Seattle, McCormick popped his head into the visiting clubhouse manager’s office.
“Tito, Manny isn’t getting on the bus. He isn’t going to Seattle with us.”
“Jack, let’s go,” said Francona. “Let’s get on the plane. I’ll just call Theo and tell him Manny’s not with us.”
Dressed and packed, Francona snapped his carry-on luggage into place and wheeled it down the corridor toward the Sox team bus, which was waiting to go to the airport. He got on the bus, taking his usual seat in the second row behind the driver. He did not check to see if Manny was on the bus. It was time to go.
Manny was in the back of the bus. He made the trip, played the first two games in Seattle, then got a day off before the flight home.
Storm clouds gathered over Fenway on the final weekend before the trading deadline. The tipping point came when Manny took himself out of the lineup for the Friday night return to Fenway against Joba Chamberlain and the Yankees. Ramirez’s name was on the original lineup card when Francona met with the media at 4:00 PM. During the press conference, Manny went to Mills and said he couldn’t play due to pain in his knee. Henry and Werner were furious. They ordered Manny sent to the hospital for MRIs on both knees during the game. In midgame the Sox issued a press release stating that the MRIs came back clean. The Red Sox lost, 1–0. Ramirez started the next five games while Theo went to work cutting the best deal he could make.
On Thursday, July 31, an off day, the Sox traded Ramirez in a three-deal swap that sent him to the Dodgers and brought Pittsburgh outfielder Jason Bay to Boston. Francona was at Logan Airport, alone in his car, waiting to pick up one of his kids, when he got the call from Epstein telling him that Manny had finally been traded.
“I got emotional,” Francona recalled. “It hit me so hard. I lost my composure sitting there in the car, and a cop came up and asked me if I was okay, and it was embarrassing. I told him everything was cool. I guess until that moment I hadn’t realized what a toll the whole thing was taking on me, just going through all that.”
The next day Francona called Bay into his office.
“J-Bay, great to see you,” said the manager. “Here’s what you do. I know it sounds simple, but just do the best you can. You’re in a firestorm here, but you’re going to be received in thi
s clubhouse better than you can imagine.”
Bay hit .293 with nine homers and 37 RBI over the final 49 games.
“He was a manager’s dream,” said Francona. “He loved to play. We went from a guy that we had been trying to keep in the lineup to a guy you couldn’t get out of there.”
In 53 games with the 2008 Dodgers, Manny hit a staggering .396 with 17 homers and 53 RBI. In the spring of 2009, Ramirez signed a two-year, $45 million contract with the Dodgers. In May 2009, he was suspended for 50 games for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy. It would not be his last positive test for banned substances.
The 2008 Red Sox finished in second place in the American League East, two games behind the Tampa Bay Rays, with a 95–67 record. The Sox went 34–19 after the Ramirez trade, the second-best record in baseball. They went an alarming 1–8 at the Tropicana Dome in St. Petersburg.
The manager loved his team down the stretch. Manny was gone. Bay was a team player. Pedroia was the American League Most Valuable Player. Lester was a 16-game winner, ace of the staff. Matsuzaka went 18–3, thanks to hefty run support. Papelbon saved 41 games, and 23-year-old Justin Masterson became a dependable long reliever, able to pitch every day. Youkilis was a .312, 29–home run producer and an All-Star starter at first base. Alex Cora, Mark Kotsay, and Sean Casey gave the manager the veteran, go-to bench guys he’d had in Kapler and Roberts back in 2004.
“I think our organization should be proud,” said Francona before the start of the playoffs. “It’s an exciting time for the Red Sox.”
Just like in 2007, they were “doing it better,” fulfilling a promise Francona and Epstein made to one another after the storybook but sometime sloppy championship of 2004.
Going into the playoffs, Francona was 22–9 lifetime as a postseason manager. His .710 winning percentage was the best of any manager in baseball history who had managed at least 20 postseason games.
The Red Sox beat the Angels in the Division Series in four games, a series that included a five-hour-and-19-minute Sunday night game at Fenway.
During a group press conference before Game 2 in Anaheim, Francona deflected praise from a well-meaning reporter.
“You’ve been the manager in the World Series, and if you stopped people on the street and asked them who are the five best managers in baseball, I’m not sure people would say your name,” said the scribe.
“My dad would,” started Francona, as the group laughed. “. . . If I said I don’t care, that sounds flippant and I don’t mean it like that, but I guess what I care more about is us winning. . . . You go to Beaver County, Pennsylvania, though, and they think I’m pretty good.”
The best part of the exchange was the official MLB transcript, which identified it as an interview with “Coach Francona.”
Veteran writers could not wait to show the transcript to the manager.
“About six guys pulled hamstrings running down here to show me the thing,” said Francona.
The ALCS was a coming-out party for the Tampa Bay Rays and Tropicana Field, the hideous indoor baseball arcade featuring overhead catwalks that sometimes blocked home run shots.
“I actually didn’t mind the place,” said Francona. “I loved the clubhouse. If they could take that catwalk away, I wouldn’t mind the Trop. There were so many rules, you couldn’t keep everything straight, but it played fair. The Metrodome in Minneapolis was much worse.”
The Sox won the first game in the Trop, 2–0 (Dice-K), but the series turned in Game 2 when the Sox gambled on Josh Beckett. Beckett had a strained oblique muscle and was taking painkiller shots in order to pitch. He gave up three homers and five hits in the first four innings, but when the Sox rallied to take a 6–5 lead in the top of the fifth, Francona and Farrell tried to squeeze one more inning out of their erstwhile ace.
“We went to him and asked him, and he had it in his eyes,” said the manager. “He was ready.”
Beckett struck out Akinori Iwamura to start the inning, then walked B. J. Upton, surrendered a single to Carlos Pena, then a double to Evan Longoria. Francona came out to get Beckett, but the damage was done. The Sox lost, 9–8, in 11 innings. Francona went through 72 pieces of bubblegum in the five-hour-and-27-minute marathon. He also hurt Varitek’s feelings when he sent Drew up to hit for the catcher in the ninth inning against Dan Wheeler. Sticking too long with Beckett stayed with him long after the game was over.
“It still haunts me a little bit,” he said. “But I don’t think I’d do anything differently. We just wanted Beckett to get through that fifth inning, then get to the bullpen. It got away from us quick. I could tell Theo was upset with me that night. Those were the nights when it was lonely being the manager.”
The series moved to Fenway, and the Rays won two more times, taking a commanding 3–1 series lead. Game 4 was a 13–4 Tampa blowout that sucked the air out of Fenway. Beckett, Lester, and Wakefield were hammered for 17 earned runs in 12 and two-thirds innings and gave up eight homers in the three straight losses.
It looked like the Sox were headed for an embarrassing series defeat in five quick games when they fell behind 7–0 in the first six and a half innings of Game 5. But there was one last rally.
Pedroia started the comeback with a two-out, RBI single in the seventh. After two more runners reached, Ortiz cut the lead to 7–4 with a three-run homer to right. The Sox scored three more in the bottom of the eighth to tie the game and won it on a Drew two-out single in the bottom of the ninth at 12:16 AM. The late-inning drama included high-yield, ten-pitch at-bats by Crisp and Youkilis. The only other team to recover from a seven-or-more-run deficit in a postseason game was the 1929 Philadelphia A’s, who trailed the Cubs 8–0 in the fourth game of the World Series, then won 10–8. It was a nice way for the Red Sox to say good-bye to Fenway fans for 2008.
“I’ve never seen a group so happy to get on a plane at one-thirty in the morning,” said Francona.
They went back to Tampa and forced a Game 7 with a 4–2 victory, powered by captain Varitek’s game-winning homer off James Shields in the sixth. Varitek was 0–15 at the time, had hit only .220 during the season, and was adjusting to the notion that he might not always be Francona’s best available hitter. He was lifted for a pinch hitter three times in the series.
“I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate,” Francona gushed after the win. “Our whole dugout went crazy. The way it happened, and as hard as he’s worked, it meant a lot to everybody.”
One night later, Tampa’s young righty Matt Garza dominated the Red Sox, holding the visitors to two hits (including a Pedroia first-inning homer) over seven innings of a 3–1 win in Game 7.
The big moment of the game came with the bases loaded and two out in the top of the eighth. Protecting Garza’s 3–1 lead, Tampa manager Joe Maddon used five pitchers in an inning in which the Red Sox never scored a run. The Rays’ final hurler was 23-year-old, six-foot-six lefty David Price, who’d been the number-one draft pick in the nation when he was selected out of Vanderbilt in 2007.
“In our dugout, we felt we were going to win,” said Francona. “We’d done it so many times, and that’s the way it always was with that group.”
Price worked the count to 1–2 on Drew, then fanned the Sox right fielder with a 97-mile-per-hour fastball on the black. Drew committed, tried to hold back, but was ruled out on a check swing. Drew never looked at the replay to see if he could have gotten away with taking the pitch for ball two. He never checked with home-plate umpire Brian Gorman. That’s the way it was with J. D. Watching the replay or arguing with the umpire wouldn’t change the call, so why bother?
“I thought the ’08 team might have been our best team,” Francona said later. “It was a shame we didn’t win that one. But we got beat by a good team.”
The flight back to Boston was long, dark, and quiet. Francona abandoned his seat at the front of the aircraft and went back a few rows where he could lie down across a row of three seats. He was more tired than he had been in any othe
r season. He had no way of knowing that his best days in Boston were behind him. After two championships and a seven-game ALCS, it was already starting to unravel. He would never win another playoff game as manager of the Boston Red Sox. Nobody knew it yet, but the fall of the franchise was officially under way.
Francona's college roommate and best friend Brad Mills was by his side for his first six years in Boston.
Getty Images / J. Meric
Trusted captain Jason Varitek always had the manager's back.
AP Photo / Jim Mone
The manager with three of his latter-day favorites (left to right): Jonathan Papelbon, Dustin Pedroia, and Mike Lowell.
AP Photo / Elise Amendola
In an emotional end to a comeback season, Francona lifts Jon Lester in the sixth inning of the final game of the 2007 World Series, less than a year aft er Lester recovered from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Tannen Maury / epa / Corbis
Red Sox owners John Henry, Tom Werner, and Larry Lucchino, along with Epstein and Francona, pose with the 2007 championship trophy aft er Game 4 in Denver.
Getty Images / Brad Mangin
Francona congratulates Jon Lester again on May 19, 2008, after he pitches a no-hitter in Fenway Park against the Kansas City Royals.
Brita Meng Outzen
The manager in his spartan office at Fenway. Note the old-fashioned saloon door shielding the corner latrine.
© Photograph by Walter Iooss
The manager shares a laugh with his players.
Brita Meng Outzen
Red Sox publicist Pam Ganley (left) delivers the manager to a press conference.
Francona: The Red Sox Years Page 27