Francona: The Red Sox Years

by Terry Francona

  Thick-skinned Lucchino was amused and mildly flattered by the resurrection of the passage. Werner was furious and said, “That’s gratuitous.”

  While the Lucchino-Epstein relationship continued to deteriorate, Francona’s relationship with Epstein was stronger than ever. Epstein had learned to steer clear of his manager in the early minutes after tough losses, and Francona was always careful to back up his GM even when he was not in agreement with personnel decisions or statistical suggestions. The manager and the GM had one another’s backs. Francona enjoyed the youthful exuberance of Theo’s baseball ops staff. At 50 years old, he was not above practical jokes and locker-room stunts typically reserved for professional ballplayers.

  In late August of 2010, young publicist Pam Ganley witnessed a Bull Durham moment when she burst into the manager’s office between games of a day-night doubleheader and caught the manager mooning Epstein, Cherington, and O’Halloran. The Sox had won the first game of the twin bill, then learned that Matsuzaka was injured and would be unable to pitch the nightcap. The manager and the baseball ops executives were in a good mood after the afternoon win, and it was not unusual for Francona to engage in immature horseplay. Boys will be boys. It is the way of many baseball lifers. When Epstein made a wisecrack, Francona came out from the other side of the saloon door and dropped trow.

  Unaware of the hijinks in the corner office and armed with the press release announcing that Tim Wakefield would start in place of Matsuzaka, Ganley entered the office without warning, saw the manager’s bare backside, gasped, then turned and left. Francona never saw her. He had his back to the room. But he heard the door slam while Epstein and his guys were laughing.

  Pulling up his pants, the manager turned and said, “Was that Pam?”

  “She just left,” said the young executives, all doubled over.

  Francona bolted from his office, walked quickly across the clubhouse and down the stairs to the tunnel connecting the locker room to the first-base dugout. There he found Ganley, sitting alone on the bench, staring out at the field.

  “Pam, I am so sorry,” said the manager. “We were just goofing around.”

  “Don’t talk to me,” said Ganley. “I can never look at you again. I am never going to be the same.”

  “There were some human resources concerns going on in the back of my brain, but it was pretty freakin’ funny,” said Epstein.

  Fortunately, the moment passed and Ganley recovered nicely. No need to report to HR. Like many of the young employees at Fenway—the ones who worked long hours for little pay—Ganley was treated royally and respectfully by the manager of the Red Sox. Ever-mindful of his upbringing around big league clubhouses, Little Tito always took care of the people behind the scenes.

  While folks in baseball ops and the manager’s office struggled to win games with a depleted roster, the Sox owners and folks at NESN were trying to identify why ratings were soft. On July 21, while the ball club was on the West Coast, NESN officials met at Fenway with Werner, Lucchino, and a mortified Epstein for an emergency “Viewership/Team Interest Discussion.” The young GM with two World Series championships on his résumé was forced to sit through a meeting that addressed “indicators of declining team popularity” and “possible factors to reduced interest.” The television executives agreed to hire a market research and consulting firm to “access factors contributing to lower interest in the Red Sox in the 2010 season.” The decision to hire the consulting firm “was evidence to me of the inherent tension between building a baseball operation the way I thought was best and the realities of being in a big market and this Monster which had gotten bigger than any of us could handle,” said Epstein. “I thought it was evidence that that conflict was as intense as ever and it was probably inevitable that the business of the game was becoming pretty important.”

  “Theo was good about shielding me from that shit,” said Francona. “There were days when he was a little grumpy, and I could tell somebody probably hit him from up above, but he was really good about that. I don’t think he liked that shit about ratings at all.”

  Back in the dugout, there was no saving the 2010 Red Sox season. From July 4 through the final day in October, the Sox were a sub-.500 team. Francona was forced to use some bizarre lineups and continued to rotate shortstops. Infielder Bill Hall played some center field. Lowell was lurching toward retirement, while kids Yamaico Navarro, Daniel Nava, Ryan Kalish, and Felix Doubront were introduced to the big leagues. The Sox finished in third place, 89–73, seven games behind the Tampa Bay Rays. They sent 19 players to the disabled list and lost 1,013 man-games to broken bones and torn ligaments.

  The Lackey signing was not a hit. In his first season in Boston, the big righty went 14–11 with a 4.40 ERA.

  “It was a matter of coming into this division with smaller ballparks and deeper lineups,” said pitching coach Farrell. “With the Angels, he was making 22 of 34 starts at night on the West Coast in Seattle, Anaheim, and Oakland—the three best pitcher’s ballparks in the American League. I don’t think he was any different as a pitcher. I just think there were some circumstances that changed.”

  Run prevention was a bust. The Sox finished 12th out of 14 American League teams in fielding percentage. They made 42 more errors than the wild-card-winning Yankees. The Seattle Mariners, godfathers of run prevention in 2009, won a league-low 61 games in 2010.

  John Henry was no longer immersed in his baseball team. The owner and his young bride welcomed a baby girl into their lives in late September, and Henry and his Fenway Sports Group were preparing to buy the Liverpool Football Club for $480 million. The Red Sox were no longer Henry’s sole passion. Henry and Werner would spend much of the next two years flying across the Atlantic to tend to matters regarding Liverpool and the Premier League.

  The final weekend at home against the Yankees was a public relations disaster for the Sox. Friday night’s game was rained out, but fans were not sent home until 10:35 PM. Saturday’s day-night doubleheader ended at 1:22 AM Sunday morning. Sunday’s season finale was Fan Appreciation Day, and Sox players and the coaching staff greeted fans at the turnstiles. Fans were given nifty round magnetic calendars featuring the 2011 schedule.

  It was not Manager Appreciation Day. Werner, privy to the results of the $100,000 study he’d commissioned to explore the Sox television ratings slump, passed Francona on the field during pregame activities and grumbled, “What a shitty season.”

  “That bothered me,” said the manager. “We were up against a lot, and we ground out 89 wins. I was so proud of our guys. They played their asses off. I remember thinking, Fuck, if this was shitty, I don’t want to be around here when it really is shitty.”

  CHAPTER 14

  • 2011 •

  “I feel like I let you down”

  THE 2011 RED SOX season—which would prove to be one of the most disappointing and tumultuous campaigns in the 111-year history of Boston’s American League franchise—was launched immediately after the conclusion of the injury-plagued, 89-win season of 2010. The Sox came up with a slogan that promised better days while acknowledging the disappointment of 2010:

  “We Won’t Rest Until Order Is Restored.”

  On Tuesday, November 2, just over a month after the Sox season ended, a group gathered at Fenway to review results of that $100,000 marketing research project the Sox had commissioned back in July. With Werner participating on speakerphone, Lucchino met with the bosses of NESN. Epstein, who’d been reluctant to participate in the study, attended the meeting.

  The document distributed to all participants stated that the “research objectives” were “(1) to access factors contributing to lower interest in the Red Sox in the 2010 season” and “(2) to understand factors contributing to less viewing of Red Sox telecasts in the 2010 season.”

  Listed among the reasons for “lower interest” in the 2010 Red Sox:

  Disappointing news and moves in the off-season; not spending the money to get big players

&nb
sp; The team’s positioning of itself as “pitching and defense” after not making “big” trades and acquisitions, and the characterization of 2010 as a “bridge year”

  Not delivering on pitching and defense in April

  Suffering injuries and playing with a “no-name” lineup going into and beyond the All-Star break

  On page 28, a section dealing with male-female demographics, the report stated: “The women are definitely more drawn to the ‘soap opera’ and ‘reality-TV’ aspects of the game. . . . They are interested in good-looking stars and sex symbols (Pedroia).”

  The team-sponsored survey concluded that fans were watching less because “the games are too long with disappointing outcomes.” At the top of the list of “key take-aways” was the recommendation: “Big moves, trades, and messaging in the off-season are important.”

  There was little nuance in the survey. No ambiguity. NESN’s in-house memo was telling Epstein and his baseball operations staff what was needed to reverse the costly downward trend in Red Sox television ratings: star power.

  Epstein was insulted, amused (Pedroia sexy?), and angry as he sat through the session.

  “They told us we didn’t have any marketable players, the team’s not exciting enough,” he recalled. “We need some sizzle. We need some sexy guys. I was laughing to myself. Talk about the tail wagging the dog. This is like an absurdist comedy. We’d become too big. It was the farthest thing removed from what we set out to be.

  “That type of shit contributed to the decision in the winter to go for more of a quick fix. Signing Crawford and trading for Adrian [Gonzalez] was in direct response to that in a lot of ways. Shame on me for giving in to it, but at some point the landscape is what it is. I didn’t handle it well, but that kind of explains the arc of what we were doing.”

  “Theo never talked to me about any of that, and I appreciated it,” said Francona. “I didn’t want to know, and it’s good that I didn’t know.”

  Pressed by his bosses and the sagging ratings, Epstein went to work to build the transcendent team, a team that could win 100 games and a World Series, a team that would boost NESN’s ratings, a team that would cement the legacies of Henry, Werner, and Lucchino as great owners. It would be a team that could make Epstein and Francona candidates for Cooperstown. Three World Series championships in eight years would make any baseball bosses Hall-worthy.

  Everyone in the organization knew the Sox were going to lose two of their best hitters. They were not going to compete for free agents Victor Martinez and Adrian Beltre. The Sox did not want Martinez as their everyday catcher, and he wound up getting $50 million over four years from the Tigers. Beltre signed with the American League Champion Rangers for $96 million over six years.

  Epstein had a plan. He was going to make a trade for Adrian Gonzalez, a hitter he’d coveted since 2000 when Gonzalez was a San Diego high school senior and Epstein was a 26-year-old assistant director of baseball operations with the Padres. Caving to the pressure of his bosses, Epstein was willing to trade coveted prospects in order to win immediately. He knew he would be allowed to spend freely. He would be allowed to compete for Crawford and Jayson Werth, considered the best position players on the market. He could even lavish $12 million on a setup reliever (Bobby Jenks). He was going to make the moves that would satisfy the focus groups and the talk shows.

  Francona was not at the NESN war-room meeting and did not know that Epstein was charged with the task of making the Red Sox more interesting. He did not involve himself with ancillary issues. He barely noticed when John Henry ponied up $480 million to buy the Liverpool soccer team. He was not listening to the radio when Werner went on WEEI, the Sox flagship station, and said, “I’m concerned about perception. . . . I think we are going to sign a significant free agent. . . . We’ve got our eyes on a couple of people.”

  The manager was back at Massachusetts General Hospital for another knee replacement, this time the left knee. Boston’s non-playoff status gave Francona the opportunity to plan his surgery for mid- October. Because of the manager’s history and meds, it was a complex process. He had to wean himself off his blood-thinning medication and regulate his blood levels, which required a week of presurgical hospitalization. Like all patients dealing with anesthesia and pain medication, Francona came out of the surgical process with a gap in his awareness of everyday events. It had happened in 2006 when Epstein resigned, and it happened in 2010 when Theo was planning to build the super team.

  “I missed a lot of stuff again,” said the manager. “Maybe that was good.”

  The surgery and the urgency of the off-season coincided with a difficult time in Francona’s personal life. By the time he checked into Mass General for surgery, he’d moved out of his Chestnut Hill home. His marriage of almost 30 years to Jacque Lang—the pretty girl from math class at Arizona and the wonderful mother of his four adult children—was dissolving. Too much devotion to baseball, too many nights on the road, maybe too many nights on that Pesky couch in his office, had taken a toll. Nick had graduated from Penn and was a lieutenant in the US Marines. Alyssa had graduated from North Carolina and was working at Boston College, living in her own apartment. Leah was getting married to Marine Michael Rice, one of Nick’s best friends. Jamie was a star volleyballer at Brookline High, on her way to a coveted spot in the US Naval Academy class of 2016. Their dad was making more money than he’d ever dreamed he’d make—and had hopes for another two years if he got his contract extended through 2013—but Terry and Jacque had reached the difficult crossroads of a long, happy marriage. The manager of the Red Sox left his Chestnut Hill home and moved into the Brookline Courtyard Marriott Hotel near Coolidge Corner, where he would live throughout the 2011 season.

  By late November, he’d rebounded from the knee replacement and joined Epstein for a recruiting road trip to Houston and Chicago a week before the annual baseball meetings at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, near Orlando. The Sox GM and manager first went to Houston to meet with Crawford. At Epstein’s request, Allard Baird, the Sox vice president in charge of professional scouting, had followed Crawford extensively in the second half of the 2010 season and contributed detailed observations to a 50-page report that included extensive statistical analysis and a comprehensive background check. It was widely believed that the Angels had the inside track with Crawford, but Epstein wanted to measure the outfielder’s interest in Boston and thought Francona would make a good recruiter. On November 30, Epstein and Francona met with Crawford and his agents, Greg Genske and Brian Peters, in the agents’ offices near Rice University. Francona had managed Crawford on a Team USA unit that toured Taiwan in 2001 and, like everyone else, was impressed with Crawford’s speed, athleticism, and sincerity. Crawford had run wild on the Red Sox during Francona’s tenure in the Boston dugout. The meeting went well.

  “Theo and I did some of our best work on those trips,” said the manager. “Theo didn’t want us to be the team that they used for leverage. The meeting was very informal, but Carl did a great job of presenting himself. I didn’t see Boston as a deterrent for him. When we walked away from that one, Theo asked me what I thought, and I said I thought it went great.”

  Leaving Houston, Epstein and Francona received a message from Scott Boras indicating that Werth, a Boras client, would be available for a meeting at a hotel near O’Hare Airport in Chicago. The Sox bosses arrived several hours earlier than the free agent outfielder and found an old-fashioned steakhouse bar near the O’Hare Hilton.

  “We had a great time at the bar,” said the manager. “I think that might have been when Theo made the offer to Mariano Rivera. We got about ten deep, and then Werth showed up and we had an even better time. We knew we couldn’t match the money he was going to get. [Less than a week after the meeting, Werth signed with the Washington Nationals for $126 million over seven years.] Later in the winter I got the nicest note from Jayson. He said he would have loved playing for us, but he couldn’t turn down that mon
ey.”

  After the free agent meetings, Francona went to Fort Myers for the weekend while Epstein returned to Boston. On Friday, December 3, Adrian Gonzalez and his agent, John Boggs, flew to Boston on Henry’s private jet. The Sox put them up at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Boylston Street.

  Epstein needed to accomplish three things: he needed to work out a deal with San Diego GM Jed Hoyer; he needed to make sure Gonzalez was healthy (Gonzalez had undergone shoulder surgery after the 2010 season); and he needed to work out a contract extension with Gonzalez.

  Dealing with Hoyer was probably the easiest part. This was the Jed Hoyer who “ate his ass off” the night Francona first interviewed for the Red Sox job back in November of 2003. Hoyer needed to move his best player because San Diego could not afford Gonzalez after his “walk” year in 2011. Hoyer knew who the best Sox prospects were because he’d been part of the Boston operation. He knew Theo didn’t like parting with top prospects, but the pressure in Boston was great. Epstein was ready to deal, and Hoyer had the experienced hitter Boston coveted.

  With Gonzalez in town, the Sox scheduled a series of physicals and an MRI. The slugger passed every test. On Sunday, December 5, the Sox met with Gonzalez at Fenway to discuss the contract extension. Talks broke down early in the afternoon, and Gonzalez returned to the Mandarin. Talks resumed Sunday evening, and late that night the ball club released a bulletin stating that it would have a “major announcement Monday at 11 AM.”