Crawford kept to himself and was usually alone in the dugout. Ellsbury was friendly, but seemed to interact only with Jed Lowrie. Youkilis was on the disabled list (sports hernia) during the collapse of 2011. Youk was much easier to have around when he was contributing on the field. When he was on the disabled list, he was not as positive a force in the clubhouse or the dugout. Ditto for Drew, who carried himself like a man who’d already retired. Gonzalez complained about tough travel after too many Sunday night games.
The night after the fantasy draft, the Sox demolished the Blue Jays, 14–0, with Lester pitching seven innings, striking out 11. It would be Lester’s only win of September.
Francona met with Varitek early the next day.
“There were things that I was seeing, and I wanted to bounce that stuff off ’Tek,” said the manager later. “We spoke for about a half-hour. I told him I was worried. I valued his judgment. He’d tell me if I was overreacting, but he told me he was seeing the same things I was seeing. That convinced me that what I was seeing was there. It wasn’t something I was just imagining. It was weird, because we’d just won that 14–0 game. But I wouldn’t just come out of the blue with a meeting.”
After the lengthy talk with his captain, Francona alerted Hale that he was going to call a team meeting.
“That kind of surprised me,” said Hale. “He told me to get everybody into the room, and I was asking, ‘A meeting about what?’ and I’d go up to guys and they’d say, ‘A meeting about what?’ And guys were saying, ‘What the fuck for?’”
The meeting was not a success.
“You guys might think it’s weird having a meeting after a 14–0 win,” Francona said at the start of the meeting. “But I’m seeing things that are bothering me. If I didn’t tell you, I’d be wrong. You don’t always have a chance to win, and we have a team that can win this year. But if we don’t put our best foot forward, that’s going to bother me. I see us worrying about too much shit that doesn’t mean anything. People are spending too much time and energy worrying about things they can’t control. For a team that’s supposed to be good, we sure bitch about a lot of stuff. We need to stop bitching about scoring decisions, contracts, personal goals, bus times, getaway days, the media, everything. Just stop. Remember what we are here for.”
He didn’t single anyone out.
Back in his office with Hale, Francona looked at his trusted bench coach and said, “That fell on deaf ears. All they are doing is wondering why I’m having a meeting when we just won 14–0. Everybody is going their own way.”
“We just ain’t playing good,” Hale told Francona. “We’re not scoring runs. We’re not getting the two-out hits. We’re not defending. We’re not picking the ball up. We’ve tried a lot of things here.”
“It wasn’t about Tito,” said Pedroia. “Some guys were mad for other reasons. They weren’t mad at him. He didn’t need to change.”
“That meeting just seemed weird,” added Youkilis. “It was too open. Guys were like, ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ Some guys didn’t know what was going on. You’re so wrapped up in doing your thing, it was vague. I knew what he was saying wasn’t directed at me, but I think some guys took offense. Here in Boston it’s just story after fucking story after story. And drama, drama, drama. Guys that can’t handle it go nuts.”
The Red Sox lost five straight games after the meeting, including a damaging three-game sweep at the hands of the surging Rays in St. Petersburg. They came home for an off day, September 12, and Henry entertained the players on his boat.
Before the next game, at home against Toronto, Francona and Epstein had a lengthy talk in the manager’s office.
“Theo, we’re going to win, but it’s going to be a little more interesting than we want,” said Francona. “Beckett and Lester will dial it up for a couple of games. One of them will throw a masterpiece, and we’ll be okay.”
Wakefield won his 200th that night, pitching six innings of an 18–6 blowout. The next night they lost, 5–4. This was a pattern. A week later they would beat the Orioles 18–9, just a few hours after losing the first game of a day-night doubleheader 6–5. This was how the Sox managed to rank third in the majors in runs scored during a month in which they went 7–20.
The final homestand was disastrous. The Sox split a pair with Toronto, lost three of four to the Rays, and three of four to the Orioles. In the Fenway finale Wednesday, September 21, Beckett blew a 4–1 lead in the sixth and gave up all six runs before he was pulled in the eighth of a 6–4 loss. The Sox went down one-two-three in the ninth. Fenway fans booed with gusto when Lowrie grounded out to end the game.
After the game, Pedroia went to Francona and asked him to put Crawford into the second spot in the batting order.
“He wants it bad,” Pedroia explained.
There was an off day before the Sox went to New York and Baltimore to close the season. They were a full eight games behind the first-place Yankees, but still held a two-and-a-half-game lead over Tampa for the wild-card spot. When they arrived in New York, Francona was greeted with a report that his relationship with Epstein was fractured. Speaking on The Dan Patrick Show, Peter Gammons—the veteran scribe Francona visited in the hospital when Gammons suffered a brain aneurysm in 2006—said, “I’m sensing an increasing disconnect between Theo Epstein and Terry Francona.”
It was a telling remark, given Gammons’s close relationship with Epstein. By the end of the 2011 season, Gammons was established as a virtual mouthpiece for Boston’s baseball operations department. Epstein and Gammons spoke almost daily, and the scribe’s public utterance of a GM-manager “disconnect” was an indication that Theo wanted to float the story.
“I was pissed about that,” countered Epstein.
According to Francona, “Theo called me and said, ‘Tito, that’s crazy,’ but I knew those guys talked so much. I know Peter reports stuff he probably shouldn’t, but I was tired by then and everybody’s nerves were shot. When you’re losing, we all were worn thin. It was another thing I kind of had to defend, and I didn’t appreciate it.”
Friday’s game was washed out. On Saturday, Lester was pummeled for eight runs over two and two-thirds innings of a 9–1 loss to the Yankees.
Sunday morning, standing in front of the Sox Manhattan hotel headquarters (the Palace Hotel at 465 Madison Avenue), Francona was waiting for Hale when he was approached by a stranger with a foreign accent.
“You must win today,” said the well-dressed stranger.
“Hey, asshole, what do you think we’re trying to do?” said the stressed-out manager.
Before the astonished intruder could react, a security official got between the two men and explained to Francona that the man he was barking at was a well-meaning diplomat from South America. There was an international convention nearby, and the streets around the Sox hotel were peppered with government officials and security officers from around the world. Francona reintroduced himself to the visiting dignitary, posed for a photo, then got in a cab bound for the Bronx. It was going to be a long day at the ballpark.
Wakefield made the last start of his career in the afternoon game, losing to the Yankees, 6–2, despite a couple of home runs from Ellsbury, who was making a late-season push for Most Valuable Player.
Against the wishes of Epstein, Lackey was Boston’s starting pitcher for the nightcap. Lackey’s previous start had been rough, like most of his starts in 2011. At Fenway against the Orioles, he was battered for eight runs on 11 hits, and he glared at Francona when the manager came to take him out of the game in the fifth inning.
“I never paid any attention to that,” said Francona. “I’m just out there saying, ‘Gimme the fucking ball.’ Ten minutes after the game, I don’t think John even knows he did it. I could have made a bigger deal out of it, but we were trying to get him not to bury himself.”
In 2011, Lackey was officially the worst starting pitcher in Red Sox history for a single season (28 starts, 6.41 ERA). He was a pariah to most fans
. Sports talk show hosts in Boston made an issue of Lackey showing up his teammates and his manager. Francona and Sox players continued to support the big Texan, but Lackey made things hard on everyone. His pitching elbow was throbbing (he underwent Tommy John surgery after the season), his marriage was over, and he just wanted to get away from everything.
“He was going through a lot,” said Francona. “His stuff had backed up, and every mistake he made on the mound, Goddamn did he pay for it. He could give up two-out runs with the best of ’em. He’d get two guys out and then make a mistake. He probably didn’t help his cause with the media. He was kind of surly. But he wasn’t like that around us. He was hurting at the end, and we gave him every chance to go on the disabled list, but he talked us out of it. I think he just wanted to win so bad, and he couldn’t believe what was happening.”
Francona had to sell Lackey to his general manager before the final game in New York.
“I know you don’t like this, and I’m trying not to be stubborn, but I’ve got to do what I think is right,” Francona told Epstein. “I know what’s on the line, but I’ve got to do what I think is right. If we pitch somebody else and we lose, it’s going to hurt our team. If we pitch Lackey, he might not pitch well, but it won’t fuck our team up.”
“I don’t think he should be the guy,” said the GM. “I don’t think he gives us the best chance to win. But this is your call. You’re the manager.”
Things got more complicated between games of the doubleheader when Lackey got a text message from a TMZ reporter asking about his troubled marriage. TMZ was getting ready to report that Lackey had filed for divorce from his wife Krista, who was battling cancer. Lackey was appalled by this invasion of his privacy, didn’t believe the ball club was doing enough to protect him, went to Francona’s office, and shoved his cell-phone screen into the face of his manager. Twenty minutes before the game, Francona called Pam Ganley into the office to see if she could help with the delicate situation and the media storm that was sure to follow.
In a nationally televised game that lasted 14 innings, covering five hours and 11 minutes, the Red Sox beat the Yankees, 7–4. Lackey gave up three runs in the first inning, then settled down and blanked the Bombers through the sixth. Five more Sox pitchers went to the mound, and Francona used 14 position players to keep the desperate Sox alive. The doubleheader split gave Boston a one-game lead over the Rays with three to play.
Standing in front of his locker after the game, Lackey started things by saying, “Thirty minutes before the game I got a text message on my cell phone from one of you, someone in the media, talking about personal stuff. . . . It’s unbelievable I’ve got to deal with this.”
A short flight and a few hours later, Francona walked into the visiting manager’s office at Camden Yards and discovered Ganley sitting alone on the couch. She was distressed about the way things had gone down with Lackey the night before in New York. She was also powerless to control TMZ.
It pained Francona to see Ganley upset. Dealing with an epic collapse, no contract for 2012, bus schedules, reports of a “disconnect” with his GM, sulking veterans, and pitchers out of shape and out of control, the manager donned his big brother cap and consoled the loyal public relations employee. It was not the first time he’d come to the rescue of Pam Ganley. In her first year on the job, she’d taken some shots from pitching coach Farrell regarding official scorers’ decisions, and Francona had urged that Farrell apologize. Now he had to gently extinguish a brushfire between his struggling $82 million pitcher and a dedicated publicist who logged 100-hour workweeks for less than John Lackey paid in clubhouse tips.
“It’s okay, Pam,” said the manager. “We all know you are doing the right thing.”
A few hours later, the Orioles beat the Red Sox, 6–3, and the Sox fell into a tie with the Rays for the wild-card spot. Boston’s nine-game lead over Tampa was completely gone. The Yankees weren’t trying very hard to beat Tampa, but nobody begrudged New York’s opportunity to rest. Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez sat out every inning of Boston’s 14-inning victory over New York Sunday night.
In his final start of 2011, Beckett coughed up a 2–1 lead, giving up all six runs in six innings. Batting in the second spot for the fourth consecutive game, Crawford went 0–5 again, which made him 3–21 since Pedroia petitioned the manager to elevate the sensitive outfielder.
“Fuck, Pedey, I can’t do this anymore,” Francona told Pedroia. The manager moved Crawford to the eight spot in the batting order for the final two games of the season.
The Red Sox and Rays both won their next-to-last game Tuesday night. With Lowrie batting in the cleanup spot for the first time in his career, Sox rookie catcher Ryan Lavarnway hit a pair of homers and Papelbon survived a 28-pitch ninth to give the Sox an 8–7 win.
The last night of the 2011 Major League Baseball season was one of the most exciting nights in the history of the game. The Red Sox, Rays, St. Louis Cardinals, and Atlanta Braves were all playing with the playoffs on the line. Four other teams, the Tigers, Angels, Brewers, and Phillies, played with home-field advantage at stake.
At 10:30 AM on Wednesday, September 28, Francona came down the elevator from his room in the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel. He placed his bag behind the velvet ropes in a space set aside for the Red Sox traveling party. He did not have to check out of the hotel or even stop by the desk to pay incidental charges. Trusty Jack McCormick took care of paying the manager’s incidentals. It was a managerial perk.
McCormick had a lot of other duties on the final day of the regular season. The Sox were going somewhere after the game. There were four possibilities. They could be going to Detroit or Dallas–Fort Worth for the first game of the American League Division Series. They could be going to Tampa–St. Petersburg for a one-game playoff against the Rays. Or, worst case, they could be going back to Boston for a long, awful winter. McCormick had a Delta 757 jet (Air Red Sox flight number 8884) set to transport the team from Baltimore-Washington Airport to one of those four destinations after midnight.
“No problem,” said McCormick. “They have maps to every city.”
Francona walked to the ballpark for the final game. The walk would have been intolerable in midsummer, when hundreds of Red Sox fans patrolled the half-mile of streets between the Renaissance and Camden Yards. It was not a problem in September. The manager made his lonely walk and enjoyed every step.
“We were fighting for our baseball lives, and I was excited that morning,” said Francona. “For me it felt like we were getting ready to play a Game 7, and that was exciting. We had all those destinations, which was somewhat hilarious, and I still thought we were gonna win. We had Lester on the mound, and he was 14–0 lifetime against Baltimore.”
The manager arrived at Camden Yards before 11:00 AM.
There was much to do. Lester was getting the ball on three days’ rest for the regular-season finale, but Francona had to think about the possibility of a one-game playoff game the next day in Tampa. There was no logical starting pitcher for the Red Sox. Beleaguered Lackey (weeks away from surgery) was a candidate on three days’ rest. Beckett, whose wife was scheduled to deliver a baby any minute, said he’d start on two days’ rest. Wakefield, as ever, could pitch anytime. Rookie lefty Felix Doubront, 0–0 in 11 relief appearances, was available. Buchholz, who hadn’t pitched since June, was another possibility. Henry was petitioning his manager to pitch Buchholz. Meanwhile, in a bizarre twist, urged on by Henry’s nervousness, Epstein explored acquiring Kansas City lefty Bruce Chen for a one-game stint with the Red Sox.
Francona hated the idea of bringing in Chen for such an important game.
“I’m really uncomfortable with this,” Francona told his GM. “I want us to do this with our team. These guys are busting their asses. He’s not even part of what we are doing.”
“I’ve got a responsibility,” countered Epstein.
Epstein was unable to acquire Chen.
The GM had a few things to sa
y about the final lineup. He wanted rookie catcher Ryan Lavarnway, a September call-up, back in the lineup, batting fifth, behind Gonzalez. Francona agreed.
“We were always pushing Tito to play Lavarnway,” admitted Epstein. “But where he was in the lineup was Tito’s call. That was something Tito wanted to do.”
Lester said he was comfortable throwing to a rookie who had less than a month of experience behind the plate.
The finale unfolded in ghastly fashion. Pedroia’s solo homer in the fifth gave the Sox a 3–2 lead, which was where things stood when Baltimore rains interrupted the game at 9:33 PM in the middle of the seventh. When the Sox got to their clubhouse, they tuned in to the game in Tampa. Folks watching the Sox NESN broadcast back in Boston were bombarded with virtual ads urging them to watch Liverpool versus Wolverhampton the next day at 4:00 PM, which would have been the same time the Red Sox might play Tampa on TBS. The Yankee broadcast showed the Bronx Bombers leading the Rays, 7–0. It looked like the Sox were going to either Detroit or Texas for the ALDS.
The Sox had been in their clubhouse for more than a half-hour when the Rays came to bat, still trailing 7–0, in the bottom of the eighth. No Yankee team had blown a lead of 7–0 or greater in the eighth inning or later since 1953, but Yankee manager Joe Girardi was not playing to win. Jeter, Teixeira, Curtis Granderson, and Nick Swisher had all been pulled from the game. Tampa scored six times in the eighth, pulling to within a run on Evan Longoria’s three-run homer.
Epstein and Cherington watched with Francona in the manager’s office at Camden Yards.
“The Yankees had that lead, then started treating it like a spring training game, as we would have,” said Epstein. “There was a sense of dread as we saw them chipping away. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion.”
“We started that night worrying about ourselves,” said Hale. “But when all that stuff started happening in Tampa, I thought we stopped thinking about ourselves and thinking about them.”
Francona: The Red Sox Years Page 37