Francona: The Red Sox Years (10 page)

“It went great,” said Epstein. “He was the guy, clearly, for us. We just had to go through a bit of a process.”

“When I left Boston that night, I really wanted the job,” remembered Francona.

The Sox were impressed, but the search was only beginning. Maddon and Hale were still on tap to be interviewed, and Hoffman was under consideration.

“I came in after Tito,” said DeMarlo Hale, who would eventually join the Sox as part of Francona’s staff in 2006. “I definitely got the sense that Tito was the front-runner. I knew I wasn’t ready. You could sort of tell by the way everybody was talking, even the Red Sox players.”

Francona had claimed the inside track. He knew he was the front-runner when the Sox invited him back to work in their offices for a day. And then again for another day. It was a little strange. The Sox were still interviewing candidates, still had no manager, but Francona kept flying to Hanscom Field in Bedford, where he’d be picked up by traveling secretary Jack McCormick (the same guy who made sure the A’s were delayed getting out of Boston a month earlier) for a day of work in the third-floor baseball operations offices near the New England Sports Network (NESN) studio, the club’s television station. While the managerial search was allegedly ongoing, Francona returned to Boston multiple times.

He got comfortable. He played more simulation baseball (“Diamond Mind”) against 32-year-old “baseball operations assistant” Brian O’Halloran.

“It was basically a computer version of Strat-O-Matic,” said O’Halloran.

In a light moment, Epstein told Francona he could have the job if he consistently beat O’Halloran. Francona knew Theo wasn’t serious, but the comment encouraged Francona to bend the rules in the pretend baseball games.

O’Halloran had worked as an unpaid intern under Epstein in San Diego. He had graduated from Colby, had an MBA from UCLA, and spoke fluent Russian, but he did not play baseball after high school.

Alone in the office shared by Josh Byrnes and Jed Hoyer, Francona and O’Halloran sat side by side in front of a computer and started a three-game series between the 2003 Red Sox and the 2003 A’s. O’Halloran managed the Sox. Francona took the A’s. O’Halloran manipulated the controls, following Francona’s instructions when it was time for the A’s “manager” to make decisions. O’Halloran’s Red Sox routed the A’s, 6–1, in Game 1. When the Sox went out to an early lead off Barry Zito in Game, 2, Francona went to his imaginary bullpen and summoned Rich Harden.

“You know that’s your Game 3 starter, right?” said O’Halloran.

“I’ve got to win this fucking game,” said the suddenly engaged Francona.

Francona’s A’s rallied to win Game 2. Using Ted Lilly as a substitute starter, Francona won Game 3 and copped the series.

When they asked him what he would have done in the Grady-Pedro situation, he joked and said he’d have taken Pedro out, but he didn’t really feel that way. A lot of managers would have done what Grady Little did, including Francona and Bobby Valentine, the man who would ultimately succeed Francona. (Valentine, then the ex-manager of the Mets, got a little airtime when he claimed he’d been informally interviewed by Lucchino and took himself out of the running by admitting he’d have done the exact same thing as Grady Little.)

Epstein involved everyone in the process, including veteran Bill Lajoie, a “special assistant” who had been general manager of the Detroit Tigers. The Lajoie-Francona interview did not go well.

“It was over the phone, and he was hammering me about the way I’d handled pitching, and it kind of aggravated me,” said Francona. “I called him back and gave him a list of names. I asked him if he knew the names, and he said, ‘Some of ’em.’ And I said, ‘Well, that was my fucking bullpen. You don’t even know who they are, and you’re questioning how I use them.’”

Speaking with the Sox regularly while still not officially an employee was somewhat uncomfortable for Francona. He was still a member of the Oakland A’s coaching staff, but he was unofficially working for the Red Sox. The Sox asked about Schilling, who was considering waiving his no-trade clause for a chance to pitch for the Red Sox. They asked about free agent Foulke, who had led the American League with 43 saves for the A’s in 2003. Francona was conflicted. He didn’t want the Red Sox to sign Foulke if he was going back to be Macha’s bench coach in Oakland.

In mid-November, he spoke to Epstein.

“Am I going to get this job here or what?” he asked, half-joking.

“Hang in there, you’ll be fine,” said Theo.

By the fourth week of November, Francona was comfortable enough about his chances to tell the
Globe
’s Gordon Edes, “I think they’re going to name me manager. I believe that. I hope they do, but I don’t think it will be tomorrow.”

The day after making those comments, he returned to Boston, yet again, this time for a physical with Sox team physician Dr. Bill Morgan. Epstein told him not to bring a sport coat. There wasn’t going to be any announcement of his hiring, not on this trip.

There wasn’t much of a physical either.

“I loved Dr. Morgan,” said Francona. “He had me put my arms out, then he pushed down on my hands to see how much resistance I had. I guess I did okay, because after he did that he said, ‘You’re good,’ and that was it.”

Francona also went to meet with Henry at the owner’s mansion in Fort Lauderdale. Henry wasn’t spending much time in Boston in the off-season of 2003–2004, but he wasn’t about to make this important hire without meeting Epstein’s favorite candidate. Francona flew into West Palm Beach, where the Sox had arranged for a car service to take him to Henry’s estate.

Nervous about the interview—Epstein warned him that Henry was soft-spoken and sometimes quiet around new people—Francona chuckled when the Town Car passed the Palm Beach International Polo Club on the way to Henry’s estate. Francona’s mind flashed back to a charity event in the 1980s when he’d been reprimanded along with Expos teammates Larry Parrish and Tim Wallach. Part of a charity tennis tournament during spring training, the three young players offended club officials by betting on one another’s croquet strokes. Two decades later, he was on his way to a job interview with a man who lived near the stodgy club. He felt a little like Groucho Marx, who famously said he would never want to belong to any club that would have him as a member.

Francona’s anxiety increased when the car went through not one but two security gates on the Henry property. When he finally got inside Henry’s home, he was seated in a front room with a lot of windows, then waited nervously for almost an hour. He was all alone except for the servant who brought him an iced tea and told him that Mr. Henry would be right down.

Francona kept checking the crib sheet in his pocket. He wanted to be prepared. But he kept thinking,
What’s up with this guy? Is this some kind of test?

Finally, Henry came into the room, looking typically frail and pale, and he was also hunched over. Henry explained that he’d recently suffered a back injury.

The conversation was brief. Ten minutes. Francona didn’t know what to make of it. He wondered if he’d offended Henry. Then, as Henry was walking Francona to the car, he almost committed a major faux pas. Henry’s six-year-old daughter ran up to the two men, and Francona started to say, “What a cute grandchild,” then caught himself. He was no longer the young wiseguy who got admonished at the Palm Beach International Polo Club. In a quarter-century of professional ball, he’d learned never to ask a dome-bellied young woman, “When’s the baby due?” So he held back on the “granddaughter” compliment, perhaps changing the course of Red Sox history.

Still, he wondered why the interview was so brief.

“I wasn’t sure if he was hurt or if I offended him, but Theo called me later and said, ‘I heard it went great.’” Henry later told people it was the single best interview he’d ever had in baseball.

Francona had cleared every hurdle, but the announcement was still on hold while Theo attended to the matter of bringing Schilling to Boston.

The Red Sox did not hire Francona as their 44th manager in order to lure Schilling to Boston. It doesn’t work that way. A manager is too important to the overall well-being of a franchise. It’s not like college basketball where a school might hire a coach if said coach can induce a once-in-a-lifetime recruit to come with him to study and play. This happened to Holy Cross College in the mid-1960s when the small Catholic institution hired Power Memorial High School coach Jack Donahue, hoping that Donahue could convince his star center—Lewis Alcindor—to follow him to Worcester. It never happened, of course. Donahue went to Holy Cross, where he never won an NCAA tournament game, and Alcindor went to UCLA, where he won three national championships for John Wooden and the Bruins.

By late November 2003, Henry, Lucchino, and Epstein all knew they wanted Francona to be their manager, and having him waiting in the wings certainly did not hurt their chances of getting Schilling to agree to a trade to Boston. Schilling, a World Series co-MVP with Arizona in 2001, had veto power over any trade, and when the Diamondbacks were looking to deal him, the big righty at first said he would only accept a deal to the Yankees or the Phillies. Schilling didn’t know that Epstein was already working on a deal with D-Backs general manager Joe Garagiola.

Epstein told Schilling that Terry Francona was going to be the Red Sox manager. He also wrote (with Lucchino) a letter to Curt and Shonda Schilling.

“There is no other place in baseball where you can have as great an impact on a franchise, as great an impact on a region, as great an impact on baseball history, as you can in Boston,” wrote the Sox executives. “. . . The players who help deliver a title to Red Sox Nation will never be forgotten, their place in baseball history forever secure.”

It worked. Schilling immediately started lobbying for Francona to get the Sox job.

On November 24, the day Selig gave Schilling a 72-hour window in which he could waive his no-trade clause and come to terms with the Red Sox, Schilling responded to a media question about the possibility of coming to Boston by saying, “Terry is a huge part of this. Terry is the number-one attraction there for me. If he’s not the manager there, my interest in going to Boston would diminish drastically. I love playing for him, I enjoyed playing for him. I knew where I stood with him when I walked through the door. He didn’t get dealt a full deck when he was in Philadelphia. He’s up there with the people I played for in terms of the respect factor. That will play a big part in my decision.”

Aware of how his remarks would be interpreted, Schilling said, “People are going to put a real bad spin on this. I only made myself available [for a trade to Boston] when I understood Terry was the number-one candidate there after a lot of interviews. It would be disrespectful to insinuate otherwise that I’m the reason he was going to get the job.”

The next day Epstein and Hoyer flew to Arizona to court Schilling. Lucchino also made an appearance, arriving from San Diego the day before Thanksgiving. Schilling and his wife were impressed with the Sox presentation and invited Epstein and Hoyer to Thanksgiving at their home in Paradise Valley. (Lucchino went back to his family in California.) The day after Thanksgiving, the day of the commissioner’s deadline, Schilling agreed to a three-year, $37.5 million deal with the Red Sox and announced to the world, “I guess I hate the Yankees now.”

“I think Schill was trying to help,” Francona said later. “But then it came out that the reason I got my job was because of Schill. I don’t think that’s true. I was pretty deep into the process. They weren’t interviewing any more people. But I really didn’t care what people thought.”

“Schill couldn’t have been stronger with his praise for Tito,” said Epstein. “With Schill’s personality, I think he thought,
Hey, they want me so bad they’ll hire this manager just to get me,
but the reality is that it was done.”

Early in the next week, as November turned to December, Francona got the call he’d been hoping for.

“I was at my daughter’s volleyball practice, in a car, freezing my ass off,” he remembered. “Theo had told me Larry was going to call and for me to act all surprised. So Larry called and said, ‘We’d like you to be the manager.’ I said, ‘Great,’ and he said, ‘We’ll pay you just over a million for two years.’ I asked if he was serious about the money, and he said, ‘Yes, take it or leave it, because if you don’t want it, we’ll get somebody else.’ I said I’d have to think about it.”

The hard-line contract offer was typical of Lucchino, ever-mindful of demonstrating that he was the boss. Epstein understood this, but Francona was just beginning to learn. Francona called Epstein to complain about the proposed salary. By major league standards, it was terrible. Epstein said he understood and bumped Francona to three years for a total of $1.55 million.

This is how things would work for the next eight years. Francona would register his complaints to ownership through Epstein. Theo would be the man in the middle, right up until the day Francona was fired.

On Thursday, December 4, six days after the Schilling announcement, Francona was introduced to the Boston media as the new manager of the Red Sox. The first question he was asked was about Manny Ramirez not running out ground balls.

He handled the queries with ease, even when WBZ’s ubiquitous Jonny Miller asked if every Sox manager was just a man waiting to be fired.

“Think about it for a second,” Francona said. “I’ve been released from six teams. I’ve been fired as a manager. I’ve got no hair. I’ve got a nose that’s three times too big for my face, and I grew up in a major league clubhouse. My skin’s pretty thick. I’ll be okay. . . . This is the most exciting day of my baseball life.”

When the press conference was over, Francona and Epstein retreated to the baseball operations offices on Fenway’s third floor.

“What do you want to do now?” asked Epstein.

“I’d like to make some phone calls,” said Francona.

They set him up in a tiny office, and the new manager started dialing. His first call was to Dallas Williams, who had been a coach with the Red Sox in 2003. Williams was one of Francona’s best friends, but the Sox brass had informed Francona that Williams would not be part of the coaching staff in 2004. It was a tough phone call for Francona, but he knew it was always better to let people know so they could start making other plans.