Francona: The Red Sox Years (16 page)

Remembering that his shortstop would not be available for the series finale, Francona’s mind flashed to his first impressions of 20-year-old Nomar a decade earlier in the Arizona Fall League:

“He was an off-the-charts good kid. Michael Jordan loved him. We all loved him. In those days, the Fall League went into December, and Nomar hand-delivered Christmas cards to everybody. Nobody does that. That’s good manners. He was polite and asked the best questions of any kid I’d been around. He was hungry to be good. I remember getting a visit from Red Sox manager Kevin Kennedy and his coach Tim Johnson. They wanted an update on their first-round pick, so they stopped by and had a few beers in my office. They asked me if I thought Nomar could make a switch to second base. I told them, ‘I don’t know who the fuck your shortstop is, but move that guy to second! Just let this kid play short. He throws on the run sometimes, so you need to have a first baseman who can catch it, but you want Nomar to be your shortstop. This kid can play!’”

It was good advice. In 1997, still playing shortstop, Garciaparra won the American League Rookie of the Year Award, hitting .306. Two years later—a year in which the Sox played the Yankees in the American League Championship Series—Garciaparra won the AL batting title with a .357 average. In 2000 he hit an astonishing .372 and became the first right-handed batter to win back-to-back batting titles in the American League since Joe DiMaggio.

The DiMaggio comparison was not a stretch, not in the early years. Nomar wore number 5, just like Joe D. Ted Williams was fond of saying how much Nomar reminded him of DiMaggio. Even Joe’s brother, Dominic DiMaggio, a former Sox center fielder, got on board with the comparison.

Those were heady days for Garciaparra in Boston. After Roger Clemens and Mo Vaughn . . . before Pedro Martinez and Manny Ramirez . . . Nomar was the face of the Sox franchise. Nationally, he was part of a “who is the best shortstop?” debate, posing for magazine covers with A-Rod and Jeter. Red Sox and Yankee fans enjoyed the Garciaparra-Jeter argument, just as they’d debated the merits of Teddy Ballgame versus Joe D, and Carlton Fisk versus Thurman Munson. Even Nomar’s name was fun. A
Saturday Night Live
parody poked fun at New Englanders’ pronunciation of “No-maaaaah.”

In 2001 Garciaparra ruptured a tendon in his right wrist in the spring, underwent major surgery, and played in only 21 games. He was never the same player when he came back. The ball no longer jumped off his bat. He went from Hall of Fame–bound to being just a very good, injury-prone player. As his skills diminished, it became increasingly difficult for him to stay out of the trainer’s room.

What didn’t change was his maniacal series of routines. All baseball players are superstitious, but Garciaparra took it to a new level. When he stood in the batter’s box, fans would see a series of toe taps and batting-glove tugs before every pitch. New England Little Leaguers easily mimed his motions. Kids paying close attention might also have noticed that Nomar put two feet on every dugout step every time he went on and off the field. It was like watching a two-year-old climb stairs.

There was much more. Garciaparra became a virtual prisoner of his routines, and it was sometimes hard for the rest of the people in the clubhouse to be around him.

Garciaparra loved the fans and they loved him back, but he didn’t appreciate attention away from the park. Boston was far removed from his southern California home in every way. Nomar grew up in an environment where baseball players went unnoticed at restaurants and in crosswalks. It was never like that in Boston, and Garciaparra did not understand why baseball was so important. He particularly loathed the Boston media. It was Nomar who got the Sox to embed a red line in the clubhouse carpet—a line in front of players’ lockers that could not be crossed by reporters. He had little use for the “new” Sox ownership, which had failed to extend his contract, then tried to trade him. He was also involved in a one-man licensing dispute with Major League Baseball. Nomar was the only player in the big leagues who objected to the MLB logo on the back of his helmet. He was fined for removing the logo. After he reluctantly agreed to allow the logo on his helmet, he smudged it with pine tar so that it was unrecognizable. Then he was fined again.

“He was just Bostoned-out,” said Francona. “I told him that. Things that didn’t used to bother him seemed to be bothering him at that point.”

The final night in New York in July ’04 was one of the better regular-season games of any season. It looked like a Red Sox victory when Manny Ramirez broke a 3–3 tie with a solo homer in the top of the 13th, but the Yankees rallied for a pair of runs after Sox reliever Curtis Leskanic retired the first two Yankees in the bottom of the inning. When the four-hour-and-20-minute epic ended, Boss Steinbrenner issued an official statement, declaring, “This was the most exciting game I have ever seen in all of sports.”

It wasn’t received with the same glee in New England, largely owing to the appearance of Nomar sitting on the pine while managers in both dugouts emptied their benches over the course of 13 innings. Francona used a five-man infield (lefty outfielder Dave McCarty playing second base) to get out of a jam in the 12th. Kevin Millar played third base, first base, and left field in the same inning. Torre used every player on his bench. The highlight came when Jeter dove into the stands behind third base, snaring a foul pop by Trot Nixon. Jeter walked back from the play holding the ball aloft, blood pouring from his chin. He was taken to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital for stitches and X-rays. While all this was going on, Nomar sat. In one damning TV shot, Garciaparra could be seen in the background, sitting, while most of his teammates were on the top step of the dugout, supporting a Sox rally. The image was devastating.

“He wasn’t supposed to be in the lineup,” Francona recalled. “We had an arrangement. When he came back from the Achilles injury, it was real obvious he couldn’t play every day. And I told the media that. He’d play two out of three, and it had to stay that way regardless of who we were playing. I checked with him that night because I knew he was going to get crushed by the media. So I went to him. He was in the whirlpool, and I wanted to get across to him that I wished he would play. The way we were playing, I thought people were going to start taking shots at him, and I didn’t want them to. When you start looking at people’s injuries, it’s really difficult. It wasn’t that I was mad at him. The weird part was, when he started getting loose in the 12th inning, I was stuck. I was confused. He was down in the tunnel kind of loosening up, and he said, ‘I’m getting ready.’ I was like,
What do I do now?
On a long night when a guy is unavailable for four hours, it puts the manager in a tough situation when he’s suddenly available and it’s the 12th inning.

“The next day in Atlanta I told him, ‘Maybe it’s time for you to move on.’ I asked if he had thought about that, and he said he had. I wasn’t telling him that I didn’t think he could play or that I didn’t like him, but I was telling him that maybe it was time for him to move on. He had a lot going on. Obviously there were feathers that were ruffled. Thankfully, I wasn’t part of that. We didn’t ever bump heads, but it was obvious he wasn’t happy, and that puts a strain on your team.”

The strain was all over the 2004 Red Sox. Epstein had not planned on going to Atlanta for the next series, but changed his mind and went south to check on his team. He wanted to talk to Nomar and would reluctantly answer questions from the media. Most of all, he wanted to talk to his manager.

“It’s really uncomfortable to be the GM and have the team go off the rails when you’re not there,” said Epstein. “That was the meat of the three-month stretch where this great team was playing .500 baseball and was playing really soft and was letting bad defense and mental mistakes sabotage game after game after game. We weren’t a good outfit at that time. We weren’t playing the game the right way, and it was tough to watch. People were getting pretty upset, and we all thought we were wasting this great opportunity with this great team. So I flew to Atlanta in part to answer questions about Nomar and calm that whole thing down and pat Nomar on the butt and try to stabilize things, but I really wanted to talk to Tito. I felt like he needed some support and that he was on the verge of letting the outside storm—which he was usually good at insulating himself and the team from—he was on the verge of letting it get the better of him. He wasn’t being himself.”

It was their first formal closed-door meeting dealing with an uncomfortable topic.

“Tito, you’re not yourself,” started the GM. “Remember what we talked about when you had your interview? Remember everything you said you stood for in the interview? Everything that’s important to you? The type of leadership you said you could pull off? How you said you would handle situations and deal with the media and interact? Well, that was only six months ago, and there’s a lot going on now. There’s a storm going on, and the wolves are circling. Let’s make sure we do this our way. We only get one chance to do this. All the things you said? That’s the guy we hired. Go be that guy. Don’t worry about what happened in this one game, or what this one player is doing, or what somebody wrote. Be that guy you were in the interview. That’s what this team needs, and that’s who we hired, and we need to be able to look in the mirror and know that we did it our way.”

Francona was a little surprised. He didn’t sense any urgency.

“Theo, I don’t even know what people are writing or care,” he responded. “Fuck, I know we’re not playing great, but I believe in all the things I said, and we’re gonna fight through this. That’s the only way I know how to do it. We’re okay. I believe in myself. What I told you in that interview, that’s what’s happening here. Our clubhouse is fine. Guys aren’t complaining. We’re spinning our wheels a little bit, but we’re going to be fine.”

Years later, Francona said, “I know Larry was worried and sent Theo down. And I know John was worried about me at that time. But there was nothing any different really going on. I knew we weren’t playing great, but I didn’t think we were panicked. When you go to New York and have a 13-inning loss, it exaggerates things. Those games were on television, and sometimes people tend to think that the games they see are the only ones going on. I never really knew what Larry and Theo were worried about there. Maybe I was naive, but I didn’t think it was as big a deal as they did. It probably flew over my head. I didn’t feel any different before or after Theo came down. The reality for us is that we wake up the next day and we’ve got another game. That’s baseball. You do the same things the same way every day, and I never thought we got away from that.”

In the first game after the Yankee Stadium debacle, Nomar was back in the lineup and managed to get three hits in another Red Sox loss. Theo thought his manager looked fine. The GM was comfortable with what he heard and saw from his manager.

The Red Sox were 48–39, eight games behind the Yankees, at the All-Star break. On the morning of the final game before the break, Manny said he couldn’t play. He said his left hamstring was sore. Everybody knew the real reason. Pedro had been allowed to go home to the Dominican Republic a couple of days before the break. Sitting out the final game gave Manny his own little vacation.

It was always the hamstrings with Manny. It was the perfect ruse. A sore hamstring doesn’t show up on X-rays. There’s no bruising. For an elite athlete looking for a day off, it’s the equivalent of “Not tonight, honey, I have a headache.” It’s impossible to prove or disprove.

While Pedro kicked back under a mango tree in the DR, Manny went to Houston with Schilling and Ortiz for the All-Star Game. When the Sox gathered in Anaheim for the second half of their season, Francona had Manny in the lineup for the first game of the series, but Manny said he could only serve as designated hitter. Manny had homered in the All-Star Game. This was another Manny test for the manager. Francona stood up to his slugger when the team moved on to Seattle. He told Manny he’d only put him in the lineup if he was well enough to play left field.

“Spending time with stuff like that is draining,” said the manager.

Then came the game that took on a life of its own. Red Sox 11, Yankees 10. Varitek 1, A-Rod 0.

It unfolded on the weekend of July 23–25 (Nomar’s 31st birthday was July 23), the eve of the Democratic National Convention, which was held in Boston.

The Yankees won the series opener Friday night, and it rained hard overnight, casting doubt about the field’s readiness when everyone returned to the ballpark Saturday morning for a nationally televised game scheduled to start at 3:15. Four hours before the game, Henry, Lucchino, and Epstein met with Nomar and his agent, Arn Tellem. Garciaparra expressed his unhappiness with everything related to Boston and the Red Sox.

Francona was not at the meeting. He was worried about the field. He knew Sox officials and television officials would want the game to start on time, and he prepared for Lucchino’s “Doppler weather” visit. Routinely, the decision to play is made by the home team, then becomes the domain of the umpires once the first pitch is thrown. Before the inevitable visit from Lucchino, Francona inspected the field with Torre, Sox chief operating officer Mike Dee, and Fenway groundskeeper Dave Mellor. The outfield was swampy, and there were puddles on the warning track. Dee, the managers, and the groundskeeper agreed that the field was unplayable. Torre went back to his clubhouse. Still standing in the outfield, Francona took a call from Epstein.

“You need to come back to your office now,” said Epstein. “There’s a mutiny here. The players want to play.”

Francona and Dee went back to the Sox clubhouse and found Epstein, Henry, Lucchino, Varitek, and Millar waiting in the manager’s office. The players wanted to play the game. Pedro even volunteered to come in as a relief specialist. It didn’t make the field playable, but it was a good sign that the Sox wanted to get back out there. Francona agreed. The game would be played.

“Somebody better tell Joe,” Dee told the Sox manager.