Francona: The Red Sox Years (21 page)
Read Francona: The Red Sox Years Online
Authors: Terry Francona,Dan Shaughnessy
Getty Images / Patrick Murphy-Racey
AP Photo / Chris Gardner
AP Photo / Winslow Townson
Brita Meng Outzen
Getty Images / Jed Jacobsohn
AP Photo / Amy Sancetta
Getty Images / Boston Globe / Stan Grossfeld
Getty Images / Ezra Shaw
AP Photo / Charles Krupa
small issue with Sox brass in the moments before the parade.
Getty Images / Boston Globe
CHAPTER 8
“Everywhere we went, people were bowing and shit”
T
HE WINTER WENT BY
too quickly. A once-in-a-lifetime season that almost stretched into November gave way to a short off-season peppered with celebrations and speaking engagements. Francona said yes to just about everyone and found himself flying from banquet to banquet, spreading the gospel of the great comeback against the Yankees and the first World Series win for Boston in eight and a half decades.
“When I spoke in Boston, all I had to do was speak about the parade part, and they loved it,” he said. “It didn’t matter what I said. They’d all laugh. In other parts of the country I had to explain more. Everybody wanted to know about the identity of the Idiots. ‘What are they really like?’ I told them that what you see is what you got.
“It wore me out a little. I was still living at our home in Pennsylvania. There was one day when I went to Las Vegas and spoke, then I flew to Boston the next day and spoke. After I spoke in Boston, I jumped on a private jet, flew to San Juan, spoke that night, then got on a private jet and flew back to Boston and spoke the next morning. It was four speeches in three days.”
Francona got another taste of leftover champagne in the latter stages of his annual drive from Yardley, Pennsylvania, to the Gulf coast of Florida.
Steering south on I-95 in early February 2005, the manager of the World Champion Red Sox noticed a massive SUV with Pennsylvania plates, heading north. Green flags flapping, decals shining, the vehicle was festooned in Philadelphia Eagles logos. Francona nodded and kept driving. A few miles farther south, he saw another widebody Eagles chariot. Then another. Suddenly, it dawned on him. Eagles fans were driving home from Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville—a 24–21 loss to Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and the New England Patriots.
This made him smile. He had a World Series ring. He’d just wrapped up an off-season of handshakes and paychecks. He was working in a town of multiple winners, no longer answering to the angry cynics of Philadelphia. Seeing more Eagles fans coming toward him, he started flashing his middle finger and honking his horn as he passed. Somewhere in that caravan perhaps was the guy who’d slashed his tires outside the Vet.