Francona: The Red Sox Years (22 page)

So long, cheesesteak-eaters. The Philly mob couldn’t hurt him anymore. It was a nice way to start the 2005 baseball season.

His roster was significantly altered when he reported to the Sox minor league complex for the arrival of pitchers and catchers. Roberts had asked to be traded (he wanted more playing time) and was dealt to San Diego. Free agent Kapler signed to play in Japan. Pokey Reese went to the Mariners. Boston traded Mientkiewicz to the Mets for Ian Bladergroen. The Sox made no effort to sign playoff hero Lowe, and the veteran sinkerballer signed a four-year, $36 million-a-year contract with the Dodgers. Similarly, the Sox let free agent Cabrera walk to the Angels without putting up any resistance.

Fans always wondered about the Sox reluctance to re-sign Cabrera. He’d done everything the club asked and came up big in the big moments. His departure was without ceremony. Cabrera never got into any trouble and always seemed to wind up playing for a team that was in the playoffs. After the Sox let him go, Cabrera played with eight teams over the next seven seasons.

With Cabrera, Roberts, and Mientkiewicz all gone by spring training, the Sox had no players left from Theo’s flurry of bold moves at the 2004 trading deadline. Nomar was gone, and all the Sox had to show for it was a World Championship. To replace Cabrera, Theo signed free agent Cardinal shortstop Edgar Renteria to a four-year, $40 million contract. It seemed like a big commitment given that the Sox had a superstar shortstop down on the farm who was almost ready: Hanley Ramirez.

The loudest loss was Pedro Martinez. Pedro compiled a 117–37 won-loss record in seven seasons with the Red Sox. He changed the culture in the stands and on the streets outside Fenway. Martinez’s starts brought Dominican flags, salsa music, and people of color to Fenway Park. Pedro also nicely bridged the star gap from Roger Clemens and Mo Vaughn to Curt Schilling and David Ortiz.

The Pedro negotiations were sticky. The proud Dominican righty wanted a contract that would pay him as much as Schilling (between $12.5 million and $13 million per year), and he wanted four years. The Sox thought they had Pedro locked up when they increased their initial offer to $40.5 million over three years, but Met GM Omar Minaya topped Boston with a four-year, $54 million package. Pedro, a man who equates money with respect, didn’t have to think twice about his decision.

Francona loved Martinez’s talent and understood his iconic position in Boston, but wondered about his durability.

“I worried about his staying healthy over the length of that contract,” said Francona. “He was throwing lower and lower.”

Through the decades in Boston, it was common to pay players for what they had done, not for what they were going to do. Signing Pedro for four years would have been a classic example of paying royally for past performance. Epstein agreed with his manager.

There was another back story that figured in the Martinez negotiations. Lucchino is a big-picture thinker and likes superstars. He was always okay with special treatment for special talent. When old-school thinkers would make a case that the special treatment was bad for team morale, Lucchino would say, “This isn’t fucking high school baseball.”

In December 2004, Lucchino and Henry flew to the Dominican Republic and met with Martinez. They came back from the island uncertain about Pedro’s desire to remain in Boston. Lucchino wanted to go the extra mile to keep Pedro, but he did not push Theo. The mentor and the protégé were starting their third season as CEO and GM of the Red Sox, and the two were increasingly suspicious of one another. Lucchino knew Theo had the ear of Henry. He also knew that Martinez had made life difficult for his manager throughout the championship season.

Had Pedro won a couple of Cy Youngs and pitched the full four years in New York, it would have been rough on Epstein and Francona, but none of that happened. Martinez broke down and averaged eight wins per season over his four-year deal with the Mets. In the third year of the contract he went 3–1, and in his final Met season Pedro was 5–6 with a 5.61 ERA. He finished his career with the Phillies in 2009. The Mets won nothing and teetered toward financial ruin as Pedro went home to the Dominican Republic and waited for a call from Cooperstown. He would occasionally talk about making a comeback, but few took him seriously.

The remarkable stability and good health of the 2004 Red Sox starting rotation is one of the underplayed stories of that magical season. Martinez, Lowe, Schilling, Tim Wakefield, and Bronson Arroyo made 157 of 162 starts, a feat that is unlikely to be duplicated. Starting pitchers get hurt and wind up on the disabled list. It is a baseball certainty. But the Sox had the same rotation for six full months—which was all the more shocking considering the fragility of aging star hurlers Schilling and Martinez.

Epstein and Francona would spend seven seasons together after 2004, but never again benefit from five healthy starters over a full 162-game season.

In the winter of 2004–2005, the Sox spent considerable time and energy pursuing pitchers Brad Radke (Twins) and Tim Hudson (A’s), but came away with neither. They even flirted with bringing back Carl Pavano, a long-ago Sox prospect who was sent to Montreal in the Dan Duquette deal that brought Pedro to Boston in 1998.

None of the deals materialized and within a week of Pedro’s departure to the Mets, they’d replaced Martinez and Lowe in the pitching rotation with David Wells (two years, $8 million) and Matt Clement (three years, $25.5 million).

“Boomer” Wells was an interesting character. A certified strike-machine with a perfect left-handed motion, he was a large man with a large belly and a larger personality. He was the guy who wrote a book about his life in baseball and bragged about being drunk on the day he pitched his perfect game. He’d alternately charmed and enraged fans, teammates, and management when he pitched for the Yankees. He went 68–28 with the Bronx Bombers, an astounding winning percentage of .708. Bud Selig had Wells’s cell-phone number on speed-dial. Everyone loved Wells’s talent, but he was 41 years old and the Red Sox were his eighth team. He could be a manager-killer. He ripped Joe Torre and Yankee pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre on his way out of New York, but was known to be a favorite of Steinbrenner. His free spirit seemed more in keeping with the Red Sox Idiot Culture of 2004 than with the new (buttoned-down, professional) direction Theo and Tito were trying to follow.

Francona was surprised when he heard that the Sox signed Clement. At the winter meetings in Dallas, it was generally agreed that the Sox would not pursue the tall free agent righty. Leaving the meetings, Francona encountered Cleveland GM Mark Shapiro, and the two talked about Clement.

“I heard you guys are interested,” said Shapiro.

“I don’t think he’s on our radar,” said Francona. “Good luck signing him.”

When Francona’s plane landed, he got the news that the Sox had signed Clement. He called Shapiro to apologize.

Neither signing worked out as well as hoped. The bald, bawdy Wells blended nicely with the returning Idiots from 2004 and never lost his ability to throw strikes, but he was near the end of his career and wound up nearly challenging Francona to a fistfight after he was lifted from a playoff game. Clement pitched well enough to make the 2005 All-Star team, but got hurt and never lived up to expectations.

The Red Sox scene in Fort Myers in 2005 was an absolute circus.

“Everywhere we went, people were bowing and shit,” Francona recalled.

Millar showed up somewhat heavier and spent a lot of time talking about Jack Daniels and shocking the world. The Red Sox had become a third major league team for the New York market. Gotham media outlets planted a flag at the Sox minor league complex, and there were daily questions about Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees. Schilling, Arroyo, and others took turns piling on A-Rod. Nixon called Rodriguez a “clown.” Damon, Millar, Mirabelli, Wakefield, and Varitek appeared in a club-sanctioned Bravo broadcast of
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
Stephen King made the drive down from his Sarasota spring home and basked in the glow of his Sox best-seller until bullpen coach Bill Haselman told him to stay away from the manager, who did not appreciate being called “Frank Coma” in King’s tome. Autograph seekers swarmed the Sox training site, and it was hard not to notice the absurdity of it all when folks witnessed a man standing ten-deep in a roped-off crowd, holding a sign that read,
SON WHO HAS CEREBRAL PALSY WANTS AUTOGRAPH, PLEASE
.

Francona was not immune to distraction. Listeners of WEEI sports radio back in Boston were treated to the sound of the manager’s car being struck from behind when Francona fulfilled his radio obligation while driving on the cluttered roads of Fort Myers.

One of the spring highlights was young Jonathan Papelbon’s memorable performance on the east coast of Florida against the Orioles. A big goofy righty from Mississippi, Papelbon’s first mistake was thinking the Sox team bus was going to swing by the Sox minor league complex to give him a ride to the Orioles spring site in Fort Lauderdale. He wound up traveling across the state in a van with several veterans, including Nixon, who spent most of the ride telling him that Francona hated rookies. When the van arrived late at the Orioles park, the veterans told Papelbon to report to the manager.

“Mr. Francona, do you need to see me?” Papelbon said as he poked his head in the door.

“No, dumb-ass,” said Francona. “But I need to see you pitch. And how’d you miss the bus?”

All was forgiven a few hours later when Papelbon took it upon himself to buzz Sammy Sosa after one of the Oriole pitchers hit one of the Red Sox batters. The kid did it on his own, and that impressed the manager.

The Sox interrupted spring training in early March and made the obligatory trip to the White House. Manny skipped the trip, and Theo avoided the team photo with President Bush, opting to sit in the crowd with Larry Lucchino’s wife Stacey. Ever-curious and mischievous, Francona was thrilled when one of the White House operatives showed him the door to the Monica Lewinsky pantry.

“I had a lot of concerns going into spring training,” said the manager. “I was worried for good reason because I was tired. I’m the one supposed to keep track of these guys, and I’d been getting pulled in a million directions. I think I actually made more money that winter than I did managing, but I shouldn’t have done that. It was shortsighted on my part. I was worn out, going all over the place. Dr. Charles Steinberg and all those guys were in heaven. They let everybody in. We had the TV show with the homosexual guys. Are you shitting me? I told our players to go ahead and have fun, but not to forget that they were baseball players. With some of the spring road games, I was asked to leave certain players behind so they could do television stuff. It got to the point where it was bothering me.
Don’t forget you’re baseball players. If you don’t get it done on the field, it doesn’t work.
I found myself so many times making excuses for players. Part of my job is to make it easy for guys to play here, but at some point I think we were sacrificing some of the things we believed in.”

The manager didn’t like the 6,000-mile side trip to Arizona at the end of spring training. Boston to Phoenix to New York seemed like a bad way to get ready for the Sunday night opener at Yankee Stadium. Ramirez, Damon, Renteria, Varitek, Millar, and Schilling were allowed to skip the trip, which made Arizona general manager Joe Garagiola Jr. as unhappy as Francona.

“We were exhausted,” said Francona. “It was a fiasco. I thought the trip was made for the wrong reasons. It didn’t put us in the best position to win.”

It was not a big deal, but it was a red flag. Ownership is in the business of spreading the brand and making money, and sometimes that goal is not consistent with the goal of the people who are trying to win the baseball games.

“That was the beginning of us starting to butt heads and me asking, ‘What are we here for?’” Francona said years later.

Francona did reap one benefit from the superfluous trip; a newfound appreciation for minor league infielder Dustin Pedroia.

In every way, Pedroia was the poster-boy Red Sox future. Listed as five-foot-nine (he is five-eight), Pedroia has spent his personal and professional life making fools of those who doubt him. To the naked eye, nothing about Pedroia makes sense. He’s too short and scrawny to be a professional athlete. He’s too loud and cocky to be an asset to any team. His swing is too violent, especially for a little guy who was never going to be a home run hitter. In high school, college, and professional baseball, Pedroia had to overcome preconceived notions.

Francona heard all about Pedroia from Theo Epstein and Sox director of scouting Jason McLeod. They made Pedroia their second-round pick (65th overall) in 2004, and when the kid showed up for work, no one could believe the Sox “wasted” a lofty selection on the Arizona State infielder who looked like a waterboy. The manager was skeptical when he first saw Pedroia in spring training in 2005. He put him into a couple of Grapefruit League games, and Pedroia was a logical candidate for the long, unnecessary trip to Arizona.

On the flight to Phoenix, Tim Wakefield engaged in some harmless, old-fashioned rookie hazing, sending Pedroia to the back of the plane to fetch beers for the veterans.

“I didn’t know how to act,” said Pedroia. “I was just out of college. I went back and got the beer and put it into two bags. But I had to go to the bathroom, so I set the bags down. When I came out of the bathroom, the beers had spilled out of the bags and were rolling around everywhere, and Wakefield started crushing me. I was young, so I started yelling back at him. I didn’t know any better. He was all over me. The next day he pitched and gave up about eight runs in the first inning, and I was saying, ‘That’s what you get for making fun of me and crushing me in front of the whole team.’”

Francona loved Pedroia’s reaction to the hazing.

“It made me think we may have something with this kid,” said the manager.

Unfortunately, he had more pressing matters on his mind as the Sox played their exhibitions in Arizona. Francona knew his pitching staff was not ready for a title defense.