Francona: The Red Sox Years (35 page)

“Jack only got mad at me once in eight years,” said Francona. “We were playing cards on the plane and we had our table out in the middle of the aisle, and he didn’t see it and he tripped and went face first onto the carpet, and I laughed. He gave me a look, and that was the end of that. I stopped laughing and never had an uncomfortable moment with him again.”

McCormick was unusually fit for a 64-year-old man. He had run the Boston Marathon 17 times.

The road rule of thumb for player tickets is six per player per game—four for family and two for guests. Players who need additional tickets are welcome to dip into the allotment of players who are not using their tickets or make a purchase. Four hours before big league games, it’s common to hear major league ballplayers yelling across the room to teammates, asking, “Are you using your tickets?”

Manny was in no mood for asking teammates for tickets on June 28 when he approached McCormick.

“Jack, I need 16 tickets for tonight,” said Ramirez.

“Okay, Manny. Just borrow them from your teammates and I’ll put them into the computer.”

“No, just do it,” said Manny.

“Manny, you know how it works,” said McCormick. “I can get them, but you have to ask the guys and I’ll take care of it.”

Louder and more angry, Manny insisted, “Just do it.”

Sensing that this was not going well, the six-foot-tall McCormick stood up and faced Ramirez, eyeball to eyeball.

“Manny . . .” he started.

There was no more discussion. Ramirez pushed McCormick violently, and the traveling secretary fell back onto a spring water jug that was on the floor by the entrance to the players’ lounge.

“Just do your job and get my tickets!” Manny yelled as he stood over the fallen club executive.

Farrell, Papelbon, Youkilis, and Alex Cora were the first to get to the scene and push Manny away. Francona heard the ruckus from his office and came out.

“It took me a few seconds to realize that this wasn’t in fun,” Francona said. “There were not a lot of guys around when I got out there, and I saw Jack leaning against a table, kind of dazed. I grabbed Manny and said, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I was hoping he wasn’t going to hit me.”

Francona brought McCormick into his office to hear his version of events. The two met with Don Kalkstein, the Red Sox mental performance coach, who was traveling full-time with the team. After the meeting, Francona called Epstein.

“Theo, we’ve got a bad problem,” said the manager. “We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to send Manny home.”

Manny was not sent home. Ramirez was brought into a meeting with Francona and McCormick and apologized to McCormick. He started in left field the night of the incident and hit a game-winning home run a day later.

“I knew what was going on was wrong,” said Francona. “It didn’t sit well with me. I should have held my ground.”

Red Sox management had little response when the story leaked. Lucchino said it was “an internal matter.” Henry sent an email stating, “Actions have been taken commensurate with what occurred.”

“I don’t think there was any kind of effort to coddle Manny at all, by that point,” said Lucchino. “We were all upset by it. It was outrageous behavior.”

“That was so egregious,” said Epstein years later. “We were constantly walking a tightrope with Manny. We needed to maintain some discipline and some integrity because we had to manage the other 24 players, but we understood that if we asked Manny to live up to everything we expected from the other players, we wouldn’t even get past the opening series of the year. So there was this balancing act. It was a very difficult dance over the years. Tito was right in the same boat with everyone else. There were things we wanted to do over the years, but Tito and the rest of us at times had to bite our tongues and look the other way. It was so hard to do our job in a way that we could be proud of and also create an environment that would allow Manny to play and be productive. It was hardest on Tito.”

Once again, Francona had to go before the media and say things he did not believe. He had to talk about handling things internally. He had to bite his tongue, more than at any time in his tenure as Red Sox manager.

“It was one of the tougher situations for me because it went against something I knew,” he said later. “I knew it was wrong. It made it harder because it was Jack. Jack didn’t want to be the guy that got Manny suspended. He knew how things worked with the Red Sox. He saw how upset I was and told me to settle down, that he would be okay, but it was backwards. Over the years, Jack looked out for Manny as much as anybody. My patience for Manny lessened after that incident. That one really bothered me. I thought we needed to take a stance. I’d always had meetings with our veteran players about this situation, but now it was obvious they were tired of him too.”

Ramirez was fined by the team. McCormick downplayed the incident every time he was asked for a comment.

“The only thing that pissed me off about it was those newspaper reports that I was some frail, 80-year-old man,” McCormick said.

McCormick had a theory about Manny’s motive. A few days before the incident, Houston GM Ed Wade had been attacked by Astros pitcher Shawn Chacon while Wade was explaining Chacon’s demotion to the bullpen. The episode was headline news when the Sox got to Houston. In McCormick’s mind, Ramirez was trying to shove his way out of Boston.

“I don’t know that Manny thinks that far in advance,” countered Francona.

For the first time in Boston, some fans were calling for Manny to be moved.

It got worse for Ramirez in Boston a week after the McCormick episode. Pinch-hitting against Mariano Rivera in the top of the ninth of a tie game at Yankee Stadium, Manny looked at three consecutive strikes, got rung up, then sauntered back to the dugout. He never took the bat off his shoulder. The Sox lost 5–4. For a lot of Sox fans, it was the last straw. It looked like Manny had intentionally quit in the at-bat against Rivera.

“Not true,” said Francona. “It was never an issue. I believe it to this day that he was trying there. He had been in the dugout tunnel, getting ready for that at-bat. We didn’t have to drag him up there. He knew Rivera enough, he knew what he could hit and what he couldn’t hit. He didn’t get it and he didn’t swing. Mariano painted three. I’m not going to say Manny lost sleep over it, but he was ready to hit. That was a tough one because I always stuck up for Manny, and the media probably thought I was just doing it again, but in my mind he was ready to hit. That one was never an issue.”

The Sox were still in first place, owning a 57–40 record, when Francona took a Sunday night train from Boston to New York for his second crack at managing in the All-Star Game. Waiting for him in New York was Phyllis Merhige, a Major League Baseball senior vice president who’d known Francona when he was a young ballplayer and she was director of public relations for the American League. For several decades, Merhige has been the moderator of managers’ pre- and postgame press conferences at postseason games and All-Star Games. She was the one who’d been waiting for Francona in the makeshift interview room at Fenway when fans were throwing things at him from the bleachers after the 19–8 loss in Game 3 of the 2004 American League Championship Series. Francona was a favorite of the widely respected Merhige. On the last day of games before the break, Merhige spent the day making arrangements for players and managers from all 30 teams coming to New York. She made sure Francona knew she’d postponed a hairdressing appointment while waiting for him to arrive on the train from Boston Sunday night. Unfortunately, Francona’s train was delayed and he didn’t get to New York until after midnight.

The ever-loyal Merhige was there to greet him at the midtown All-Star hotel headquarters.

“Phyllis, your hair looks like shit,” said the manager as he gave Merhige a hug.

Francona selected New York’s Joe Girardi and Detroit’s Jim Leyland as his coaches. He was honored that Leyland accepted his offer. Leyland managed in the minors when Francona played at Triple A, and the Sox manager considered Leyland the gold standard of major league managers. Francona’s favorite memory of the 2008 All-Star experience was sitting in Girardi’s office, swapping stories with Leyland and Farrell while hundreds of media members covered the workout on the Yankee Stadium diamond. Leyland wanted to know more about Pedroia (one of seven Red Sox named to the American League squad), so Francona brought his second baseman into the room to meet with the Tiger manager.

The game, an epic 15-inning joust won by the American League, was an homage to the legacy of Yankee Stadium, which was prepped for the wrecking ball at the end of the 2008 season. Forty-nine Hall of Famers paraded onto the field before the ceremonial first pitch.

“That pregame was one of the most electric moments of my career,” said Francona. “That was humbling. One of the most fun things I’ve ever done.”

During the second inning of the game, one of the Cooperstown boys—Milwaukee Brewer Robin Yount—snuck back into the first-base dugout to meet with Francona. They had been teammates at the end of Francona’s playing career in 1990. Yount had been the Brewer superstar who made sure benchwarmer Francona had a car to drive while he played for Milwaukee. All these years later, Francona was touched that the Hall of Fame shortstop took the time to find him, even if it was in the middle of an inning at the All-Star Game.

Looking at Francona, who’d been the 25th player on the roster when they were teammates, managing an All-Star team in front of 55,632 fans and 49 Hall of Famers at Yankee Stadium, Yount shook his head.

“Tito, I can’t believe it,” said the Brewer legend.

“I just can’t believe it,” Yount said again, still shaking his head.

Then again.

“Yeah, Robin, I know,” Francona said, laughing. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

The All-Star Game is traditionally difficult to manage, and the task became more challenging after the infamous tie game of 2002 when Joe Torre and Bob Brenly ran out of pitchers. The embarrassment played out at Bud Selig’s hometown yard, Miller Park in Milwaukee. The debacle inspired a rule change stipulating that the winner of the All-Star Game would give its league home-field advantage in that year’s World Series. “This time it counts” was the new slogan.

With Leyland at his side, Francona found himself in a 3–3 tie and running out of pitching in the 13th inning at Yankee Stadium. Concerned MLB officials dispatched Jimmie Lee Solomon—the vice president of MLB’s baseball operations who had been part of Francona’s “shirt-gate” episode in 2007—to ask about available pitching for upcoming innings.

“Tito, how are we looking for pitching?” Solomon asked as he approached the manager from the clubhouse tunnel leading to the dugout.

“Unless you have any pitchers with you, leave me alone and let me figure it out,” snapped Francona.

When Kansas City righty Joakim Soria walked off and waved to his family in the stands after shutting down the NL in the 11th, Francona said, “Don’t be waving to anybody just yet, big boy. You’re going back out there for the 12th.”

Pittsburgh’s Nate McLouth launched a fly to deep right to start the 14th, but J. D. Drew made the catch. Francona walked down to the end of the bench where Derek Jeter was watching.

“It wouldn’t have killed me if that ball went out,” said the manager.

Jeter looked puzzled. He knew that home field in the World Series was on the line. More than a lot of players, Jeter cared.

“Aw, I think we can win the Series on the road,” Francona said with a laugh.

He loved the fact that Jeter stuck around after he was pulled from the game. Many players left the bench, even the ballpark, when they were pulled from All-Star Games. Not Jeter. Not at Yankee Stadium. Not anywhere.

Baltimore’s George Sherrill bailed out Francona by pitching multiple innings. Against Tampa’s wishes, Rays starter Scott Kazmir came on for the 15th. Francona kept looking at his lineup card.

“You can look at that thing all you want,” said Leyland. “There’s no more pitchers on there.”

When the American League came in to hit in the bottom of the 15th, Francona talked to Drew about pitching the 16th inning, but it never came to pass. The AL won it on Michael Young’s sac fly in the bottom of the 15th at 1:38 AM.

Francona and his staff reunited with Sox players in Anaheim after the break. It would be Manny Ramirez’s final trip with the Red Sox.

Manny had switched agents and was working with Scott Boras. Like every team, the Sox were wary of Boras, but he was impossible to avoid. Boras and Manny were looking for a contract extension in the summer of ’08, and there was more controversy at the break when Manny told the
Boston Herald,
“I want to know what’s my situation. I want no more [times] where they tell you one thing and behind your back they do another thing.”

Henry termed the remarks “personally offensive.”

Manny was a handful on his final Sox trip. He hit a game-tying homer in the first game in Anaheim, but furnished a
SportsCenter
“Not Top Ten” moment when he flopped badly chasing a fly ball, then started laughing when he realized he was sitting on the baseball. Epstein was in the stands and did not look amused when he saw Manny laughing. Two days later, Manny hit an RBI double, but the Sox lost their third straight to the Angels. After the sweep, while Francona was getting dressed quickly for the trip to Seattle, McCormick popped his head into the visiting clubhouse manager’s office.

“Tito, Manny isn’t getting on the bus. He isn’t going to Seattle with us.”

“Jack, let’s go,” said Francona. “Let’s get on the plane. I’ll just call Theo and tell him Manny’s not with us.”

Dressed and packed, Francona snapped his carry-on luggage into place and wheeled it down the corridor toward the Sox team bus, which was waiting to go to the airport. He got on the bus, taking his usual seat in the second row behind the driver. He did not check to see if Manny was on the bus. It was time to go.

Manny was in the back of the bus. He made the trip, played the first two games in Seattle, then got a day off before the flight home.