Francona: The Red Sox Years (39 page)

“I think the Idiot culture can only exist for so long before it starts to create its own issues,” said Epstein in the spring of ’09. “We’ve shifted to players who play hard, care about each other, and focus on winning above everything else in a selfless manner. The more players you have like that, the more cohesive a team you’re going to have. We don’t want to be on TV for non-baseball reasons. That’s what happens when you bring in players who are focused on winning. They tend not to surround themselves with too many outside influences or distractions. . . . I think people who follow baseball like a soap opera might not appreciate the team quite as much, but in the end I think the reason people like baseball is just the game itself.”

All true. But the Red Sox television ratings were on the decline, and it would be a seismic issue that eventually affected everyone in Red Sox Nation more than any other factor. Concern over TV ratings led to the fall of the franchise.

In the spring of ’09, the Sox owners were taken to task for failing to sign free agent first baseman Mark Teixeira. Like any manager, Francona would have liked to have Teixeira, a power-laden switch-hitter, terrific fielder, hard worker, and positive influence in the clubhouse who was coming into his athletic prime.

Francona knew Teixeira from his 2002 year as the Texas bench coach. He loved the young man’s ability and work ethic. Early in the 2008–2009 negotiations, Francona and Epstein flew to Washington, DC, to court the free agent first baseman. In early December, they met in a hotel room, supplied by Boras. Francona tossed a cautionary flag at the start of the five-hour session when he reminded Teixeira to be mindful of Mike Lowell’s feelings. If Teixeira came to Boston, it would mean switching Kevin Youkilis from first base to third, and that would bump Lowell off the bag. Lowell was nearing the end of his career and no longer able to cover much ground, but Francona did not look forward to telling Lowell his time was done in Boston. Teixeira told Francona that he appreciated the manager’s honesty.

“It was an awesome meeting,” said Teixeira. “Tito was great to me when I was a young player. He helped me out and showed me how to deal with players and how to act around superstars. Guys loved him in Boston, so when he came to visit, he was great, and part of me would have loved to have played for him. Theo is obviously brilliant. The meeting with those two was one of the best meetings I’ve ever had. They did great.”

The Sox thought they had a deal with Teixeira right up until December 18, when talks deteriorated at a Texas meeting that included Teixeira, Boras, Lucchino, Henry, and Epstein.

“That meeting was a little different,” said Teixeira. “When you’re being recruited, you would hope that you’d be treated well. That didn’t happen. I was treated very poorly by Larry at dinner when they were recruiting me to sign me.”

Lucchino scoffs at the notion that his temper killed the deal and blames Epstein for perpetuating that version of events.

“It didn’t blow up in Dallas,” said the CEO. “It ended after we declined to raise our offer to match another offer. Theo at some point thought it was a mistake to ask him [Boras] where the other offers were coming from, but there was no blowup at the table. He [Boras] said we were the lowest of the five offers that he had, and I said, ‘Scott, we don’t think that’s so. If that’s so, tell us. Who are we behind? What do we need to do?’ . . . Scott wasn’t willing to tell us the other clubs. I asked, ‘Who are some of the other teams that have blown us out of the water?’ Apparently that ruffled Scott’s feathers. . . . The real issue came after, when they did nonetheless make a counteroffer and ask us about another offer, and we said we were not going to bid against ourselves.”

Werner said, “I was always under the opinion that no matter what our final offer was, Scott would go back to the Yankees and give them the right to match.”

Teixeira signed an eight-year, $180 million deal with the Yankees and won a World Series in his first season in pinstripes. The Red Sox, meanwhile, set about building a high-priced team that would fail in every aspect.

The 2009 Red Sox had hopes of getting back to the Fall Classic. The Sox were only one year removed from a World Championship and had advanced to the seventh game of the American League Championship Series in 2008. Expectations were high when fans were greeted at the turnstiles and in the stands by Francona and his ballplayers on opening day at Fenway.

In full uniform, wearing his red top, the manager stood in an aisle in the lower boxes by the Fenway home dugout and shook hands with citizens of Red Sox Nation. Ever-willing to comply with management, Francona thought greeting fans in uniform was a little over the top.

“One of the things I always thought was cool about Fenway was that we sold out every game just on baseball,” he said. “I always loved that. We never had to do the hot dog races and the presidents running around the field and all of that promotional stuff. I know we have to reach out to the fans and we are a business, but I thought it was cool that we never had to do the other stuff that teams did.”

Boston mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald threw out the ceremonial first pitch when Fenway opened in 1912. Senator Ted Kennedy, grandson of Honey Fitz, had talked about making the toss on Fenway’s 100th anniversary in 2012, but Kennedy was in failing health in 2009 and everyone knew this might be his final opportunity. The senator’s primary care physician was Sox internist Dr. Larry Ronan, and Ronan arranged for Kennedy to appear at the opener. Ronan peppered Francona with stories about the congressional lion. After Kennedy was chauffeured to the front of the first-base dugout in a golf cart driven by Jim Rice, Francona greeted him with a handshake and a hug and escorted him to a spot in front of the mound.

“That was a cool moment,” said Francona. “I was fortunate to do some pretty neat things, and that was one of them. The senator was struggling, but we didn’t want it to appear that he was struggling. I had instructions. Larry told me to stay close enough, don’t hold him up, but be there for him. We took a picture, and it’s one of the ones I kept. I’m not a political person. My dad was a Democrat, but he didn’t care much. I grew up in a household of batting averages and slugging percentages. We didn’t keep track of political polls.”

There was no chance of Francona spilling tobacco juice on Ted Kennedy. In the spring of 2009, the Sox manager temporarily quit the chew because of a $20,000 bet with Larry Lucchino.

The Sox CEO was a two-time cancer survivor and warned everyone of the pitfalls of tobacco and mouth cancer. For years Lucchino would routinely brush past Francona, point to the manager’s wadded cheek, and say, “You still using that?”

Six years into the job, Francona threw down the tobacco-stained gauntlet.

“Larry, let’s put some money on it,” said the manager. “If I’m going to do this, we need to make it worthwhile. I say we go for $20,000. If I quit for the whole season, you give $20,000 to Children’s Hospital. If I cave, I’ll write the check.”

“You’re on,” said Lucchino.

The Francona-Lucchino relationship was never wholly comfortable. Lucchino’s temper was famous, and his perpetual concern with the business and marketing of the ball club sometimes conflicted with the priorities of the manager, who was only interested in winning.

“Ever notice how Larry never says my first name?” Francona would ask people. “He always calls me ‘Francona.’”

The bet gave the two men some common ground early in the 2009 season. The abstinent Sox manager made it through spring training and into the first four weeks of the season without the wad in his cheek. But he was not good company.

“Players were saying, ‘Dude, it’s $20,000, you’re not going to make it,’” remembered Hale. “Just pay the man, cuz you ain’t going to make it!”

When Francona screamed at a NESN cameraman during a rain delay in the Fenway dugout, he knew it was time to fold.

“‘Pookie, get me some fucking Lancaster!” snapped the manager.

Later in the day, he wrote the check. Then he called Lucchino and left a three-word message: “Larry, I lost.”

Thanks, Francona.

There was a weird pattern early in the 2009 season. The Red Sox could do no wrong against the Yankees. They swept a three-game series against the Bronx Bombers in April, took three more in New York in early May, then beat the Yankees two more times at Fenway in June. It was the first time the Red Sox opened a season with eight consecutive victories against the Yankees since 1912, which was the first year of Fenway Park and two years before Babe Ruth broke into the majors as a rookie left-hander with the Red Sox.

The House That Ruth Built was vacant in 2009. The Yankees had closed down their majestic stadium and moved next door into the “new” Yankee Stadium. There was amusement in Boston when it was learned that a construction worker/Red Sox fan had buried an Ortiz jersey in the concrete outside the visitors’ clubhouse. Outraged Yankee officials ordered a jackhammer crew to dig out the embedded Sox jersey. Francona chuckled when he walked past the site, which was ceremoniously cordoned off by Yankee officials.

But he missed the old stadium.

“I was a big fan of Yankee Stadium,” said the manager. “You might swallow some asbestos, but I loved the place. The new one was gorgeous, but for me it just didn’t touch the old one. Some of the amenities are out of this world, but they lost a lot when they moved out of the old one. It’s like what I heard happened in Boston with the old Boston Garden and the new Boston Garden.”

Francona didn’t have much of a relationship with Yankee manager Joe Girardi, who was in his second year on the job in 2009. The friendly banter he’d enjoyed with Torre was gone. But he’d developed a fondness for Jeter, especially after managing him in All-Star Games in 2005 and 2008.

Like every ballplayer, Jeter believes in routine. He has used the exact same model bat (Louisville Slugger, P-72) for every professional plate appearance over his multiple-decade career. He is famous for stepping out of the batter’s box and arching his back between pitches. By 2009, part of his routine in Red Sox games involved acknowledging Francona before his first at-bat of each game. Approaching home plate, Jeter would look over into the Boston dugout and gesture toward the Sox manager with his hand or bat. If Francona was momentarily distracted, Jeter would step back and wait for a response before proceeding with his work.

“A couple of times somebody in our dugout had to nudge me and say, ‘Hey, look over at him! He’s waiting for you to wave back,’” said Francona.

“I don’t remember when I first started doing that with him,” said Jeter. “But I’ve always respected Terry. I know his players loved playing for him, and I got to know him throughout the years. I always admired him from afar. He always seemed to me like he was pretty even-keel. He never seemed to overreact. He never had a look of panic on his face, and I think that rubs off on teams.”

Once Jeter established the ritual, coaches in the Red Sox dugout noticed that A-Rod started to mime the gesture. Francona never noticed. He wouldn’t intentionally ignore Rodriguez, but he had too much to do and there were usually runners on base by the time A-Rod came to bat.

Red Sox–Yankee games were traditionally lengthy, often running as long as four hours. Hitters on both teams worked into high pitch counts. Every at-bat was contested, and there were multiple pitching changes and commercial delays.

One of the more prominent time-suckers was the seventh-inning stretch appearance of Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, singing “God Bless America.” Some players were agitated by the nightly delay, but Francona enjoyed the appearance of the supersized singer.

“I’d met him over the winter when he sang at the Boston Pops,” said the manager. “I teased him about how long he took—that he was fucking my pitchers up—and told him if he took too long next time we were at Yankee Stadium I was going to come out of the dugout and kiss him on the lips. So there we were back at Yankee Stadium, and when he got done singing—it was just as long as usual—he looked over at me in the dugout. I think he thought I was coming out there. Some of the players were bothered by it, but I thought it was a nice ritual. The only bad thing about it was, I had to take off my hat and stand there for five minutes. You know how many insults you can hear from the first three rows of Yankee Stadium in five minutes—while we’re ‘honoring America’? They should have just introduced it with, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, now let’s honor America and hurl insults at Tito’s head.’”

Francona suffered another Bronx indignity when the team bus left without him after a late game at the new stadium.

“That was the greatest thing ever,” said traveling secretary McCormick. “We were pulling out, and all of a sudden I hear this banging on the side of the door, and there’s Tito, trying to run alongside the bus. He was pissed, but it was funny.”

The highlight of Boston’s early dominance against the Yankees came on
Sunday Night Baseball,
April 26, when Ellsbury stole home off Andy Pettitte in the fifth inning of a 4–1 Fenway win.

A steal of home is rare and exciting. It cannot be called or planned. Ellsbury was not without information. He was privy to the scouting report prepared by Sox veteran Dana LeVangie. The report told Ellsbury everything he needed to know: Pettitte could be slow and deliberate toward home plate. A fast runner on third had a chance to steal home against the Yankee lefty.

“Ells always talked about it,” said third-base coach Hale. “He’d say, ‘I can get it, I can get it.’ On this night, I saw where he started to inch down, and I was thinking,
Oh-oh.
I could see he was going to have a chance. It was all on him. It was the perfect storm. The kid is fearless. He thinks he can steal off anybody.”

After Ellsbury dashed down the line and easily beat the throw to the plate, he popped up, jogged past a stunned J. D. Drew (“Good to have J. D. hitting there, he probably wasn’t going to swing anyway,” said Hale), and made his way to the Sox dugout, where Francona greeted him with, “Way to go, Jake! Don’t ever be out doing that!”

The first two months of the 2009 season presented Francona with a new and difficult dilemma: David Ortiz stopped hitting altogether. Ortiz was only 33 years old. In his first six years with the Red Sox, Ortiz’s average season was .297 with 39 homers and 122 RBI. He ranked second in the majors in RBI, trailing only Alex Rodriguez. He had the third-highest slugging percentage, trailing only Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols. There had been signs of trouble in 2008 when Ortiz hit .264, his lowest average since the Twins released him in 2002; he started only 108 games, suffering a torn tendon sheath in his left wrist that put him on the disabled list in June. But the latter part of ’08 was nothing like the beginning of ’09, when Ortiz was a .200 hitter without a single home run in the first 39 games. It was no mere slump. It was a stunning decline of a skill set, and it put a strain on the man making out the lineup card. Francona was forced to drop Ortiz in the lineup and considered benching him against tough lefties. The prospect of pinch-hitting for Ortiz had once seemed preposterous, but was suddenly in play. Francona was quizzed daily about how long he could keep Ortiz in the lineup.