Francona: The Red Sox Years (47 page)

Lackey picked up the win. Crawford was the leadoff hitter, went 0–5, and saw his average drop to .143. He’d batted in four different spots in the order in the first seven games. Two weeks later, twenty games into the season, Crawford had batted first, second, third, seventh, and eighth and was hitting .135.

“We talked to Carl on the plane and at his locker,” said Hale. “Carl was aware, but he was struggling. Fuck, we were losing. We needed to do things to get him going, and I told him, ‘When you get going, we’ll move you up.’ Tito wanted guys to play with confidence and aggressiveness. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. That’s how Tito got the best out of players.”

“I never called Carl into my office,” said Francona. “Like a few other guys, to him, that would have felt like going to the principal’s office. Moving a guy around the lineup goes against everything I believe, but this was hard. I asked him where was his favorite place to hit, and he said he hadn’t hit leadoff much, but would do it. He was always fine about things, saying, ‘It’s okay. I’m cool.’ He was just tentative all year. He was jumpy up there. I think he was afraid to make a mistake. It was the same in the outfield and on the bases. I’d tell him to go ahead and run: ‘If you’re out, I’ll tell people I sent you.’ Fuck, he wouldn’t go.”

In his only full season with the Red Sox, Crawford hit .255, with 11 homers, 56 RBI, and only 18 stolen bases in 24 attempts. His on-base percentage was a staggeringly low .289. He was never the player who tortured the Sox for eight years.

“He was a little unique in the way he hit,” said Francona. “He was always open, but he started to open more. To close he had to rush, and he couldn’t get his foot down in time. He started swinging at balls in the mitt, and it snowballed. He was swinging at everything, trying to go two-for-one and three-for-one. You could see he didn’t have his comfort zone all year.”

While the Sox slowly climbed toward .500, Francona was dealing with physical and emotional issues.

His replacement knee gave him new problems. He’d learned how to manage the swelling and pain, always wearing multiple layers and wraps. (It was not unusual to see Francona with his legs propped up somewhere in the dugout or in the clubhouse at the end of batting practice.) The Percocets helped, but sometimes the pain and swelling were overwhelming. In the first inning of a game at Toronto on May 10, Francona and Sox trainer Mike Reinold walked over to the Blue Jays’ clubhouse training room, where a Toronto team doctor drained Francona’s knee.

“I looked over and didn’t see him in their dugout,” said Blue Jays manager Farrell, one of Francona’s best friends. “I didn’t know he was right behind me in our room. Physically, he went through a lot.”

Five days later, Francona had the same procedure done by a Yankee team doctor at Yankee Stadium.

“People that were around knew what was going on,” said the manager. “I had my knee drained four or five times in two weeks. I was so hurtin’. They were worried about infection, and I had trouble sleeping. When you have that much blood in there, it hurts.”

Twice a month, he dutifully visited with a pain management specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“It was pretty casual,” said Francona. “Larry [Dr. Ronan] would be there and pop his head in. I explained to the pain doctor what I’d been through, that I’d had surgery. But the whole thing has taken on a life of its own. I didn’t see the pain management guy until we got to Boston, and Larry and I had first talked about it halfway through spring training. If I was having trouble, you think they’d have waited a month?”

Pain and insomnia were not relieved by Francona’s living situation. Few people knew that Francona was no longer living at home. It wasn’t something he talked about with his ballplayers or Sox officials, but it was a time of personal turmoil in the manager’s life. Homestands became like road trips as the manager padded around his hotel room at the Marriott Courtyard, always keeping the television on.

Living with the white noise of television was something Francona did throughout his adult life. And he was not strictly an ESPN viewer. He liked to watch the History Channel and CNN’s
Headline News,
but in the summer of 2011 Francona avoided news programs. US Marine lieutenant Nick Francona was serving a six-month tour as a rifle platoon leader in Afghanistan, and Leah’s husband, Michael Rice, was also in Afghanistan, dismantling homemade bombs. News reports from the war zone only made the manager worry.

“It was awful,” he admitted. “No getting around it. I thought about it all the time, worried all the time. I tried to stay away from the news, but it’s always there.”

For the first time in his career, Francona kept his cell phone in the dugout runway during games. He’d sometimes check it between innings.

“I don’t know why I did that,” he said. “Who was going to call me if something happened to my son? It was just an uneasy feeling for me. I’m sure people saw me checking it.”

Months later, when he was out of a job, the cell-phone habit might have been used to hurt him when an anonymous club source told the
Boston Globe
that Francona appeared distracted during the season.

It was actually the opposite. Coping with a dissolving marriage, family members at war, and severe pain and insomnia, Francona sought refuge at the ballpark. He went to work earlier than in any of his previous years in Boston. The clubhouse guys—Pookie, Murphy, Joe, Tommy, John, and the rest—became almost like family members. He developed a tighter relationship with bench coach DeMarlo Hale, but missed Mills and Farrell, who were managing the Astros and Blue Jays, respectively, thanks in part to Francona’s recommendations.

“I knew he was living in a hotel, but I respect people’s privacy,” said Hale. “He knew his responsibility. He knew what he had to do on a daily basis.

“Tito was the same in 2011 as he had been every year before that. I remember walking to the ballpark in Pittsburgh with Tito and asking a question about Nick, and I saw his lip tighten and I knew he was worried. It didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it, so I never brought it up again.”

More than most managers, Francona relied on coaches as go- betweens.

“He used us to put out some fires,” said Hale. “We all knew that was part of the job.”

Coaches could play good cop. Coaches could have a voice. Hitting coach Dave Magadan was a trusted instructor with a voice. Third-base coach Tim Bogar was considered a manager-in-training by Boston baseball ops. Francona enjoyed working with both, but the manager and his players missed the strong presence of Mills and Farrell. New pitching coach Curt Young was smart, affable, and experienced, but didn’t have the command of the John Wayne–like Farrell.

“Losing John Farrell was huge, and we knew it was going to be huge,” said Francona. “We knew we’d better fill this with someone who knows what they are doing. Theo met with Curt in the Fall League and hired him. Curt’s good. He’s got a different mentality than John. He’s not as take-charge as John. You’ll never find a guy more upbeat. During the first week of the season, Curt would be the one saying, ‘Tito, it’s going to be okay,’ and I’d be like, ‘Fuck, no, it isn’t. You don’t know this place.’ Curt gave our pitchers more latitude than John did, and I think they took advantage. He was a good hire, but he got caught up in it. If guys didn’t listen to him, it’s an excuse. Shame on them.”

The starters were Beckett, Lester, Lackey, Buchholz, and Wakefield. Buchholz admitted he was afraid of Farrell. No one feared nice guy Curt Young.

“I talk to the pitchers at the beginning,” said Francona. “We had a lot of veterans that had earned the right to do things on their own. I told them, ‘Don’t abuse it. I trust you.’ I’d tell guys, ‘Follow Beckett. He works his ass off.’ I’d always tell ’em, ‘If you think you’re fucking up, you probably are.’ For whatever reason, during the year, I wasn’t comfortable.”

They also had to break in a new catcher. Long coveted by Epstein, switch-hitting Jarrod Saltalamacchia was acquired at the deadline in 2010 and anointed the everyday catcher for 2011. Varitek still caught Beckett almost exclusively, but Salty was the regular, and he could never be expected to match Varitek’s game-calling.

“The guy that followed ’Tek was going to be at a disadvantage no matter what,” said Francona. “There was a comfort zone pitching to ’Tek. We always called all the pitchouts and slide-steps from the bench, but we never called a pitch in eight years with ’Tek. There were times we’d help out Salty.”

The abysmal Red Sox of April clawed their way back to .500 in mid-May and went over the break-even mark May 16, with Alfredo Aceves getting the win.

“Now we flip the tortilla,” said Aceves.

Indeed. For 123 games—four and a half months—the Red Sox went 81–42, posting the best record in baseball. They went 20–6 in July, their best month since 1952.

In June, July, and August of 2011, the Boston Red Sox were the monster team that almost everyone predicted they would be. Gonzalez posted MVP numbers. Ortiz found his old confidence and crushed righties and lefties. Ellsbury rebounded from the broken rib disaster of 2010 and made a legitimate run at the American League MVP Award, hitting .321 with 32 homers, 105 RBI, and 39 steals. Batting in the second spot most of the year, Pedroia hit .307 with 21 homers and 91 RBI. The Red Sox led the majors in runs, hits, doubles, extra-base hits, and slugging.

Francona observed a nice moment in Philadelphia at the end of June. Nice guy Cameron was at the end and had to be “designated for assignment,” which is baseball parlance for “We’re letting you go.”

“Theo handled that, and he was really great at it,” said the manager. “It’s always a tough thing to do, but Theo was very respectful. He had a way of making the player feel really good about himself, and with Mike it was all legit. It made me think back to when I was released by the Cardinals. That was awful for me, and seeing Theo talking to Mike made me wish I’d had someone talk to me like that back in 1991.”

The Sox were in first place at the All-Star break. Taking advantage of three days off, Francona rounded up five of his favorite clubbies and drove to the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. The manager paid for a suite and still laughs at the memory of Pookie Jackson lying on his back in the middle of the floor, snoring, with a slice of pizza resting on his chest.

“That was the Six Stooges,” said Francona. “A true reality show.”

Perhaps because the Sox were finally fulfilling expectations, there was virtually no discussion of Francona’s contract. It was assumed he would be back in 2012 and beyond. Even though Sox insiders often heard Henry grumbling about his manager during Fenway games, a sixth playoff appearance in eight years and a possible third World Series championship would make Francona a lock to return in 2012 and probably longer. The manager’s lame-duck status was not a topic for Boston baseball reporters during the summer of 2011. Things were simply going too well.

The impending disaster of September did not happen in a vacuum. There were signs all along the way. The Sox missed the veteran coaches who had commanded their attention. They had a lot of aging players in the final year of their contracts. They had players placing personal rewards above team success. On the bench, Francona didn’t have players who could deliver messages for him—selfless types like Gabe Kapler, Alex Cora, and Eric Hinske. These Sox were looking out for themselves. They also had inattentive ownership—Henry and Werner were consumed with Liverpool, Roush Racing, LeBron James (FSG represented James)—and a general manager who was rumored to be going to the Cubs. They had a cluttered and nervous medical and training staff. And they had a manager who was working more hours than ever, but feared he was losing his voice in the clubhouse.

“I was worried about it all year,” said Francona. “Somebody would strike out and go look at video instead of staying on the bench. We had a lot of guys who wanted to play every day. Scutaro would be pissed if he wasn’t playing. Jed Lowrie wanted to play every day, but he kept getting hurt. I didn’t want to overexpose Josh Reddick. David was in a contract year. Youk got hurt. There was just a lot of frustration with a lot of things. Without the voices of the coaches and veteran players, I was doing a lot more of that work, and the players were like, ‘Fuck, man, where is this coming from?’ It catches up with you.”

The starting pitchers—particularly Beckett, Lackey, and Lester—were a disappointment. They always seemed to be together—in the clubhouse, in the dugout, away from the park. If Beckett came around a corner, Lackey and Lester were usually nearby. Following the lead of Beckett, Lester took on a tough guy persona, grumbled when he didn’t get calls from umpires, and was brusque with the media.

All three of them had achieved ultimate big league success at a young age. All three—Lackey with the Angels, Beckett with the Marlins, Lester with the Red Sox—had been the winning pitcher in a World Series clinching game before the age of 26.

Beckett and Lackey were from Texas. Lester grew up near Seattle and settled in Georgia, but was wearing cowboys boots and speaking with a Texas drawl by 2011.

Of the three, Beckett had the best numbers in 2011. Rebounding from an injury-plagued (6–6, 5.78 ERA) 2010 season, he made the All-Star team and had one of the top five ERAs (2.89) in the American League.

“I think every pitcher looked up to Josh,” said Farrell, a year after he’d left the Red Sox. “For anyone that was in uniform in the organization in 2007 and watched what he did, he earned that. He was the go-to guy, the guy that didn’t back away from challenges. He relished that, and I think guys looked up to him. I don’t think Josh abused that in any form or fashion. He wanted to be the guy, and he’d earned it.”

Despite Beckett’s 2011 numbers, Lester was considered the most dominating pitcher on the staff. He’d drawn the opening day assignment and was on his way to a 15-win season on the heels of 19 wins in 2010. He was also an American League All-Star in 2011.

“I didn’t worry about Lester because Lester worked his ass off,” said Francona. “He just wanted to follow Beckett and Lackey. I liked the fact that they were loyal to each other. I just wanted the whole team to be like that. It’s how you handle frustration, and this team did not handle frustration. They made excuses, and that was troubling.”