Francona: The Red Sox Years (49 page)

By the end of August there was considerable speculation that Epstein was leaving. He was under contract through the 2012 season, but Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts had fired general manager Jim Hendry and recklessly identified Epstein as the man he wanted to run his team. Epstein went underground after the rumor surfaced and was careful with his words when he finally addressed the Cub question before a Sox-Yankees game at Fenway.

“I’m completely focused on the Red Sox of 2011,” said Epstein.

Werner called the Epstein rumor a “non-story.” But Epstein made no verbal commitment beyond 2011 and said nothing to squash the speculation. It was one more distraction leading into one of the worst months in baseball history.

Hours after Epstein’s vague remarks, the Sox beat the Yankees, 9–5. Boston held a one-and-a-half-game first-place lead over the Yankees and had a nine-and-a-half-game lead over the closest wild-card contender. The Sox were 81–42 since their 2–10 start.

Everything unraveled in September, and it had little to do with chicken and beer. The Red Sox folded because their starting pitching collapsed. In the month of September, Boston starters did not survive the fifth inning in 12 of 27 games. Beckett, Lester, and Lackey were an aggregate 2–7 in September with a 6.45 ERA. The Red Sox lost 11 of their 15 starts. Beckett gave up six earned runs in each of his last two starts, both against the last-place Orioles, losing leads in both games. Lester, in his last four games, went 0–3 with an 8.34 ERA, giving up 25 hits and 12 walks in 19 and two-thirds innings. Buchholz, who’d suffered a stress fracture in his back in June, never made it back to the mound. Erik Bedard, a lefty acquired at the trading deadline, won only one of eight starts in his two-month tenure in Boston and couldn’t get through four innings on the next-to-last night of the season in Baltimore. Setup man Bard, after not giving up a run over 25 consecutive outings from late May through the end of July, grew tired from too much work and lost three games in a single week in September.

Tim Wakefield’s exhaustive quest for his 200th victory was difficult for everyone, including the manager. The 45-year-old knuckleballer picked up victory number 199 on July 24, then made seven starts without reaching the milestone. It was a strain on the team and the manager.

“I wanted Tim to get the 200th, but I also wanted us to win,” said Francona. “Part of the good thing about getting records is doing it during the normal course of events. Unfortunately, we kept losing his starts. After the fourth try, it was like,
Damn.
You try not to think about it, and I was careful to manage the same way I would always manage, but it seemed like energy was going toward personal things that weren’t team achievements. I don’t blame anyone for wanting that win, but for a manager, you want your guys to be concerned about team goals.”

Wakefield finally beat the Blue Jays at Fenway on September 13, but that was his only win in September. Wakefield’s September ERA was 6.45, and the Sox lost four of his five starts.

On Monday, September 5, after an 11-inning, 1–0 day game loss in Toronto, Francona had McCormick get a suite at the Park Hyatt Toronto so that Sox players could hold their annual NFL fantasy draft. Pizza, beer, and sandwiches were served. It was usually a good team-building event.

The night did not go as well as Francona hoped. Francona noticed teammates rolling their eyes when other players were attempting to be funny. This was nothing like 2004 when the Idiots drank beer, played cards, and teased one another on charter flights. It was nothing like 2007 when there was always a friendly cribbage game, or the fantasy draft night in Baltimore in 2010 when players interacted, busted chops, and left the room feeling good about themselves and one another.

“DeMarlo and I were looking about the room and I thought,
These guys just don’t like each other like they used to,
” remembered Francona. “It was a different atmosphere. You could tell the guys weren’t as close as the teams we’d had in the past.”

“It’s usually a night with a lot of laughter and fun, and when you came out of it you felt good,” said Hale. “But Tito didn’t think this one connected like it did in the past. This team was just a little different that way.”

Crawford kept to himself and was usually alone in the dugout. Ellsbury was friendly, but seemed to interact only with Jed Lowrie. Youkilis was on the disabled list (sports hernia) during the collapse of 2011. Youk was much easier to have around when he was contributing on the field. When he was on the disabled list, he was not as positive a force in the clubhouse or the dugout. Ditto for Drew, who carried himself like a man who’d already retired. Gonzalez complained about tough travel after too many Sunday night games.

The night after the fantasy draft, the Sox demolished the Blue Jays, 14–0, with Lester pitching seven innings, striking out 11. It would be Lester’s only win of September.

Francona met with Varitek early the next day.

“There were things that I was seeing, and I wanted to bounce that stuff off ’Tek,” said the manager later. “We spoke for about a half-hour. I told him I was worried. I valued his judgment. He’d tell me if I was overreacting, but he told me he was seeing the same things I was seeing. That convinced me that what I was seeing was there. It wasn’t something I was just imagining. It was weird, because we’d just won that 14–0 game. But I wouldn’t just come out of the blue with a meeting.”

After the lengthy talk with his captain, Francona alerted Hale that he was going to call a team meeting.

“That kind of surprised me,” said Hale. “He told me to get everybody into the room, and I was asking, ‘A meeting about what?’ and I’d go up to guys and they’d say, ‘A meeting about what?’ And guys were saying, ‘What the fuck for?’”

The meeting was not a success.

“You guys might think it’s weird having a meeting after a 14–0 win,” Francona said at the start of the meeting. “But I’m seeing things that are bothering me. If I didn’t tell you, I’d be wrong. You don’t always have a chance to win, and we have a team that can win this year. But if we don’t put our best foot forward, that’s going to bother me. I see us worrying about too much shit that doesn’t mean anything. People are spending too much time and energy worrying about things they can’t control. For a team that’s supposed to be good, we sure bitch about a lot of stuff. We need to stop bitching about scoring decisions, contracts, personal goals, bus times, getaway days, the media, everything. Just stop. Remember what we are here for.”

He didn’t single anyone out.

Back in his office with Hale, Francona looked at his trusted bench coach and said, “That fell on deaf ears. All they are doing is wondering why I’m having a meeting when we just won 14–0. Everybody is going their own way.”

“We just ain’t playing good,” Hale told Francona. “We’re not scoring runs. We’re not getting the two-out hits. We’re not defending. We’re not picking the ball up. We’ve tried a lot of things here.”

“It wasn’t about Tito,” said Pedroia. “Some guys were mad for other reasons. They weren’t mad at him. He didn’t need to change.”

“That meeting just seemed weird,” added Youkilis. “It was too open. Guys were like, ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ Some guys didn’t know what was going on. You’re so wrapped up in doing your thing, it was vague. I knew what he was saying wasn’t directed at me, but I think some guys took offense. Here in Boston it’s just story after fucking story after story. And drama, drama, drama. Guys that can’t handle it go nuts.”

The Red Sox lost five straight games after the meeting, including a damaging three-game sweep at the hands of the surging Rays in St. Petersburg. They came home for an off day, September 12, and Henry entertained the players on his boat.

Before the next game, at home against Toronto, Francona and Epstein had a lengthy talk in the manager’s office.

“Theo, we’re going to win, but it’s going to be a little more interesting than we want,” said Francona. “Beckett and Lester will dial it up for a couple of games. One of them will throw a masterpiece, and we’ll be okay.”

Wakefield won his 200th that night, pitching six innings of an 18–6 blowout. The next night they lost, 5–4. This was a pattern. A week later they would beat the Orioles 18–9, just a few hours after losing the first game of a day-night doubleheader 6–5. This was how the Sox managed to rank third in the majors in runs scored during a month in which they went 7–20.

The final homestand was disastrous. The Sox split a pair with Toronto, lost three of four to the Rays, and three of four to the Orioles. In the Fenway finale Wednesday, September 21, Beckett blew a 4–1 lead in the sixth and gave up all six runs before he was pulled in the eighth of a 6–4 loss. The Sox went down one-two-three in the ninth. Fenway fans booed with gusto when Lowrie grounded out to end the game.

After the game, Pedroia went to Francona and asked him to put Crawford into the second spot in the batting order.

“He wants it bad,” Pedroia explained.

There was an off day before the Sox went to New York and Baltimore to close the season. They were a full eight games behind the first-place Yankees, but still held a two-and-a-half-game lead over Tampa for the wild-card spot. When they arrived in New York, Francona was greeted with a report that his relationship with Epstein was fractured. Speaking on
The Dan Patrick Show,
Peter Gammons—the veteran scribe Francona visited in the hospital when Gammons suffered a brain aneurysm in 2006—said, “I’m sensing an increasing disconnect between Theo Epstein and Terry Francona.”

It was a telling remark, given Gammons’s close relationship with Epstein. By the end of the 2011 season, Gammons was established as a virtual mouthpiece for Boston’s baseball operations department. Epstein and Gammons spoke almost daily, and the scribe’s public utterance of a GM-manager “disconnect” was an indication that Theo wanted to float the story.

“I was pissed about that,” countered Epstein.

According to Francona, “Theo called me and said, ‘Tito, that’s crazy,’ but I knew those guys talked so much. I know Peter reports stuff he probably shouldn’t, but I was tired by then and everybody’s nerves were shot. When you’re losing, we all were worn thin. It was another thing I kind of had to defend, and I didn’t appreciate it.”

Friday’s game was washed out. On Saturday, Lester was pummeled for eight runs over two and two-thirds innings of a 9–1 loss to the Yankees.

Sunday morning, standing in front of the Sox Manhattan hotel headquarters (the Palace Hotel at 465 Madison Avenue), Francona was waiting for Hale when he was approached by a stranger with a foreign accent.

“You must win today,” said the well-dressed stranger.

“Hey, asshole, what do you think we’re trying to do?” said the stressed-out manager.

Before the astonished intruder could react, a security official got between the two men and explained to Francona that the man he was barking at was a well-meaning diplomat from South America. There was an international convention nearby, and the streets around the Sox hotel were peppered with government officials and security officers from around the world. Francona reintroduced himself to the visiting dignitary, posed for a photo, then got in a cab bound for the Bronx. It was going to be a long day at the ballpark.

Wakefield made the last start of his career in the afternoon game, losing to the Yankees, 6–2, despite a couple of home runs from Ellsbury, who was making a late-season push for Most Valuable Player.

Against the wishes of Epstein, Lackey was Boston’s starting pitcher for the nightcap. Lackey’s previous start had been rough, like most of his starts in 2011. At Fenway against the Orioles, he was battered for eight runs on 11 hits, and he glared at Francona when the manager came to take him out of the game in the fifth inning.

“I never paid any attention to that,” said Francona. “I’m just out there saying, ‘Gimme the fucking ball.’ Ten minutes after the game, I don’t think John even knows he did it. I could have made a bigger deal out of it, but we were trying to get him not to bury himself.”

In 2011, Lackey was officially the worst starting pitcher in Red Sox history for a single season (28 starts, 6.41 ERA). He was a pariah to most fans. Sports talk show hosts in Boston made an issue of Lackey showing up his teammates and his manager. Francona and Sox players continued to support the big Texan, but Lackey made things hard on everyone. His pitching elbow was throbbing (he underwent Tommy John surgery after the season), his marriage was over, and he just wanted to get away from everything.

“He was going through a lot,” said Francona. “His stuff had backed up, and every mistake he made on the mound, Goddamn did he pay for it. He could give up two-out runs with the best of ’em. He’d get two guys out and then make a mistake. He probably didn’t help his cause with the media. He was kind of surly. But he wasn’t like that around us. He was hurting at the end, and we gave him every chance to go on the disabled list, but he talked us out of it. I think he just wanted to win so bad, and he couldn’t believe what was happening.”

Francona had to sell Lackey to his general manager before the final game in New York.

“I know you don’t like this, and I’m trying not to be stubborn, but I’ve got to do what I think is right,” Francona told Epstein. “I know what’s on the line, but I’ve got to do what I think is right. If we pitch somebody else and we lose, it’s going to hurt our team. If we pitch Lackey, he might not pitch well, but it won’t fuck our team up.”

“I don’t think he should be the guy,” said the GM. “I don’t think he gives us the best chance to win. But this is your call. You’re the manager.”

Things got more complicated between games of the doubleheader when Lackey got a text message from a TMZ reporter asking about his troubled marriage. TMZ was getting ready to report that Lackey had filed for divorce from his wife Krista, who was battling cancer. Lackey was appalled by this invasion of his privacy, didn’t believe the ball club was doing enough to protect him, went to Francona’s office, and shoved his cell-phone screen into the face of his manager. Twenty minutes before the game, Francona called Pam Ganley into the office to see if she could help with the delicate situation and the media storm that was sure to follow.