Francona: The Red Sox Years (54 page)

Later the same day, Bobby Valentine announced that the Sox would no longer have beer in their clubhouse at Fenway Park.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Ortiz. “We’re not here to drink; we’re here to play baseball. This ain’t no bar.”

Appearing on ESPN Radio, Francona said, “I think it’s a PR move. I think if a guy wants a beer, he can probably get one.”

Valentine shot back with, “Remember, you’re getting paid there for saying stuff. You get paid over here for doing stuff. I’ve done both.”

Francona felt badly and promised “to be more careful with my words.”

Red Sox spring training spawned dozens of accounts of Valentine’s innovative and busy preseason camp. The new manager’s training regimen was described as “creative” and “sophisticated.” Bobby V loved the bunt and hated the windup. He did not communicate much with his coaches. He had a video director put together theme-driven highlight reels—a one-hour loop of pitchers making good fielding plays, or perhaps 60 minutes of nonstop relays from the outfield—and ordered the tapes played throughout the day in the clubhouse. Valentine did not delegate to his coaches, several of whom were team-appointed. Francona tired of hearing about the new “clubhouse culture” and the new way of doing things in the Sox spring camp.

“When somebody takes over, it’s always going to be bigger, better, newer,” said the ex-manager. “I grew weary of that. I wanted to put rings on both fingers and say, ‘We were a little above average.’”

The Francona-Valentine contrast could not have been more clear. Francona was a communicator, ever-mindful of the feelings of his players. Valentine made little effort to extend himself to his players. Francona hated it when reporters’ cell phones went off during press conferences. Valentine smiled when his own phone rang while he was addressing the media. Francona had kept everything in-house. Valentine was always likely to blurt out something that would ignite a media storm.

Francona returned to Fort Myers for the first time when the ESPN crew visited JetBlue Park for a much-hyped exhibition game between the Yankees and the Red Sox in March. The former manager skipped the customary pregame information session in Valentine’s office, leaving Dan Shulman and Orel Hershiser to carry out the chore.

“It was strange to be there that night,” said Francona. “I was glad that the first Red Sox game I was doing was spring training and not regular season. The one thing I didn’t want was pictures of me standing in the middle of the clubhouse looking awkward. So I went on the field and saw some guys and retreated upstairs and got ready for the game. I didn’t want to be the focal point of somebody’s story.”

Despite his efforts, Francona was corralled by a number of Boston baseball reporters. He said he hadn’t heard anything about Fenway’s 100th birthday bash in April, adding, “I’m not quite ready for the hugs yet. I’m still trying to stop the bleeding.”

Later that night, when Valentine ordered a suicide squeeze in the bottom of the ninth, Francona correctly predicted that Yankee manager Joe Girardi would take his team back to Tampa even though the game was tied after nine innings.

Francona was in the broadcast booth for the Red Sox opening day loss at Comerica Park in Detroit, but once again he avoided the Sox clubhouse. Given the traditional pomp of every opener, it was easy for him to stay under the radar. The game unfolded in a fashion remarkably similar to the final night in Baltimore in September 2011. The Tigers beat the Red Sox with a cheesy walk-off single to left in the bottom of the ninth.

A week later, Francona was in a phone store in Tucson with three young Verizon employees, learning to use his new iPhone. While the phone was on speaker, he took an unexpected call from Larry Lucchino.

“Tito, this is Larry,” Lucchino started.

“Hey, Larry,” said Francona. “Just so you know, I’m in a Verizon store learning to use my new phone and we’re on speakerphone here.”

“Fine,” said Lucchino. “I was just following up to make sure you know we’d love to have you on hand with all the other ex-Sox players and managers when we celebrate Fenway’s 100th on April 20.”

“Larry, you know what my answer is, don’t you?” said Francona.

“Yeah, you’re not ready to hug everybody,” said Lucchino. “I read all about it.”

“That’s right, Larry,” said the ex-manager, “I said the same thing to John. I told him I don’t want to be included in anything to do with the Red Sox until he gives me a decent answer on who fucked me in the newspaper.”

“It wasn’t fucking me!” insisted Lucchino. “And it wasn’t fucking John!”

“That’s fine, Larry,” snapped Francona, aware that folks in the phone store were starting to look at him. “I believe you. I’m just telling you how I feel. I don’t want anything to do with the Red Sox until you care enough to find out who said it. Call me when you got a better answer!”

Click.

Later in the day, Francona tried to call Lucchino and left a message with the CEO.

“I thought it was a respectful message,” said Francona. “I wasn’t emotional. I just wanted him to understand why. I didn’t want it to be a fight.”

When Lucchino returned the call, Francona started to ask if the CEO had received his message, and Lucchino snapped, “I didn’t listen to it.”

“That led us to round two,” said Francona.

“That was a bit of a blowup,” admitted Lucchino. “He was mad we hadn’t publicly identified the person who had leaked this story, and I told him how hard it was and how frustrating it had been my whole career, and you just can’t keep turning your organization upside down and expect that you’re likely to find who had done it. I never had any great success.”

“I never asked them to publicly identify the person,” said Francona. “I just wanted to know who it was. And Larry told me if he found out, it was a fireable offense. And that he’d call me back. But he never did. Both Larry and John said they’d get back to me after their attempts at discovery, and neither one of them ever did. I think that’s what bothered me the most.”

Nine days before Fenway’s 100th celebration, news of Francona’s rejection of the Sox invite hit the front page of the
Globe.

“It’s a shame,” Francona said in the article. “I’m sure they’ll have a great event and I was part of a lot of that stuff there, but I just can’t go back there and start hugging people and stuff without feeling a little bit hypocritical. . . . I just feel like someone in the organization went out of their way to hurt me and the more we talked I realized we’re just not on the same wavelength. They’re probably better off going forth and leaving me out of it. . . . Until I’m more comfortable with some answers on what happened at the end of the year, I don’t want to have much to do with the organization and that’s a shame. With all the good things that were accomplished, I just feel pretty strongly about that. . . . When I spoke to John he made me think they were going to make an effort. John and Larry made it clear to me they weren’t responsible for what was said. I thought they owed it to me to get to the bottom of it a little bit.”

“I understand how strongly he feels on this matter and I accept that,” Lucchino said in the
Globe
story.

After disclosure of his refusal to attend Fenway’s 100th, Francona received phone calls from friends urging him to return for the celebration. Nomar Garciaparra called the ex-manager, no small deed given the acrimony that had accompanied Nomar’s departure from the Red Sox. Commissioner Bud Selig called to deliver the same message: Francona owed it to the fans.

The ex-manager started to have second thoughts. He called his 78-year-old father in New Brighton, Pennsylvania.

“Dad, you’ve always been the voice of reason,” said Terry Francona. “They want me to come back. What should I do?”

“Tell them to shove it up their ass!” said Tito Francona.

“Thanks, Dad, I just needed to hear you say that.”

Then he got a letter from Red Sox vice chairman Phillip H. Morse, a limited partner in the ownership group who had been close to the manager during his eight years in Boston. Francona trusted Morse and valued his opinion. Morse informed Francona that if the ex-manager did not see fit to return to Fenway, Morse would also skip the celebration.

“That really floored me,” said Francona. “Phil was one of my favorites, and his letter made me think hard about it. I wanted to acknowledge the fans. My strong feelings about what happened with the organization didn’t change, but I was making myself the story and I wasn’t comfortable with that. I didn’t feel good about myself. So I decided to go.”

He called Pam Ganley two days before the event to tell her that he’d changed his mind. He didn’t want to interact with his old bosses, but he wanted to be there for the fans.

Francona was in Connecticut, working for ESPN, on the morning of Friday, April 20, the 100th anniversary of the inaugural Boston–New York baseball game at Fenway. After the morning broadcast, ESPN senior vice president Jed Drake drove the ex-manager from Bristol to Fenway High School on Ipswich Street outside the ballpark, where more than 200 ex-Sox players, coaches, and managers were gathered for the pregame ceremony. Francona was issued Red Sox uniform top number 47, a jersey fans rarely saw during the eight years he worked in the Boston dugout.

Departing from his modus operandi, Francona arrived at the holding area across the street from Fenway just a few minutes before the group boarded buses for the ceremony. He was happy that he was too late to hear the welcoming remarks delivered by Henry, Lucchino, and Werner. Ganley arranged for him to wait in a private room in the high school where he could escape unwanted attention.

Lucchino still found him.

“I opened the door to his room and said hi,” recalled Lucchino. “We shook hands. We didn’t talk. It was just a greeting. He was kind of cold and distant. . . . I would hope that the passage of time would allow him to appreciate the gigantic contributions he made here. There has to be a way that there can be a rapprochement that will allow us to accord him the kind of respect and gratitude—we owe an enormous debt of gratitude—and there has to be a time when we could do that.”

On the short bus ride from Fenway High to gate C behind center field, Francona sat with Dave McCarty, one of his 2004 warriors. He didn’t know what to expect when he got off the bus and walked into the ballpark underneath the center-field bleachers.

The scene under the stands had the feel of a livestock auction. Fenway’s 100th was a complex ceremony that required planning and organization normally reserved for a presidential inauguration. Every Sox alum was issued a number, and the men were lined up in four rows of fifty. While he waited, Francona visited with old-timers Gary Bell and Tommy Harper, who asked him about his dad. When Garciaparra and Lou Merloni came over for a visit, the anxious ex-manager thanked Nomar for his phone call, but reminded both ex-players that he was not ready to extend an olive branch to the Red Sox owners.

“I’m not in the mood for any public hugs,” said Francona.

The beloved World Series–winning manager was not one of the first to appear in the 20-minute parade of alums. Jim Rice, Dwight Evans, Bill Buckner, Frank Malzone, Jerry Remy, Luis Tiant, and other gods of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s were in the initial wave of ex-greats, while 92-year-old Johnny Pesky and 94-year-old Bobby Doerr sat in folding chairs positioned outside the first-base dugout. None of the individuals’ names were announced to the crowd, but each man’s image appeared on the center-field scoreboard as he walked in from the imaginary cornfield beyond the warning track.

When Francona finally emerged from the shadow of the doorway, a wave of noise and love washed over the Fenway lawn. The ex-manager held his hand over his heart as he walked toward the infield amid chants of “We want Tito!”

His was the loudest reception.

“Sounded like a Learjet,” said Millar.

“It felt good, but I didn’t know if they were clapping for me or the next guy,” said Francona. “Mostly, I just wanted to find my place on the field and get it going. I was trying to be a little bit inconspicuous.”

Standing in the Fenway infield with 200 other Sox veterans and present-day players, Francona visited with Pedroia and the trio of pitchers who broke the rules back in September: Lackey, Lester, and Beckett. He got emotional when he saw Nate Spears, a 26-year-old utility player, who’d been in professional baseball for nine years.

“He was a great kid, and we’d taken him on every spring training road trip,” recalled Francona. “When we sent him down in 2011, I had told him, ‘Kid, you’re going to play in the big leagues.’ For some reason, seeing him there that day really got to me.”

Sox bench coach Tim Bogar saw Francona getting emotional.

Pointing to Spears, Bogar asked Francona, “Are you all misty-eyed because of him?”

“Yeah,” said the ex-manager, shaking his head, wiping his eyes. “All this fucking shit and I’m crying because of him.”

Spears was optioned to Pawtucket six days later.

After the ceremony, Francona marched shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Randy Kutcher, Jody Reed, and Buddy Hunter toward the center-field triangle. After he reached the warning track, the ex-manager peeled off his Red Sox jersey, rolled it into a ball, spotted a young girl in the front row of the bleachers, and hurled the shirt over the wall toward the girl. Typically, the gift was intercepted by an adult, but Francona got the man’s attention and directed him to give the jersey to the young girl.

Then the ex-manager raised his left fist in the air and disappeared under the stands. He walked toward the ESPN compound, where he was picked up by a driver and escorted to the Langham Hotel in Boston’s Post Office Square.

Terry Francona accomplished the impossible; he got out of Fenway faster than Carl Yastrzemski.

“They took me right to the car and got me the heck out of there,” said Francona. “I was probably halfway to the hotel by the time everybody got off the field. I was just uncomfortable and didn’t want to linger.”

Had he stayed at Fenway a little longer he would have noticed personnel changes at security stations around the ballpark. There was a new guard outside the Sox locker room. Inside the clubhouse, veteran clubbie Joe Cochran had been banished to the visitors’ side, replaced by Tommy McLaughlin, who’d been working in the visitors’ room for more than a decade. There was also paranoia upstairs, where Werner had a veteran Boston sports columnist evicted from the EMC level.