Francona: The Red Sox Years (6 page)

He loved being back in baseball, teaching hitting to enthusiastic young ballplayers. He learned organizational skills.

“Up until then, I thought you just played the game,” he said. “That was all I knew.”

A year later he was managing in South Bend. That was the season his mom was losing her long battle with breast cancer.

“She called me the day before the season was over. I could tell her memory was going. I told her I was coming home the next night. Our season ended and I drove home, and by the time I got there her memory was gone. I stayed home four or five days with my dad. He told me not to stay because he didn’t want me to see her like that. She went back to the hospital, and I got in my car and drove back home to Arizona, and that’s when she died.

“She was the perfect mom. She was a saint. I am still trying to figure out how she got pregnant. She was both mom and dad for a lot of years because my dad was gone so much.”

The young manager was promoted to Double A Birmingham in 1993, making a whopping $32,000 per year in the Southern League. Francona’s Birmingham Barons won the Southern League Championship in his first season, and
Baseball America
named him its Minor League Manager of the Year. That winter Jacque gave birth to their fourth child and third daughter, baby Jamie.

There was nothing “minor,” however, about Terry Francona’s second summer in Birmingham. It was the year Michael Jordan took a leave of absence from the NBA (he “retired” in October 1993) to play baseball and was assigned to play for the White Sox Double A affiliate in Birmingham.

“The Summer of Michael” taught Francona everything he would need to know about dealing with the mass media and the sports star culture of the late 20th century. Traditionally, minor league baseball is a place where mistakes can be made and repaired without fanfare. No one cares if your star outfielder is pouting, or if he invents a hamstring injury to get himself a day off. Fistfights on buses and in clubhouses go unreported. Everything is managed behind closed doors, far from daily tabloids and the glare of ESPN.

Jordan was the most famous athlete in the world. He was accustomed to a life of luxury. The World Champion Chicago Bulls traveled in a private jet, and the 1992 Olympic Dream Team—Jordan was the top attraction—had trained for the Barcelona Olympics in Monte Carlo.

When Francona had his first meeting with Jordan in Birmingham, Jordan’s first question for his new manager was, “Do we fly?”

“That wasn’t the question I was expecting,” said Francona. “We had major bus trips everywhere. The shortest ride was three and a half hours. It was 16 or 17 hours from Memphis to Orlando, and we did that. I told him we bused everywhere. He came back later and said, ‘What if I can get us a better bus?’ The next day there were four buses in the parking lot. It was a bus audition. One of the buses was for a touring rock band. We ended up riding in a new bus, but I’m sure he didn’t have to pay for any of it. It wasn’t even the best bus in the league. Greenville’s bus had beds. We just had a newer bus. Michael signed the door, so they called it ‘the Jordan cruiser.’”

Where to sit was another matter.

Bus seating is part of the routine of baseball. The manager goes up front. Before 1992, most managers sat in the first row on the right side, opposite the driver. That changed for a lot of skippers in May 1992 when Angels’ manager Buck Rodgers was badly injured when the lead team bus veered off the New Jersey Turnpike on a New York–to–Baltimore trip. Rodgers survived the crash, but his ordeal reminded managers that the person in the front right was the most exposed individual on the bus. When he became a manager, Terry Francona preferred the window seat in the second row behind the driver. From there he could talk to the driver without being too close to him, steer clear of disgruntled players, and stretch his ever-swollen legs toward the front or across the side—often across the ubiquitous cooler of beer.

Already a three-time NBA champ (he would win three more after baseball), Jordan was making $30 million per year in endorsements when he joined Francona’s bus-riding Barons in the Southern League in ’94. The Barons paid Jordan $850 per month and 35-year-old Terry Francona told Michael he had to run out his pop-ups.

Jordan was in the White Sox system because White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf also owned the Chicago Bulls. The White Sox made just a couple of requests of Francona: Don’t bat Michael in the number-nine spot—too embarrassing. And don’t refer to the experiment as a “circus.”

It could have been a circus, but Francona managed to keep things relatively normal.
Hard Copy
loved the Barons. Tom Brokaw would appear, and Francona would say, “Michael shows up on time, he works hard, and he’s a great guy.” And that was that. It was an adjustment for the rest of the minor leaguers—who are generally happy if their games are broadcast on the radio—but the manager was not going to be starstruck. Francona’s biggest concession to Jordan was to provide an all-access pass for Michael’s bodyguard, George Koehler. Jordan’s main contributions were the luxury bus and a club record 467,867 fans. The Barons finished 65–74. Jordan hit .202 with 51 RBI and 30 stolen bases.

“Michael respected what we were doing so much, and that made it work,” said Francona.

After the season, the White Sox asked Francona to manage Jordan again with the Scottsdale Scorpions in the Arizona Fall League. It was there that Francona first encountered Nomar Garciaparra, a young shortstop out of Georgia Tech who’d signed with the Red Sox.

Francona enjoyed his time with Jordan. They played golf together in Scottsdale with White Sox GM Ron Schueler and professional golfer Billy Mayfair. The manager beat Jordan out of $800 on the 18th hole when Mayfair got Francona out of a sand trap by throwing the Titleist onto the green when Jordan wasn’t looking.

A couple of times Francona even played in pickup basketball games with Jordan. Michael got angry once when an exhausted Francona took the last shot in a best-to-11 game.

“I always take the last shot,” said Jordan.

“Now you know how I feel when I watch you try to hit a curveball,” said the manager.

After the 1995 season in Birmingham, Francona returned to the big leagues as third-base coach of the 1996 Detroit Tigers under manager, and old friend, Buddy Bell. The ’96 Tigers were one of the most buffeted teams in hardball history, losing 109 games and providing nightly fodder for the wiseguys on ESPN. Francona was just happy to be back in the majors. The money was better. No more five-hour bus rides or Comfort Inns.

One of his favorite memories from the 1996 season was throwing batting practice to 11-year-old Prince Fielder in Tiger Stadium. Prince was the son of Tiger wideload first baseman Cecil Fielder, and the little big man put a couple of balls into the upper deck. Francona teased Prince when the youngster failed to pick up the balls in the cage after hitting. Picking up the balls in the cage after hitting is a universal practice in professional baseball—even if you are an 11-year-old future big league millionaire named Prince.

After the 1996 season, Francona got an important phone call from Tigers GM Randy Smith as he was driving from Detroit back to Tucson to join Jacque and the four kids.

“I was in Albuquerque and about up to my neck in Taco Bell wrappers when Randy called me,” Francona recalled. “I thought I was getting fired because we’d lost all those games. He said, ‘Do you know anybody with the Phillies? They want to interview you.’ I told him I didn’t know anyone with the Phillies. He said, ‘Well, give them a call.’ I immediately called Buddy Bell. He knew why I was calling. I asked what I should do, and he said, ‘Go interview. You won’t get the job, but it will be good experience.’ About three weeks later, I was the manager of the Phillies. I hadn’t had any major league interviews. I’d only been a major league coach for one year.”

The Phillies had fired Jim Fregosi after the ’96 season and were looking for a young talent to steer them through a rebuilding phase. They’d been in decline since losing the 1993 World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Francona was surprised to be considered. Phillies GM Lee Thomas had played many years against Tito, but Terry remembered only one encounter with the Phillies boss. Back in ’94, when he was managing Jordan in the Arizona Fall League, Thomas had asked Francona for a baseball autographed by Jordan.

“I’d have given him a whole autographed bat if I knew it would have given me a chance to manage,” said Francona.

Thomas checked with many of his baseball friends. He got a strong recommendation from Joe Torre, manager of the World Champion New York Yankees.

Francona was 36 years old when the Phillies named him manager. He was only five years removed from watching Gilligan, the Skipper, and Thurston Howell III on his townhouse couch in Tucson.

Armed with his first multi-year contract and a $50,000 mortgage loan from Phillies owner Bill Giles, he moved Jacque and the kids from Tucson to Yardley, Pennsylvania, just 32 miles from Veterans Stadium in downtown Philadelphia.

Francona’s four seasons as manager of the Phillies produced an aggregate record of 285–363. The Phillies never contended and never finished above .500. The media was tough, and the fans were worse. Former Phillies World Series hero Larry Bowa had been the scrappy favorite to replace Fregosi. Shortly after he was hired, Francona was booed at a Philadelphia 76ers game when his image appeared on the Jumbotron above center court. His tires were slashed on Fan Appreciation Day at Veterans Stadium. He was ridiculed for giving Scott Rolen a day off on Scott Rolen Bobblehead Day. He was ripped when he let Bobby Abreu sit out on opening day against Randy Johnson because Abreu didn’t want to face the fearsome southpaw. There was a popular notion that star pitcher Curt Schilling was running the team. All the experts said Francona was too much of a players’ manager. He didn’t have enough rules. There wasn’t enough discipline. He played cards with his ballplayers. Philadelphia sports talk jock Angelo Cataldi crushed Francona almost daily.

“They started moving my parking spot so I could sneak out the door,” Francona remembered. “People were getting aggressive.”

“It was hard seeing him get kicked around like that,” said Mills, who coached first base for Francona in Philadelphia. “He was doing a damn good job with what he had. The wiseguys on the radio didn’t know him and didn’t know what he was trying to do.”

Francona had a roster peppered with players who struggled at the big league level. His closer, Wayne Gomes, was rumored to be a fan of eating hot dogs in the bullpen during games.

“I brought him into a game one night, and he had mustard on his uniform,” Francona recalled. “I told him he had to cut that out, and he claimed the mustard got on him when a fan threw a hot dog at him. The worst part of the whole story was—we were playing at home! I remember walking back to the dugout thinking,
Boy, this is where I’m at in my career. My closer has mustard on his jersey.
”

Managing the Phillies was nothing like coaching third base for Buddy Bell in Detroit. He took the losses personally. Many a night a fretful Francona, lost in thought, would zip past the Yardley exit on Route 95 North, then turn back when he started seeing signs for New York. After losing 97 games in 2000, Francona was fired by Phillies general manager Ed Wade.

“I was fired on the last day of the season, before the game,” Francona remembered. “After the game, I went golfing with two of my coaches, Chuck Cottier and Millsie. It was weird because I knew the firing was coming. I thought,
This will be good. I’m done. I can take a deep breath. This will be a relief.
But it wasn’t. I realized that I had spent all this time with these people and I had all these emotions. It was hard for me. I didn’t handle it very well.”

He quickly landed another baseball job, one that didn’t require him to wear a uniform. In 2001 Francona served as a special assistant under Cleveland executives Mark Shapiro and (GM) John Hart. It gave him a new look at the inside operations of a baseball team. He traveled to minor league affiliates. He sat in on the draft. He scouted other major league teams, searching for a new center fielder for the Indians. (The Phillies provided citizen Francona with a security guard when he sat behind home plate at Veterans Stadium.) He ultimately recommended that the Indians acquire Milton Bradley, prophetically reporting, “Nobody comes close with tools, but my inability to connect with him throws up a little bit of a red flag.”

Francona’s first year out of uniform was a good learning experience, and more fun than he expected it to be.

He returned to the big league dugout as Jerry Narron’s bench coach with the Texas Rangers in 2002. This was somewhat awkward because a bench coach is generally a best friend and aide-de-camp of the manager and Francona was neither. He didn’t know Narron particularly well and resisted the opportunity when first approached by then–Texas GM Hart. Narron said he was comfortable with Francona, so they worked the ’02 season side by side in Arlington, Texas. The Rangers finished last, Narron was fired, and when Buck Showalter was hired, the entire staff went looking for new work.

Francona felt he was ready to manage again. Mets general manager Steve Phillips called him to interview for the job that came open when Bobby Valentine was fired. (The irony of this would not surface until 2011.) Francona knew he had no shot at the Mets job, but he went anyway and enjoyed his give-and-take with Phillips. The Mets boss explained that sometimes you have an interview for “down the road.” Francona appreciated Phillips’s candor and generosity with his time. Art Howe got the job—the same Art Howe who won 102 and 103 games his last two seasons working for Billy Beane.

Seattle was a more realistic option for Francona. The Mariners needed a manager, and Francona believed he had a chance. But something happened the night before he was scheduled to meet with Seattle boss Pat Gillick. Making notes, preparing thoughts in his Seattle hotel room, Francona felt pain in his chest. Then there was pain in his arms. Sweating, he told himself,
I came all the way out here to have a heart attack. I should have just done this at home.