Francona: The Red Sox Years (8 page)

In his box seat in the lower bowl of Yankee Stadium, a furious Henry turned to Lucchino and asked, “Can we fire him right now?”

It got away quickly after that. Hideki Matsui hit a ground-rule double to right, and Jorge Posada tied the game with a bloop double to center on Pedro’s 123rd pitch. Little finally came out to get Martinez.

The Red Sox lost in the bottom of the 11th when Aaron Boone launched a Tim Wakefield knuckleball over the wall in left.

Two nights later, with the 2003
WORLD SERIES
logo still embedded in the grass behind home plate at Fenway, David Wells threw the first pitch for the first game of the 99th World Series, played between the Florida Marlins and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium.

While the Marlins and Yankees played in the Bronx, Terry Francona was at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, on a recruiting visit with his son, Nick, a star left-handed pitcher at Lawrenceville Prep. Georgetown coach Pete Wilk annually invited four or five top recruits and their parents to the Hoyas’ fall-ball fund-raiser dinner. Boston multimedia personality Mike Barnicle was at the event with his three sons, including Nick Barnicle, a catcher on the Georgetown varsity. In between speeches, Barnicle approached Francona and suggested that Oakland’s bench coach should give the Red Sox a call.

“It’s a good fit,” Barnicle told Francona. “You’ve managed in the big leagues, you coached with the A’s, and you know the Red Sox. Your name ends in a vowel—Larry Lucchino will like that. You should give them a call.”

“The Red Sox already have a manager,” Francona told Barnicle. “They’re not going to fire a guy over one mistake.”

CHAPTER 4

B
ASEBALL COMMISSIONER BUD SELIG
has an unofficial rule prohibiting teams from making major announcements during the World Series. Selig doesn’t like teams making moves that detract attention from the Fall Classic.

On Monday, October 27, the first business day after the conclusion of the 2003 World Series, the Red Sox fired Grady Little, who had won 188 games in two seasons.

“I didn’t realize what was coming,” Francona said. “I actually thought Grady handled it pretty well that night. When he left Pedro in the game and they lost, I thought,
Okay, that’ll go away.
Now that I’ve been through it, I know.”

Theo Epstein was the man in charge of replacing Grady Little. In the autumn of 2003, Epstein was already a rising front-office star who breathed youth and charisma into the stodgy offices on Yawkey Way. He was part of a new generation of baseball executives grounded in knowledge and data rather than experience on the playing field. Many of them were educated at elite universities and grew up reading about baseball, worshiping at the altar of Peter Gammons, the Hall of Fame
Boston Globe
scribe who invented the Sunday notes columns that became a staple of newspapers across the country in the 1970s.

Theo and his twin brother, Paul, were born on December 29, 1973, children of brilliant, liberal parents who taught their sons to think independently and never root for the New York Yankees. The Epsteins are a family of letters and service. Theo’s grandfather, Oscar-winner Philip Epstein, wrote
Casablanca
with his twin brother Julius. Theo’s dad, Leslie, is a novelist who for many years served as director of the creative writing program at Boston University. Along with their older sister, Anya, the Epstein twins grew up in a roomy apartment building on Parkman Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. With no lawn of their own to mow, the boys played baseball and soccer at the nearby Amory Street playground and made a makeshift Fenway out of the concrete floor and walls of the parking lot behind the Holiday Inn along the Beacon Street trolley line. The Epstein twins were city Pony League champs as members of the Brookline Yankees, but were more accomplished as soccer players at Brookline High School, where the Warriors would make it to the state tournament in Theo’s senior season.

When Theo and Paul were 12, they nervously watched the Red Sox play the Mets in the 1986 World Series. Fenway was just a couple of stops down the Green (C) Line, and the Red Sox were a passion. The twins were home alone on Saturday night, watching the World Series on television, when the Sox were set to finally win a championship. The boys hatched a plan for the magic moment: they wanted to be suspended in midair—not of this world—when the Sox finally clinched it. Every time the Sox got to within one strike of winning, the boys would leap off the couch. It was exhausting and frightening as Calvin Schiraldi, then Bob Stanley, delivered a series of pitches, none of which delivered the long-awaited grail. Over and over, the boys leapt into the air, only to crash to the floor, disrupting the neighbors downstairs and carving more pain into their preteen souls. They saw three consecutive Met singles, a passed ball that was ruled a wild pitch, then a hideous, unspeakable Little League error—the ground ball between Bill Buckner’s wickets. There went Game 6. When the Sox lost Game 7 two days later, the ’86 World Series had christened and damaged a new generation of Sox sufferers. It broke Theo’s 12-year-old heart and made him a card-carrying member of a group that would come to be known as Red Sox Nation.

Theo’s brother Paul grew up to be a caregiver for troubled youths at Brookline High School. His sister Anya married Oscar-nominated screenwriter Dan Futterman (
Capote
) and went to Hollywood, where she enjoys a career as a film and television producer and writer (
Homicide, In Treatment
). Theo mapped out a career in baseball that may land him a plaque in Cooperstown.

After graduating from Brookline High, Epstein entered Yale in the fall of 1991, landed a gig with the school’s daily newspaper, and plotted to get himself into a baseball front office. Sitting in his dorm room in New Haven, it was easy to see that the Baltimore Orioles might be a good place to start. In ’91 the Orioles were owned by Yale grad Eli Jacobs, and former Bulldog running back Calvin Hill was working in the Baltimore front office. Hill is famous for multiple reasons. He was Yale’s running back in the infamous 29–29 Harvard-Yale game of 1969, and one of his fraternity brothers was George W. Bush. He played 12 seasons in the National Football League, made four Pro Bowls, and won a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys. He is a featured character in Garry Trudeau’s long-running
Doonesbury
cartoon strip. His wife was Hillary Rodham’s roommate at Wellesley, and his son is NBA legend Grant Hill. That’s a lot of celebrity for one individual, but Red Sox fans should embrace Calvin Hill as the man who got Theo Epstein his first baseball job.

Knowing his Yale roots might get him noticed, Theo wrote a letter to Hill in 1992, searching for an internship. Hill put the letter in front of Dr. Charles Steinberg, the Orioles’ director of public affairs. Steinberg knew what it was like to get into baseball at a young age: he had grown up in Baltimore and as a 20-year-old was assigned the task of arranging Earl Weaver’s “matchup” index cards—a skill that Theo and other Gammons Youth would turn into hardball science in the 21st century. Steinberg invited freshman Theo for an interview during Yale’s spring break, and thus was born a relationship that had enormous impact on the World Champion Red Sox of the 21st century—before everything soured inside Fenway Park’s ancient walls.

Epstein spent the summers of 1992 and 1993 in the front office of the Baltimore Orioles, assembling a project to pay tribute to baseball’s Negro Leagues, which had been shamelessly dismissed, even in the years after Jackie Robinson integrated the major leagues by coming aboard with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Epstein’s Negro League project was a featured attraction when baseball’s All-Star Game came to Camden Yards in the summer of 1993, and Steinberg insists that the exhibit was responsible for Negro Leaguer Leon Day’s plaque in Cooperstown. The project also launched the career of the man who hired Terry Francona to manage the Boston Red Sox.

In Baltimore, young Epstein caught the eye of Larry Lucchino, the man who ran the Orioles and built Camden Yards. Soon after Camden was built, Lucchino went to the Padres, taking Steinberg with him. In San Diego in 1995, Steinberg called for Epstein, who was graduating from Yale. Twenty-one-year-old Epstein started at the bottom. He was responsible for the messages that appeared on the Jumbotron (“Julie, Will You Marry Me?”) and monitored the whereabouts of “Flag Man,” a Padre mascot. He also handed out press notes to baseball writers in the press box. He didn’t have his driver’s license and relied on Steinberg for rides to and from work. At the urging of Lucchino and Steinberg, he attended the University of San Diego law school.

Theo moved into the Padres’ baseball operations department in 1997. He also graduated from law school, passed the bar, and was immediately offered a $140,000 position with an Anaheim law firm. He was making less than $30,000 with the Padres. Reacting to the offer, San Diego GM Kevin Towers bumped Epstein to $80,000 and made him director of baseball operations in 2000. In February 2002, after the Red Sox sale to John Henry, Tom Werner, and Lucchino was formalized, the Red Sox fired GM Dan Duquette, hired veteran company man Mike Port as interim GM, and hired Epstein as Port’s assistant.

It was always understood that Port was a short-term solution for the new Red Sox owners. During the 2002 Sox season, Epstein reported directly to Henry and Lucchino, but he was not the GM-in-waiting. Henry had his eye on Oakland superstar GM Billy Beane. When he owned the Florida Marlins, Henry had been wildly impressed with a presentation Beane made to baseball executives. Henry loved the way Beane was able to get the cash-strapped A’s into the playoffs for three straight seasons. Henry’s entire life was rooted in mathematics, and he saw Beane as a kindred spirit.

When the Sox finished out of the playoffs in 2002, while Oakland won 103 games with a $41 million payroll, Henry went after Beane. Henry offered Beane $12.5 million over five seasons, and when Beane agreed, Henry uncorked a bottle of champagne. A day later, the Sox owner was shocked when Beane changed his mind and decided to stay with Oakland. The Sox had few realistic options. Toronto’s J. P. Ricciardi, a central Massachusetts native, had also taken himself out of the running. Somewhat apprehensive because of Epstein’s age, Henry and Lucchino agreed to take a chance on their boy wonder. On November 25, 2002, 28-year-old Theo Epstein became the youngest general manager in the history of baseball. He promised to build a “scouting and player development machine.” In anti-Duquette fashion, he also said, “I’m not standing here thinking I have all the answers.”

Theo’s first game as GM was a disaster. With no established closer, the Sox were forced to go with a “bullpen by committee”—a collection of kids and veterans who’d never demonstrated they had what it took to finish games in the big leagues. It smacked of new-age Bill James arrogance, the Sox insisting that they knew more than anybody else. The “committee” coughed up a 4–1 lead in the ninth on opening day, losing when Tampa leadoff hitter Carl Crawford hit a three-run walk-off homer off Chad Fox.

“That was a kick in the gut,” said Epstein. “Guys in the media were licking their chops because the whole bullpen story was so easy to write.”

The 2003 Sox discovered David Ortiz, won 95 games, and came back from 0–2 against Oakland to make it to the seventh game of the ALCS. They came within five outs of making it to the World Series.

After coming so close, Epstein came out swinging in the winter of 2003–2004. The Sox successfully traded for stopper Curt Schilling and signed Oakland’s closer Foulke (no more committee). They openly courted the Rangers’ Alex Rodriguez. They placed Manny Ramirez on waivers. They made a three-team deal with Texas and Chicago in which Ramirez and Nomar Garciaparra would have been replaced by A-Rod and Magglio Ordonez. The deal was voided by Selig, however, and A-Rod wound up going to the Yankees on Valentine’s Day, right before the start of spring training.

Epstein also made his first managerial hire: 44-year-old Terry Francona.

Francona had been on a couple of job interviews by the time Epstein first called. Two days after Grady Little’s disastrous decision in Game 7 of the ALCS not to relieve a fatigued Pedro Martinez, Francona flew to Chicago to meet with White Sox general manager Ken Williams at a restaurant near O’Hare.

“It was a difficult interview,” Francona said. “Every time I started to say something meaningful, the waiter would come by and ruin my momentum. You get a feeling of how things are going right away in a situation like that. I knew I wasn’t going to be their manager.”

The White Sox hired Marlins coach Ozzie Guillen and two years later won the 2005 World Series.

The day after the Sox fired Grady Little, Francona met with Jim Beattie and Mike Flanagan, co-general managers of the Baltimore Orioles. Flanagan and Beattie had already interviewed local favorites Eddie Murray, Rich Dauer, Rick Dempsey, and Sam Perlozzo. The Oriole GMs began the Francona interview by asking him how he’d feel about inheriting the coaching staff left behind by Mike Hargrove. This didn’t sit well with Francona. He’d been “assigned” to Jerry Narron in Texas. He believed a manager should have input into the naming of a coaching staff. It sounded as if the Orioles just wanted to change managers and stick with the same losing culture. The Baltimore interview did not go well. It got worse when the Orioles had him meet with the Baltimore-Washington media after the session.

Oriole beat reporters quickly asked about Francona’s four sub-.500 seasons in Philadelphia.

“Philadelphia may not want to hear this, but it’s almost like having a mulligan,” he answered. “I had my chance to make my mistakes, to learn from them, and to gain confidence, just like a player does.”

Francona was right about folks in Philadelphia not wanting to hear about his “mulligan.” His phone lit up on the drive back to Yardley.

“I kind of put my foot in my mouth on that one,” he admitted. “What I meant was that you learn from your mistakes, but it didn’t come out that way. I knew I really misspoke.”