Francona: The Red Sox Years (32 page)

In the final game of the World Series, Lester smothered the Rockies for five innings while the Sox scored twice off Aaron Cook. When Lester walked Garrett Atkins on a 3–2 pitch with two outs and nobody aboard in the sixth, Francona walked out of the third-base dugout to pull his 22-year-old starter. Manny Delcarmen was ready in the bullpen. The manager found himself resisting the urge to hug Lester, right there on the mound with the whole world watching.

“Junior, that’s plenty,” Francona said, taking the ball from the reluctant lefty. “You did great.”

Typically, Lester said nothing. He put his head down and shuffled off toward the dugout.

“It was like he had climbed Mount Everest,” said Francona. “I know the game wasn’t over, but you have to appreciate a moment like that. I knew his mom and dad were there. It was emotional. Having him be a part of that game meant as much to me as anything else.”

With the Sox leading, 4–1, Francona pulled Manny Ramirez for defensive purposes before the bottom of the eighth. When Atkins hit a two-run homer off Okajima to cut the lead to 4–3, Francona started to fret. His heart stopped when Rockie flyweight Jamey Carroll hit a rocket to deep left off Papelbon in the ninth.

“As manager, you are paid to be a worrier,” Francona recalled. “We were up three games to none and had a lead in Game 4, but I started thinking of all the things that could go wrong. Okie was on fumes. We’d used him a lot. When Carroll crushed that ball, I was thinking,
Fuck, this game is tied. What are we gonna do?
It’s amazing how you worry about everything. It’s not that you’re not confident in your team, but it’s your job to see that nothing goes wrong.”

The game was not tied. Ellsbury, who’d moved from center to left when Crisp came in for Manny, ran back to the wall and made a leaping catch.

Sitting on the bench, happy he wasn’t screwing up the final game of the World Series, Ramirez yelled over to Francona.

“Nice move, taking me out,” said Manny.

Francona just smiled.

There was another issue in the Sox dugout at the finish. Francona had gone to the bathroom when the Rockies made a double-switch in the eighth, and he was absent when home-plate umpire Chuck Meriwether approached Mills with lineup changes made by Rockies manager Clint Hurdle. When Francona got back to his position, Mills handed him the lineup with the changes. As the ninth inning unfolded, it was clear the Sox lineup card was wrong. When Seth Smith came up with two outs in the ninth, batting in the leadoff spot where pitcher Manuel Corpas had been placed during the double-switch, Francona and Mills started arguing.

“The lineup card is fucked up,” screamed the manager.

“Not my fault,” said Mills. “Those are the changes he gave me.”

“We were a hitter off,” said Farrell. “We knew it was wrong. Tito was jumping Millsie’s ass.”

“I’m all fucked up with this,” said an exasperated Francona.

On and on they went. Right up until Papelbon fanned Smith on a 2–2 pitch. The argument stopped and the two friends embraced. They were on top of the baseball world. Again. But the lineup card had to be tossed. It would not look good to have an incorrect document in a glass case in Cooperstown.

“By the time that game ended, the card was useless,” said Francona. “Scratches everywhere. But I didn’t want to run out there in the middle of the inning and interrupt everything with Pap throwing 100 miles an hour.”

Just as the 2004 Sox caught fire when all seemed lost, the 2007 team turned into a steamroller when it mattered most. They never lost a game after Game 4 in Cleveland. The Red Sox outscored the Indians 33–5 over the final 31 innings of the ALCS and demolished the Colorado Rockies, 29–10, in the World Series. They outscored the opposition by an aggregate 62–15 in seven-plus games. Lowell, who hit .415 in four games against the Rockies, was named World Series MVP. Francona became the only manager in hardball history with an 8–0 record in the Fall Classic. He finished fourth in voting for American League Manager of the Year.

“It was kind of crazy,” said Pedroia. “At the end, it didn’t seem that far from when we were down 3–1 to Cleveland. When we won that last game, it still felt like we had to come back and play another game. That’s what I felt like. It was crazy. Every move and every break seemed like it went our way. That’s what you need. Then again, maybe it was just us being good.

“I think it was just the fight in us. Everyone was on Coco all year about his hitting, but he played great defense. Lugo had a tough year, but in the playoffs he made great plays on defense. Everyone thought I stunk in the beginning, and I ended up playing well. We were kind of the underdogs, and we proved everyone wrong, and it was fun.”

“That was the height of me and Theo being on the same page,” said Francona. “In ’04 we were kind of naive and doing it our way. I think that was a little overblown, but by ’07 we were working together really well. Theo and I had our blowups for sure. There were times when he was wrong and times when I was wrong, but when the shit was hitting the fan, I knew right where I could turn, and I always did, and he always had a good answer. I always told him that the Yankees’ best player was Jeter, but our best player, Manny, when he leaves the batter’s box, doesn’t even know what town he’s in. That had to change and it did. I knew we needed talent, but we needed guys who gave a shit about winning, and I thought we got more toward that in 2007.”

Fox TV set up a temporary stage in the Sox clubhouse for the presentation of the World Series trophy. Epstein grabbed Francona to join Henry, Werner, and Lucchino on the stage with Fox’s Jeanne Zelasko and Commissioner Bud Selig. As more people hopped on the stage to share and soak in the glory, Epstein and Francona were nudged to the far left of the plywood platform.

“We’d always joked about how certain folks would only show up when things were going really well,” said Epstein. “We’d noticed it in ’04, so we were wondering how it would go this time. We were both standing at the end of the stage, and there was a lot of trophy-passing, and it seemed like an afterthought when they passed it our way and we were kind of elbowed off a little bit.”

When the temporary staging reached its saturation point, Francona fell off the side—a moment of infinite humor and symbolism.

The manager looked up at Epstein, laughed, shook his head, and said, “Theo, I think my work is done here,” then went off to join his players.

“It was kind of funny,” he recalled later. “They were all into getting the trophy and they didn’t even know I was there.”

Rarely credited, ever-blamed. It’s part of the job for anyone who manages the Boston Red Sox.

CHAPTER 11

R
ED SOX NATION WAS GLOBAL
. The Sox were the most popular sports team on the planet. The Sox were hot. They were trendy. It was almost impossible to travel anywhere without spotting a Sox cap, and many of those caps were pink or camouflage. Garb was sold by the truckload, and tickets were impossible to acquire without going through the dreaded “secondary markets,” which somehow managed to get into business with the ball club. New Red Sox books hit the shelves in the spring of 2008, but they were no longer stories about a team that overcame insurmountable odds and shucked off an 86-year-old drought. The 2008 book titles were boastful and conceited. Tony Massarotti wrote
Dynasty,
and Michael Holley penned
Red Sox Rule.

The Sox were no longer the little engine that could. They were not lovable losers. They were not Cub-like. Their fans were not needy. Hubris and arrogance became the trademarks of the Boston baseball fan. The Sox had become like the Yankees. And ownership seized the day.

This is when Red Sox Nation and the Fenway game-day experience jumped the proverbial shark. There was scalding demand for all things Red Sox, and everything was for sale. Spontaneity was replaced by commercialization of just about everything related to the Boston baseball club. In 2008 the Red Sox became the first team in baseball history to provide fans with two hours of daily live television coverage of
spring training drills.
Sox flagship station NESN aired weeks of bunt drills and pitchers’ fielding practice.

More than the Freedom Trail or Harvard Yard, Fenway Park became a destination for tourists who touched down at Logan Airport. Tour groups ponied up their dollars and filed through Fenway at all hours. Drivers barreling toward downtown Boston on the Massachusetts Turnpike noticed that the ballpark lights were always illuminated at nighttime, game or no game. It didn’t matter if the Sox were out of season or out of town. There was 24/7 renovation and construction going on in the ballpark, and the club-level function rooms were rented almost every night. If you had enough money, you could have your wedding reception or your child’s bar mitzvah at Fenway.

Under the direction of Lucchino, the savvy “new” owners cleverly and regularly reached out to Boston mayor Thomas Menino. Patriots owner Bob Kraft and his son Jonathan famously failed to bring the mayor into the loop when they attempted to build a new stadium in South Boston in the 1990s, and it proved costly. The Sox owners were determined not to repeat the misstep. The Red Sox of the 21st century consulted the mayor on every ball-club decision that had even the remotest impact on city business. Nothing was too small.

The relentless courtship of Menino paid big dividends as the Sox rebuilt Fenway Park. (According to the ball club, it spent $285 million on Fenway renovations in Henry’s first ten years of ownership.) With Menino’s help, the ball club developed a close relationship with the Boston Redevelopment Authority, an urban renewal agency with sweeping powers. The BRA gave the Sox permission to build Green Monster seats that hovered in the airspace over Lansdowne Street. The BRA also took control of Yawkey Way (the avenue outside of Fenway’s main gate) on game days, allowing the Red Sox to use a city street for a private-enterprise block party for 81 dates, plus the playoffs. The sweetheart deal enabled the Sox to sell beer, peanuts, and Crackerjacks on city property while fans were entertained by stilt-walkers, face-painters, balloon-makers, and a band. Fans could also purchase beer and wine and a variety of foods, including a Luis Tiant Cuban sandwich. NESN set up a Yawkey Way stage for 90-minute pregame shows.

According to a February 2011
Boston Globe
editorial, “The team has earned an estimated $45 million in food vending and Green Monster ticket revenue in exchange for average lease payments to the city of about $186,000 a year.”

Every Fenway home opener featured something new inside the ballpark. In 2002 the Sox added dugout seats and the Yawkey Way concourse. The next year it was the Monster Seats—named the best seats in baseball by ESPN SportsTravel and
USA Today.
In 2004 the ball club added right-field roof seats. Then came the third-base concourse and the Game On sports bar. In 2006 the Sox gutted the aquarium-like, glass-encased high-roller section (the 600 Club) in the upper level behind home plate and created plush new executive suites—the EMC Club (EMC is a Massachusetts-based corporation that sells data storage products) and State Street Pavilion—on levels 3 and 4 of the ball- yard. In 2007 the Sox added the Jordan’s Furniture third-base deck. In 2008 the club added “Coca-Cola Corner” and the Bleacher Bar and expanded the State Street Pavilion. Fenway’s right-field roof was renovated for 2009.

Mayor Menino told the
Globe,
“People come to see the ballpark, to see the Green Monster, to be close to the players. Boston must balance development growth with the preservation of what makes our city so livable—our history, character, scale and charm. We are distinct from other American cities because we view our buildings as resources, not liabilities.”

Lucchino lieutenant Dr. Charles Steinberg put an indelible mark on the game-day experience at Fenway from 2001 to 2008. (Steinberg left the Sox after the 2007 World Series to work for Dodger owner Frank McCourt, then Bud Selig, before returning to the Red Sox for the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park in the spring of 2012.) In 2003 Steinberg hired Ray Charles to perform the national anthem on opening day—leading to a memorable moment when Tom Werner was observed waving to Charles. In his Fenway years, Steinberg brought back the Cowsills, the Standells, and James Taylor. He borrowed an old Oriole stunt and had a pretty young woman dressed in an old-time softball uniform sweeping bases between innings. He worked with a local band, the Dropkick Murphys, to come up with a modern rendition of “Tessie,” which had been a Red Sox anthem sung by the Royal Rooters in the 1903 World Series. Dr. Steinberg’s ultimate production might have been the pregame appearance in Game 7 of the ALCS of Irish step dancers on a stage in center field. The curly-topped lasses high-stepped while the Dropkicks played from a platform adjacent to the center-field bleachers. The Cleveland Indians never recovered and were beaten, 11–2.

“Sweet Caroline” evolved into a Red Sox anthem. The song was introduced to Fenway crowds in 1998 when a Sox employee’s wife gave birth to a child named Caroline. By 2008 the Neil Diamond ditty was as much a part of a Fenway game as the national anthem or the seventh-inning stretch. It was played before the Red Sox came to bat in the bottom of the eighth, and it kept a lot of trendy fans (“Pink Hats,” as they came to be known) in the ballpark long after they lost interest in the actual baseball game. Starting in 1997, the public-address system played the Standells’ “Dirty Water” at the end of each Red Sox victory.

Beginning in 2003, Fenway also became a major concert venue when the Sox left town in midsummer. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were followed by Jimmy Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band, the Rolling Stones, the Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow, The Police, and Neil Diamond himself in 2008. Soon to follow were Willie Nelson, Phish, Paul McCartney, Aerosmith, the J. Geils Band, the New Kids on the Block, and the Backstreet Boys. The shows sometimes disrupted baseball activity. The Rolling Stones played two shows in August 2005, and their stage, which was only slightly smaller than terminal D at Logan Airport, ruined the outfield grass. The entire field had to be re-sodded before the Sox got back from an 11-game road trip.