Red Sox Rule (20 page)

The house came calling in the ninth when Julio Lugo, the number-nine hitter, singled. If the Red Sox stayed out of a double play, Ortiz would have an at bat. The boisterous rookie, Dustin Pedroia, was up and he showed that he also grasped subtlety: He moved Lugo to second with a ground ball, which virtually guaranteed that Scioscia would have to make a decision to prolong the season. Everyone knew it was that serious; did anyone, even in L.A., think the Angels could beat the Red Sox in three consecutive games? Not with Beckett, the exacting and angry guardian, scheduled to be at the Game 5 gate.

So now there was a runner in scoring position, and Scioscia had to bring all the weight he had in the bullpen. He called for Francisco Rodriguez, K-Rod, hoping that he could live up to the nickname. K-Rod was facing Youkilis, and on this night, K-Rod was dealing things that caused Youkilis to be a hair late, just scraping to put his bat on a couple of those fastballs. It wasn’t a long at bat: Youkilis went down, swinging at air.

Now it was time for the real Fenway. It was the Fenway that Jacque Francona saw in 2003, when her husband was a bench coach with those A’s who were trying to knock the Red Sox out of the playoffs. She was stunned by the wall of sound, trapped in a tiny old park, 37,000 fans pleading and encouraging all at once. They were at it again, pounding the dugout, pounding the walls along the baselines, chanting
M-V-P
and
Pa-pi
and
Let’s Go Red Sox,
anticipating something from the giant Ortiz, who had a history of lifting the thoughts from your imagination and bringing them to life. You dreamed home runs and he gave them to you.

But New Englanders aren’t the only ones with imaginations; the Angels, remember, aren’t that far from Hollywood. Scioscia was
aware of Ortiz’s history, too, and he made his decision: Ortiz would not beat them. He was walked, for the fifth time in the series.

Even before public-address announcer Carl Beane rolled out his unique pronunciation—
Mah-knee
—of who was up next, the crowd was in rhythm.
Man-knee, Man-knee, Man-knee
…Everything from the past was forgiven at this moment. He was out for a month with a strained oblique? Hmmph. Shame on those quack doctors for keeping him out so long!
You the man, Man-knee
. They wore his jerseys and T-shirts, sometimes looked the other way when he played the field, and never turned away when he was at the plate.

They knew the routine. His batting helmet was filthy, the “B” barely visible behind half-dry pine tar and ancient dirt. He’d tap his helmet, spit from the huge wad of chew in his cheek, take a few practice swings, and stare in. When he stood at the plate before swinging, he was everything old-timers had never seen: dreadlocks so long and thick that neither his stocking cap nor helmet could hold them down; baggy pants, so baggy that no one knew just how solid his base was, cast-iron calves that wouldn’t move unless he wanted them to; his jersey was a size too big, giving him a sloppy look, but he was a workout fiend, from bench presses to Pilates three times per week with a certified instructor; he wore huge red wristbands with “24” grooved into them, just in case you didn’t know who he was.

A Manny swing was a different story. A Manny swing got the old-timers nodding: it was what fathers hoped their kids could mimic, because they hadn’t been able to do it themselves. A Manny swing was a rare gift: body in perfect alignment; complete control of every movement, body control that only the world’s best modern and ballet dancers understood; head down, hands and weight back. Perfect.

That swing was so perfect in Game 2 that Manny pulled it out of its golden sleeve just once in the ninth. He didn’t swing at
K-Rod’s first pitch, which was clearly a ball. On the second one, he got what every slugger in the big leagues wants: a perfect swing colliding with a mistake. Most of the time, perfection is able to win, which is what happened on a Friday night at Fenway. He took a swing at a fastball and knocked it deep to left field, out of sight, ending the ball game and, unofficially, the series. He put his hands in the air, and so did the crowd, and everyone seemed to wait for someone else to take the group photo.

One thing Scioscia could have done, maybe, was walk Ortiz and Manny. But not many managers would do that, pushing the winning run to third base with the bases loaded. At some point, you have to bring out your best and take your chances. Scioscia did and it wasn’t good enough. It was the story of the short series.

There were a couple of chartered buses waiting for the Red Sox as they exited Fenway early Saturday morning. As they boarded the buses, headed to the airport, they were saluted by crowds who waited outside steel barriers separating them from the players’ parking lot. They must have known that they’d be seeing each other soon.

Game 3, the final one of the series, was in Anaheim and it was predictable as well as absurd. There was yet another walk and homer for Ortiz, who finished the series batting .714, another homer for Ramirez, and a 100-pitch, seven-inning scoreless start for Schilling. Each of those things was plausible, but the seven-run seventh was not. It was all bookkeeping after a while, anyway, and the three-game totals—19 to 4, Red Sox—only served to put a number on what many had predicted before Game 1.

Before the first champagne bottle was uncorked, a logical question hovered: who’s next?

The Yankees were scheduled to play the fourth game of their series with the Indians the next night. The smart money was on Cleve
land because New York didn’t have what either the Red Sox or Indians had; they didn’t have a Beckett or a Carmona, an ace other teams feared. The man who was supposed to be their number-one pitcher, Chien-Ming Wang, had given up eight earned runs in Game 1 of the first-round series. And that was his high point. He was miserable in Game 4, lasting just one sorry inning and allowing four earned runs.

Smart money won and the Yankees were gone. The loss would trigger their own series of changes with the departure of Joe Torre and the fading of George Steinbrenner. An era was coming to an end, but Francona would have the off-season to contemplate that. Right now it was time for the Indians.

T
he Cleveland–Boston series pitted upper-middle-class friends from Ohio against wealthy friends from New England. The Indians’ payroll was $61 million, not even half of the $140 million-plus the Red Sox were spending.

“I can see a player exactly the same as Theo sees him,” says Indians GM Mark Shapiro. “But at times, I have financial restrictions that prevent me from doing things that he can do.”

Shapiro chose his words carefully, because he still remembers his first meeting with former NFL coach Bill Parcells. Shapiro and Scott Pioli of the Patriots are best friends, so naturally Shapiro attended Pioli’s wedding. Pioli’s bride was Dallas Parcells, daughter of the ex-coach. They met at the rehearsal dinner, and Bill Parcells asked the young executive how things were going with the baseball team. Clearly, it was a setup. Parcells didn’t want a detailed answer, but he was beginning to get one from Shapiro.

“We’ve got some guys hurt…We’re not doing quite as well as we expected in this area…”

Shapiro continued to speak, not noticing that Parcells was beginning to turn up his nose. Then, unable to take it anymore,
Parcells interrupted: “Hey, Mark. Always remember this: nobody gives a shit. Okay? They really don’t.” He explained that ownership, members of the media, and fans really don’t care what your problems are. All they want to know is if the team is winning or not. Parcells walked away.

The introductory phrase was still ringing in Shapiro’s ears when he went to the men’s room later. He was in there, and seconds afterward, so was Parcells. They were side by side at the sink, and Shapiro was looking straight ahead. He didn’t want to make any eye contact and get another lecture.

Too bad.

“Remember: nobody gives a shit,” Parcells said as he walked out the door.

Shapiro had called Francona after he was fired in Philadelphia and offered him a chance to work in the front office. Francona’s other options were what he described as “easy” coaching gigs, and he wanted to do something different. His self-esteem had taken a blow in Philadelphia, but back then he didn’t know what he didn’t know. Example: he never had a computer while working for the Phillies, and as much as he knew in his heart that his team didn’t have all the necessary parts to compete, it’s still hard to accept four losing seasons on your watch. Shapiro hired him in 2001, empowered him, and listened to him. When he told Francona that he was looking for a center fielder and explained what the restrictions were, Francona threw himself into scouting. He even made sure that he happened to bump into the players in hotel lobbies, to see what they were like away from the park.

When his mission was over, he had three names for his boss. To show how serious he was about listening to Francona, Shapiro acquired two of the players, Milton Bradley and Alex Escobar, whom
Francona recommended. It was good to be heard, and it was something to watch the brains at work in that Cleveland front office.

But the issue was fire. Francona could sit with you all day and tell you who could play baseball and who could not. That was easy, and it was not managing. Managing was relationships, seeing the same players daily and understanding what got them going. So whether you won or lost, you were still going through something with those players. From a manager’s perspective, there was an adrenaline rush to satisfy the thirst of a competitor, and there was a desire to win with people you gave a damn about.

It’s one of the reasons he’ll always appreciate Schilling, no matter how much the pitcher calls into WEEI, WIP, WFAN, or any other station near you. He’ll appreciate him because, in the depressing days of Philadelphia, Schilling was still a professional. He’d ask him to be somewhere, and Schilling would show up. He’d say that something needed to be done, and Schilling would go above and beyond to do it.

Not only did the job with Shapiro convince Francona that he wanted to manage again—as well as help him make an early contact with Pioli—leaving that job and returning to the field put him in contact with people who have made him a much stronger leader. His next job after Cleveland, in 2002, took him to Texas, where he worked with DeMarlo Hale.

“D, if I ever get a managing job again, I’m taking you with me,” he told him. “You’re good.” He liked the way players trusted Hale, he liked his preparation, and he appreciated how self-critical he was when he made a mistake on the field.

In Texas, he also met the sports psychologist Don Kalkstein, who had worked with the Rangers and the Mavericks, and he was liked by athletes from the city, the suburbs, Australia, and Africa.
Francona watched him, too, knowing that he’d have a place for him if he ever got another shot.

In 2007, his chance of getting another championship was being blocked by the Indians and Shapiro, the GM who had helped make him championship-ready in the first place. He had introduced him to Pioli, too, so he tried not to make it too awkward before Game 1 in Boston. Pioli was in Francona’s office, speaking with the manager and his son, Nick. At one point, Francona looked at Pioli and said, “Aw, get out of here. I know you have to go over and talk to Mark. He’s your best friend.”

Pioli made the walk from the first-base dugout—with Nick Francona—toward the third, to speak with Shapiro. There were so many connections in the series, from the front office to the field, that it was dizzying. Coco Crisp and Ramirez were former Indians in Boston; Trot Nixon and manager Eric Wedge were former Red Sox in Cleveland; Farrell and Francona were teammates in Cleveland who went on to work in front-office jobs for Cleveland and now coached together in Boston.

Just like in the previous Game 1, there wouldn’t be much an opposing team could do with Beckett. This time, he did have good reason to yell about something after the first inning. In their scouting meetings, the Red Sox had noticed that Travis Hafner was a half-second late turning on fastballs, so that was a note Farrell could take to his pitchers. What the scouts didn’t know was that there would be a strong wind blowing out to center, and if Hafner was a little late on the fastball, contact could still mean a home run. So Hafner got his home run, Beckett yelled, and the Red Sox scored the next eight runs of the game.

By the sixth, there was media talk of taking Beckett out early and having him fresh to bring back in the fourth game instead of the scheduled fifth. That subject would come up a lot in the next
week, and it was one of the things that turned Francona into one of the most cursed names in town. But that was for later. Game 1 was a fulfillment of the Leather Couch Prophecy: the Red Sox won 10 to 3, and Sabathia, a durable and dynamic pitcher in the regular season, had his second bad start of the playoffs.

The series got no clearer after the second game, and didn’t really take on its personality—panic, for New Englanders—until after the fourth. But in Game 2, the Red Sox were able to strip the mystique away from Carmona, just as they had done with Sabathia. Carmona had control problems, and he had reached 100 pitches without completing five innings. That was good.

It also helped Francona to know, for future late-inning card games, that he had taken a huge one, Rafael Perez, out of Wedge’s hand. Perez’s earned-run average during the regular season was 1.78, and if you combined his ERA with Rafael Betancourt’s 1.47, it was still lower than closer Joe Borowski’s, which was over 5. So they were so exceptional in setting him up that he often had wiggle room for his adventurous ninth innings.

The other side of the Game 2 story was that Schilling was having his problems, too, and he lasted just two outs longer than Carmona. It was the game that many had expected, although no one saw Carmona and Schilling checking out of it so early. It was tied at 6 in the 9th, and going into the top of the 11th, Francona had already used Papelbon for two innings, and he’d gone to Manny Delcarmen, Okajima, and Mike Timlin before him.

He was going to have to go to Eric Gagne.

Red Sox fans had long given up on him and couldn’t wait to see him leave town as a free agent. He was more unpopular than Drew, who at least had won some games for the team. “He’s a lot better than he’s shown here,” Francona said of Gagne. “He happened to struggle at a bad time, in the wrong place.” Gagne made people
jumpy; his apparent discomfort made others uncomfortable, and there were groans when the bullpen door opened and he was seen running out of it. He did run out in the 11th, and he wasn’t all that bad: he got Casey Blake to strike out, and he gave up a single to Grady Sizemore. When he walked Asdrubal Cabrera, his night was over, and he had to know he’d be the target, along with Francona, if the Red Sox didn’t get out of the inning.

They didn’t get out for what seemed like an hour. The Indians scored seven in the top of the 11th to pull away, and run back to Cleveland with a tied series and, with the next three games in Ohio, home field advantage.

This wasn’t the Cleveland that Francona and Farrell knew nearly 20 years ago. The ballpark, Jacobs Field, was just 13 years old, and it had fans who wanted to sit in it. Francona and Farrell had played in a drafty football stadium, built on a landfill by Lake Erie. George Brett once said that Cleveland Stadium was so empty that he could hear the few fans there teasing him about hemorrhoids. If you didn’t hear conversations, you heard the drum of John Adams, echoing off 70,000 empty seats.

When the Indians moved to Jacobs Field, they left the football stadium but brought the football crowd, a crowd that frantically waved white towels and cheered each pitch, as if their team needed a stop on third-and-long. It was quite an atmosphere. When the Indians were able to take Games 3 and 4 in front of that crowd, you could see a bit of hope dilating the city’s sad eyes, eyes that had been deadened by Michael Jordan, John Elway, and—a half-century earlier—Willie Mays. The Indians hadn’t won a World Series since 1948, the Browns hadn’t won a championship since 1964, and the Cavaliers had never won a thing. There were towels waving in the city because championship flags were not. It was an area that had no problem celebrating excellence with Halls of Fame—pro foot
ball and rock ’n’ roll—but it had teams that didn’t win titles and inspired you to sing the blues.

After the Indians won Game 4, 7 to 3, they were one game away from the World Series. The cities were swirling with opposite energies, with Boston ironically acting out a phrase—“Round up the usual suspects”—that was coined by Epstein’s grandfather, Philip, a cowriter of
Casablanca
. Epstein himself was on the list. So was Francona. Drew. Lugo. Crisp. There was talk that the smallest and boldest Red Sox of them all, Pedroia, was overmatched at the top of the lineup—he was hitting .188 through four games—and needed to be moved down.

Francona was up on multiple charges, starting with his decision to stay with Beckett as his Game 5 starter. The critics wanted him to use Beckett a game earlier and shift the rest of the rotation around that move. He was unwilling to do it for a couple of reasons. One was that Beckett had a cut on his right index finger and wouldn’t have been the same pitcher that he would be in Game 5. The other was philosophical.

“My goal is never to just prolong a series,” Francona explained. “My goal is to win it.”

He thought the move-up-Beckett crowd was shortsighted, thinking of only one game and not the complexion of the entire series. He knew Beckett on regular rest would be good, and all it took was one victory to change the negativity.

As for Crisp and Drew, Crisp was the likely candidate to be moved. He was hitting .188, the same as former teammate Sizemore, but he was having no impact on the game at the plate. He was a whiz in center, but was that enough to keep rookie Jacoby Ellsbury out of the lineup? It was a nonissue to Francona going into Game 5 because he knew he was going to use reserve outfielder Bobby Kielty against Sabathia, because Kielty had great
numbers against him. He was not willing to change two-thirds of his outfield positions for one game, so Crisp started again—and submitted one of his worst offensive games of the playoffs.

Crisp was able to struggle, though, and not be a headliner the next day. The towel-waving quieted and the World Series parties were put on hold because Beckett, performing like the best pitcher in the game, was at work again. Before he went to work, the sly Midwesterners tried to play with his head. The Indians invited country singer Danielle Peck to sing both the national anthem and “God Bless America.” The attractive brunette was a good choice, based on merit alone. But she wasn’t chosen on merit: the Indians claimed it was just a coincidence that Peck happened to be Beckett’s ex-girlfriend.

They should have known better. She’s a great singer, not hitter. There were two dramatic moments in Game 5, and neither one of them helped the Indians. In the bottom of the third, with Ortiz on first, Ramirez crushed what appeared to be a home run off the top of the right-field wall. As he is wont to do, Manny admired his work, only to learn that the ball hit a yellow strip atop the wall. The ball was in play. The admirer, sheepish now, was stuck at first. He did drive in a run, but he should have at least been on second.

Francona ran out to argue with the umpires, even though he knew that Ramirez should have been running. Francona, standing between first and second with his back to first, got the attention of Indians first baseman Ryan Garko. “Hey,” he said to Garko. “Look over my shoulder and tell me if Manny is still on first.” Garko nodded and put his glove to his mouth to hide a laugh. “Yeah, I thought he was still there,” Francona said, shaking his head.

In the fifth, Beckett got tired of yelling at himself and picked someone new. He chose veteran Kenny Lofton, who apparently
bothered the pitcher by placing his bat down when he thought strike one should have been ball four. After Lofton flied out to left, he ran to first and cut across the field to exchange words with Beckett. The bullpens emptied. Players stood around, and the umpires sent everyone back to their places.

There was no more drama, except for Clevelanders to wonder what happened to Sabathia. He still hadn’t put together a postseason start worthy of someone who was the likely Cy Young Award winner. Was he struggling for the same reason Cy voters would applaud him—the 240 innings pitched? Or was it something that Francona mentioned way back in September—inexperience?