Authors: Michael Holley
He wasn’t all spreadsheet or all scout; he was a little of both. He could hang out with the suits and talk their corporate talk, and he could strum a guitar while admiring the poetry of Pearl Jam. He had a need to examine a situation from all sides, a routine thoroughness that protected him from being a reactionary. No one was as hot-tempered and miserable to be around as he following a loss, but he was smart enough to avoid all decisions while his misery was fresh. It was a good quality for any executive to have, and a requirement for the GM of the Red Sox.
Really, it was a job of being constantly seduced and lobbied. Everyone in the region had an internal No Championship calendar. Each time the pages flipped from yet another barren year—’86, ’87, ’88, ’89…—the tension increased. People became more cynical and desperate. Implausible trades became plausible. Irrational signings became rational. The word “future” became an occasional f-bomb.
The GM was always having his shoulder tapped, his jacket pulled, his ear whispered into. Epstein understood it because he had done it and grown up around it. He knew the agenda-setting impact of the sports columnists and sports-talk radio hosts. They were eloquent, sure, but they were selling eloquent frustration, and it all amounted to an immediate call to action. They wrote and spoke to an opinionated and hungry audience, an audience that spanned, at least, the six New England states.
Sometimes the people wanted management to do something big and do it now; sometimes they saw a promising prospect, considered him the next great thing, and were willing to walk with him to
the altar. They flashed anger, but they still wore badges of family honor, and those badges covered the heartbeats of romantics. It always came back to a desire to win just once for Grandpa or Nana or old Uncle Roscoe. It was easy for any executive, no matter how brilliant, to be lured into their emotional dance.
One of the first things Epstein promised himself in November 2003 was that he wouldn’t be pressured to go after a so-called big name to replace Little. Even the men recognized as the best managers in the game, Bobby Cox and Mike Scioscia, might find trap doors in Boston that they hadn’t thought of in Atlanta and Los Angeles. That logic was reversible, too: a candidate might have had trouble with a team in another market, but that didn’t mean the same man wouldn’t be able to thrive in Boston.
Epstein began making phone calls to find out about Francona, and Francona did the same thing to get a glimpse of Epstein. A few times, they would have been better off doing a three-way conference call. They knew some of the same people and had some of the same sources. One of their mutual friends, Cleveland GM Mark Shapiro, kept it simple when Francona asked about Epstein.
“Don’t bullshit this guy,” Shapiro warned. “He’s too smart to fall for it. He’ll tie you up in knots.”
Those words sounded good to Francona. The concept of fooling someone to get a job never crossed his mind. His energy was spent writing and studying. He filled nine pages with notes on how he felt about pro baseball and managing, knowing that if he wrote his thoughts he’d be able to verbalize them. He wrote how important it was for players to show respect for the game simply by being on time, and he wrote about observing players. He wrote that you can peek into the soul of a player early in the morning during spring training, when few people are watching on the back fields; that’s when the
players who have passion stand out from the indifferent pack. When he was finished writing, he picked up a Red Sox media guide and committed every face he saw to memory. Anyone could recognize all the people from TV, but he wanted to put names with the assortment of unfamiliar faces. It didn’t matter if the employee worked in scouting, public relations, or the clubhouse—if there was a picture in the guide, Francona was going to learn that person’s name.
Epstein, meanwhile, was trying to figure out how to structure a relevant interview. He knew he didn’t want it to be a traditional question-and-answer session. Francona would be sitting there in a jacket and tie, which in itself was far from reality; this was the same man who once told the Phillies that the most important rule of the dress code was that no one was allowed to look worse than he did. And he was the one known for leaving his sport coats in wrinkled heaps on the floor. Epstein didn’t care if Francona’s pocket squares were coordinated with his ties. He wanted to see how his mind worked and how he reacted to pressure. His plan was to combine the best elements of the standard interview with an experimental technique designed to simulate the intensity of the dugout.
There would be no business travelers, waiters, or buttered rolls to distract them when they met at Fenway in November 2003. One of Epstein’s assistant general managers at the time, Josh Byrnes, joined them for what was going to be a full shift of talking baseball.
It was obvious to Francona that these two had done their homework, and their preparation relaxed him. They had talked to enough people to at least get a silhouette of his years in Philadelphia, so when they mentioned specific things it felt more like a conversation than an interrogation. They knew that he had taken his share of hits on talk radio, with hosts and callers labeling him Fran
coma
. The fans there didn’t like the way he rested players on
day games following night games—
Stop babying these guys, you idiot
—and they had endless laughs at his expense when he didn’t play Scott Rolen—on Scott Rolen Bobblehead Day.
He didn’t mind telling Epstein and Byrnes that he had planned to give Rolen that day off long before he had been aware of the promotion. Rolen needed it, and the third baseman was appreciative when the manager didn’t change his mind just because humans and figurines were shaking their heads at him.
The rap on him was that he was too nice, and he didn’t entirely disagree. He didn’t have the jackass gene and he didn’t pretend that he did. He admitted to Epstein that there were times when he had been too protective of his players, but he also didn’t believe in communicating with them through the media. He was similar to Epstein in that he’d wait a beat to make sure his emotions didn’t lead him to overreaction with a player or coach. Then, on a plane or bus ride or standing on the edge of the outfield grass the next day, he’d say what he needed to. If the choices were talking tough to impress reporters and fans or working privately to make sure players were accountable to both him and their teammates, he would always choose the latter.
Of course, that philosophy leads to assumptions: if no one outside the clubhouse sees it happen or hears it happen, they assume that it doesn’t happen. The Red Sox, though, searched deeper. They already knew about a story from late in the 2000 season, Francona’s last in Philadelphia, when the manager tried to send outfielder Bobby Abreu home for the year. He liked Abreu, but he was frustrated with his play and attitude. He knew that if he saw the issues, everyone else on the team did as well. Francona explained to GM Ed Wade that not sending Abreu home would undermine the manager in the clubhouse. Wade nixed the plan anyway. Francona knew at that moment that he was going to be fired at the end of the season.
He didn’t regret getting along exceptionally well with Curt Schilling, Doug Glanville, Rico Brogna, and Rolen. He played poker and golf with Giles and hung out with him in the Poconos. His family and Coppenbarger’s shared Thanksgiving dinner. In a nutshell, he was a hard worker who also enjoyed having fun and talking to everybody. That might be a good thing for managers in the American workforce, but in professional sports the freaks are the managers and coaches who dare to be well adjusted.
Epstein was intrigued by the bald man in glasses. He wanted to have a baseball conversation with even more weight, so he handed Francona a pen and a multiple-choice test. All 16 questions were geared toward finding out how a manager ranked his priorities in several categories.
“Take your time filling it out,” Epstein said as Francona went to work. “There’s no right answer.”
No right answer
. That was rich. It was a 20-minute head trip and Francona loved it. Okay, so they were trying to see where all the puzzle pieces—relationships with players, relationships with the media, handling the pitching staff—were slotted in his world. He didn’t mind. He even chuckled to himself when he glanced at one of the potential answers to the question, “What’s most important to you?” Potential answer: “(D) Making sure your uniform looks good in the dugout.” If they hired him, they would rarely see his uniform because it was usually covered with a fleece jacket. He didn’t care how he looked. He was just eager to share his thoughts and be in a position to get a second chance.
He finished the test in front of Epstein and Byrnes, his two relaxed proctors. They had been telling the truth when they said there was no right answer, but they hadn’t been completely honest. What they left out was that all the answers could be right, but there was a wrong way to defend those answers when questioned
about them. They didn’t want anyone who would wilt from his opinions or have opinions with no process to them. Epstein believed he’d get more out of a conversation about baserunning, defense, and pitching if he knew how Francona prioritized those things.
It was half test, half talking point. Epstein quickly noticed that Francona had some law school in his answers, not in terms of being legalistic, but in the way his responses were layered. He seemed to consider, naturally and thoroughly, a handful of possibilities before making a decision, and the decision itself was delivered in a few seconds. After a while, it was an interview in name only. It had become a skull session, and it was so fun that they had barely noticed that 1:00 had become 3:00 in a blink. And that was before the true test, the one that would cause beads of sweat to form on Francona’s head.
They had all moved into a Fenway suite with a flat-screen TV already in place. Francona sat on a brown leather couch, and Epstein and Byrnes handed him a partial line score from an A’s–Angels game. They explained that they wanted to see him in action. Talking about baseball was fun and all, but they really wanted to see how he applied all those sensible principles of his. Anyone could have a great day interviewing, right? How would he respond when they turned on the TV in this wood-paneled room and dropped him in the middle of the seventh inning?
Francona knew about games that seemed to have their own V-8 engines, games that moved ten times as fast in the dugout as they appeared to in the seats or in the press box. On nights like those in Philadelphia, he’d look at his longtime baseball brother, Brad Mills, and say, “Stay with me, Millsie.” But Millsie wasn’t in that Fenway suite. It was Francona and that game, a Lamborghini that wanted to drive itself. It was the dirtiest trick to play on a manager who
cares about preparation: asking him to make decisions in someone else’s game without the benefit of that person’s information.
Epstein put the DVD on pause and set the scene: “It’s the seventh inning, you’re managing Oakland, and Barry Zito is on the mound. He has thrown one hundred and five pitches, and here’s your chart of who’s available in the bullpen. Here’s who the other team has coming up. Here’s where you are in the season…” He pushed
PLAY
and said, “You have two minutes.”
Once again, that sport coat was in a heap somewhere. The tie was loosened. The sweat spread. Streams of information tumbled out of him: “I see this head-to-head matchup but I don’t put too much weight into it because that was from a couple years ago…This left-right split is pretty consistent, so I’m going to rely on that…I see on the bullpen chart that my guy has been used three days in a row, so I’m not going to use him even though we need to win this game—he can’t pitch four days in a row.”
He was involved in this simulation now. Rocking, cursing, sweating. It wasn’t his game, but he knew things about all these players. Even though he felt like he was sinking at times, he was making an impression because he seemed to have a dossier on everyone at his fingertips. He made Epstein and Byrnes laugh at one point when he worked his way through the seventh and eighth innings, with designs on giving the ball to Oakland closer Keith Foulke. But when Epstein pushed
PLAY
, Foulke was nowhere to be found. “Well,” Francona deadpanned, “I always knew Macha was a dumbass.”
It was a good line, but it wasn’t the real story. The truth was that the interviewers had picked a game in which Foulke wasn’t with the team. Still, Francona had made a point regarding a closer. He thought having one was essential for a manager. He told his interviewers that he agreed that crucial outs existed in the seventh
and eighth innings, too, but a closer was the light that a manager worked his way toward during the game.
“By the way,” he said, wiping away sweat, “we’ve talked a lot about preparation today, but I want you guys to know that I wouldn’t manage like this. This isn’t managing. I would have already known some of this stuff.”
They looked at the clock and it was close to 6:00. They had spent an entire day together, talking, debating, and watching baseball. It was time for them to leave the park and head to a restaurant called the Atlantic Fish Company; they couldn’t bring Francona to Boston without giving him some seafood. There were no tests with the menu, no tests on how he held his fork or sat in his chair. He ate, he laughed, and he had a few beers.
He remembered the time he and Millsie were driving in Arizona before a Phillies–Diamondbacks game. The Phillies stunk and the Diamondbacks didn’t. He looked at Millsie, his friend since college, and said, “Imagine what it’s like to be them, coming to the ballpark every night knowing that you have a chance to win.”
God, he missed that. As he sat there having a beer, he knew Boston would be the type of place where he would have a chance every night. He wanted the job, and Epstein wanted him to have it. They agreed that if they were going to work together, they would need the type of relationship where one man didn’t feel the need to tiptoe around the other.