Authors: Michael Holley
As for the innovation, well, Zim was just getting the surface-level stuff as he drove home with that radio gnawing at him. A couple hours down the road in Connecticut, a 24-hour entertainment and sports TV network was being conceived. ESPN would eventually grow up to be the country’s all-day meeting house for sports news and debate. In time, cities of all sizes would have all-sports radio, and the 3-minute TV sports report would appear slow and dated. The news and criticism were going to be traveling at warp speed, and managers were going to have to plan for that as well as the games. They might be able to control a single writer or broadcaster, but they wouldn’t be able to manage a team
and
a nonstop news cycle. For longevity, managers would have to change
with the times. And although it was the furthest thing from 4-year-old Theo Epstein’s mind when he entered Fenway to watch Zim’s 1978 team, he would one day understand that managing in Boston goes beyond managing the game.
Three years after young Epstein’s first Fenway visit, the past and future of Red Sox management crossed paths in the sprawl of Houston. It was 1981, a year when all of America said “strike” in unison: there was the baseball strike that halved the season, and there was the air traffic controllers’ strike, during which 13,000 workers chose to protest rather than punch a clock. The Montreal Expos were playing the Houston Astros on August 19, two and a half weeks after the air strike had started and nine days after the end of the baseball strike.
The Expos’ manager was Dick Williams.
Williams had had a few novel experiences while managing the Angels in Disneyland: three consecutive losing seasons, the first three of his managerial career. It wasn’t intentional, but he returned to Canada where his success had begun as a manager/light heavyweight in Toronto. He took over the Expos, had two more losing seasons, and then whipped them into one of the best teams in the National League. His team had the speed of Tim Raines, the power of Andre Dawson, the enthusiasm of Gary Carter, and the tolerance of most men in their late 20s who are frequently yelled at by their boss: not much. They were tired of their prickly manager, they complained about him to the front office, and they alternated between playing and waiting for the regime to fall.
On the 19th, the air strike made it difficult to travel from Denver to Houston. There were still flights to be taken, just fewer of them. The Expos’ first-round pick from 1980, Terry Francona, had been hitting between .350 and .380 all year in Triple-A Denver and the big club decided it wanted to see him. What timing.
He had been drinking the night before, he was hung over, and—weird as it sounds—it wasn’t a good time to be going to the big leagues. He actually told the team trainer that.
“What? You have to go. You’re leading off tonight in Houston.”
He made arrangements, hopped a series of connections, and finally, in the fifth inning, a cab rolled up to the Astrodome and the slender Francona emerged from the backseat.
Francona was a left-handed hitter with quick wrists, a doubles and gaps man, capable of playing either corner outfield spot. He was the Golden Boy, a hit-maker who never had to be told to keep his hands or his weight back, because he did both naturally. Oh, was it beautiful to watch. He was going to be a star. He was dropped into Double-A Memphis shortly after playing on the Arizona team that won the College World Series, got off to a .160 start in the minors, and still finished the season with a .300 average. The next year he was back in Memphis and, after a hot start, to Denver to play for Felipe Alou. He made the manager’s job easy: Francona would lead off against righties and bat eighth or ninth against lefties. He wasn’t as fast as Raines, but he ran the bases intelligently and had a dozen triples in Triple-A.
As soon as he made his way to the Expos dugout, he saw his unofficial big brother, Brad Mills. Millsie, his college teammate and roommate, had been drafted by the Expos a year before Francona. He was a rookie, too, having made his big-league debut two months earlier. Millsie and Tim Wallach were screaming his name, and not because they were happy to see him. The manager was trying to get his attention.
“Francona,” Williams bellowed. “You’re up. You’re leading off the next inning.”
There was a rush of something, a mixture of nausea and panic, when he heard the instructions. Part of it had to do with him making
his debut, and the other part—the nausea part—had a lot to do with the man on the mound, the great Nolan Ryan. Recent strike or not, Ryan could floss his teeth with prospects like Francona. He could break your bat and confidence, and do it with a fastball that traveled at 96 miles per hour on slow days. Francona grabbed a bat and got a break; Ryan was apparently on a pitch count, so Dave Smith faced him instead. He grounded out to second, and the moment seemed to be over in a flash.
The same could be said, really, of his time with Williams. It’s not like Francona could talk to him. While he hadn’t been around long enough to hate Williams, as some of his teammates did, he saw enough to be intimidated by him. The intimidation wasn’t entirely connected to his aura, either. No, what contributed to the stature of Williams was his brain. He had a brilliant baseball mind and knew exactly what he wanted to do two or three innings before it happened. His brain was chocked with notes, pitching matchups he wanted to see, and pinch hitters he wanted to use.
But the information remained locked in that brain. Two and a half weeks after Francona’s debut, Williams was fired. If they had talked more, they would have found that they both possessed an overflow passion for baseball. It was a passion so deep that one day it would inspire one of them to go to spring training just weeks after lying in what once appeared to be a deathbed. They both had the type of love for baseball that couldn’t be outgrown, and they had hearts that would always make room for the game. There was just one fundamental difference: one man’s personality represented the future of baseball managing, and one man’s represented the past.
“The drill-sergeant manager doesn’t work in this sport anymore,” says Jayson Stark, an ESPN baseball writer and commentator. “I ask people all the time to name the last tough guy to win the
World Series. They can’t do it. Tony La Russa? Lou Piniella? Nah, they have their soft sides, too. Maybe [former Twins manager] Tom Kelly, but he inspired incredible loyalty from many of those players. So it’s a long, long time ago now. A Bill Belichick or a Tom Coughlin—heck, even a Larry Bowa—doesn’t fit in this sport anymore.”
Epstein wasn’t alive when Williams brought his cold-shower style of managing to Boston. And when the 34-year-old Red Sox general manager was an intern in Baltimore, Weaver had been retired for six years. He is asked if either man’s style could work in today’s Boston.
“In a vacuum? Yes. In the end, we’re still talking about ballplayers,” he says.
So there’s no need for spa language in the clubhouse, no need for egos to be “massaged” and players to be “comfortable”?
“Not in a vacuum,” he says, putting an emphasis on the last word.
The last word explains everything.
“Yeah, I absolutely think that in a vacuum, the hardass manager who sort of motivates through fear rather than love could still work in today’s game. But we don’t live in a vacuum. You can’t separate the outside perceptions and the media’s perception from the clubhouse environment now. The newspapers are in the clubhouse. The media members linger in the clubhouse. It’s not like some outside factor the way it used to be or could be. It’s interrelated.”
In Boston, sometimes “the media” feels like the entire city. Zim would hate it. His old nemesis Ordway is still on the radio, but with a clearer signal, a larger audience, more co-hosts, and a popular call-in line for the fans—the Whiner Line—created to roast and skewer Boston sports personalities. If only it were as
simple as putting the talkers in a sports box: Boston is one of the rare top 15 markets where a sports station, WEEI, is consistently top rated among 25-to 54-year-old men and
all
adults. These are the people who plan summer vacations and summer weddings around the Red Sox’s schedule. A smart organization understands that it can manipulate that popularity to serve its interests. Sometimes. In rough moments, when a free agent hasn’t played up to expectations or the team has lost five consecutive games, there is no way to tell the people to talk about something else. There are more newspaper writers, from more cities in New England, willing to write about more things related to the team. There are daily and weekly wrap-up shows that comment on all things Red Sox. The players, manager, and general manager are stars; those who cover them are public figures who are quasi-celebrities, gaining their fame from simply covering those on the A-list. There are even Web sites designed to watch those who watch the Red Sox.
“Do you know what the Red Sox have done?” says Gabe Kapler, the former Boston outfielder. “They’ve created one of the most powerful brands in sports. If you’re someone like [
Boston Globe
columnist] Dan Shaughnessy or [
Boston Herald
reporter] Michael Silverman, just having your name associated with the Red Sox gives a major boost to your profile.”
Today, Remy is not identified as the second baseman who was pulled aside by Williams. He is not the second baseman who was an All-Star for Zim in 1978. Rather, fans in New England recognize him as the popular analyst from the New England Sports Network. From that perch, he talks insightfully about the game—a must in Boston—and also sprinkles in information about his travels, his favorite TV shows, and the latest products on his Web site. His voice is as powerful as anyone’s in the media, so if he is critical
of a manager—as he was of former Boston managers Kevin Kennedy and Joe Kerrigan—his commentary tends to hover longer than the average newspaper column or radio tirade. In Boston and in all major cities where people care about baseball, the modern manager at least has to have a daily plan for dealing with the media, even if part of the plan is to simply ignore some of the opinion-makers.
When the Franconas got to Philadelphia, Jacque and Terry were told not to listen to WIP, the all-sports radio station. Francona didn’t stick to the advice, although his poker and golf buddy from the Phillies, Bill Giles, wished he had.
“I haven’t listened to WIP in 20 years,” Giles, the team’s chairman, says now. “I hate that station. If somebody tries to call in to say something nice, they won’t let them on the air. I really believe that the station does damage to the sports teams here.”
If that’s ever the case, in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, or Chicago, it’s the responsibility of today’s manager to at least have an awareness of it or perhaps some type of defense against it. Francona meets with members of the media daily, at 3:30, and isn’t above telling them when he disagrees with a position that they’ve taken. A few times a year, he’ll read an article in which a reporter takes the manager to task for a stupid managerial move. If it’s a reporter that the manager likes, he might pull him aside and say, “Why didn’t you ask me about it after the game? I think I could have given you an explanation that might have changed your opinion.”
The job descriptions have changed for everyone around the ballpark. The media are tougher. The GMs are more visible and more accountable. And the relationship between the men inside the clubhouses, players and managers, are more complex than ever. Mark Shapiro, the Cleveland GM, includes “managing personalities” when he is asked to describe the duties of a manager. A grasp of baseball
nuance and public relations is expected, as is a willingness to be open to statistical information. Although the Red Sox have Bill James working for them, it’s not as if they are the only team with a library of numerical data: It’s hard for a manager to justify not considering numbers when fans can easily go to sites such as ESPN.com and baseball-reference.com to get almost any breakdown they can dream up.
Then, after viewing the numbers, a manager has to make sure his interpretation is open-minded, too.
“You still have guys in this sport who manage on instinct,” says Stark. “But the best managers in this era study info and use it. For example, if your managing philosophy is still to automatically bring in a left-handed reliever to face a left-handed hitter, even if it’s a left-hander who lets left-handed hitters bat .340 against him, you’re probably in the wrong profession.”
There are exceptions, of course. Bobby Cox is believed to be the best manager in the business, and he broke into the managing game in the same year Zim was talking back to Ordway on the radio. In 1978, the 37-year-old Cox took over the Braves. He stayed there for five seasons, left for the Blue Jays and Toronto, and then returned to Atlanta in 1990. Cox can say that he managed first-place teams in his 40s, 50s, and 60s. He was in charge when the Braves, in 14 consecutive non-strike seasons, finished atop their division. It’s hard to categorize Cox as belonging to any particular school. At some point in his career, he has probably been both trend and dinosaur. He’ll be back in Atlanta in 2008—he turns 67 in May—for his 28th season of managing.
“There’s much more raw material out there for people to evaluate the manager and second-guess,” Epstein says. “I don’t think the perspective of the critics has improved. I just think there’s more fuel
for the fire. There is no more insight, per se. Being second-guessed as the manager by the public is never fun and it makes it more frequent or intense than it ever was before…. It makes interacting with the media and the public more challenging.”
In Boston, the job is not for a man, or a family, with thin skin. When Francona’s daughter, Leah, started Brookline High School in September 2004, she was blindsided in an English class: The teacher wanted the students to write a persuasive paper, and just in case the class didn’t understand what he meant by “persuasive,” he offered an example: “You could write an essay detailing why Terry Francona should be fired as manager of the Red Sox.” The girl went pale. Did this mean she had no chance of passing this class? After Leah got to know her school and her city better, she understood that the Red Sox were just part of the conversation; the teacher, who meant no malice, turned out to be one of her favorites.