Francona: The Red Sox Years (40 page)

“That was one of the tougher things for me,” said the manager. “This was a guy that had carried us on his shoulders. I had rings because of him. I knew how much it bothered him because he’s so proud. I kept trying to look at the big picture. We had to fight our way through it.”

When Youkilis came off the disabled list on the night of May 20, he was surrounded by reporters who wanted to know if his return to the cleanup spot would help Ortiz.

“If everyone stops asking questions about David Ortiz and leaves him alone, maybe that will help him out,” snapped Youkilis. “It would bother me if everyone was talking negative about me every day. David Ortiz wants to get out of his slump as much as anybody. That’s it. I’m not answering any more questions about David Ortiz.”

At the end of batting practice, Francona was pulled away from the cage by Sox community relations employees Sarah Stevenson and Sheri Rosenberg to engage in some small talk with Sox fans. Stevenson and Rosenberg fielded hundreds of requests from fans anxious to connect anyone in a Sox uniform with a soldier or perhaps a young cancer patient. Francona was at ease with the small talk and the potentially awkward interactions. He was able to make the fans feel welcome, and he appreciated the work ethic of Stevenson and Rosenberg. On this night, when he was asked to visit with a small group of strangers, he brought Big Papi along to sign some baseballs.

After the quick exchange with fans, Ortiz asked his manager, “Tito, do you see anything I’m doing wrong?”

“No,” said Francona. “I never hit like you. Just remember, you are one of the best players in the game. Just keep it that way and your time will come. Keep that swagger and you will be fine.”

A few hours later, Ortiz launched his first homer of the season (first in 149 at-bats) and said, “I feel like I got my confidence back. I feel like a real hitter, not like the Punch and Judy hitter I’ve been the first 40 games. Swing like a man, not like a little bitch.”

“As a player, you have those blinders on, and little things that Tito would do would pick you up,” said Pedroia. “He was the best at that. We all struggle. You got through 20 at-bats like that. I’d be waiting to hit and I’d say to Tito, ‘What do you got? Do you see anything I’m doing?’ And he would say, ‘Fuck, man, are you kidding me? I was the worst hitter ever.’ It kind of made you relax.”

Ortiz’s problems were not over after he finally homered. The Sox sent him to the eye doctor. (Francona got an inadvertent laugh when he told the media Ortiz had visited the “obstetrician.”) With Ortiz still struggling badly in mid-June, Francona had a lengthy meeting with him when the Sox played a weekend series in Philadelphia.

“We’d had a rocky couple of weeks,” said the manager. “I’d pinch-hit for him a couple of times and sat him against a few lefties, and he was really mad at me. We had to clear the air, so I sat him down and said, ‘David, we’ve been together a long time. I understand how you feel. We’ve got to fight through this.’ And I think we did.”

While Ortiz struggled and questioned his professional mortality, Pedroia was becoming more cocky and amusing every day. He stood up to everybody. He got into a scrape with A-Rod in a dustup at second base. He challenged everyone he encountered.

Pedroia spent the early part of the season complaining about lack of respect from his own organization after winning the 2008 American League MVP Award. He complained about the night he received the MVP trophy at a banquet in New York.

“It was unbelievable,” said the second baseman, laughing while he spoke. “Tim Lincecum was the Cy Young winner, and he had the whole Giants front office there from San Francisco. Even the clubbies flew out for him. I was there with just Pam Ganley. Brian Cashman—the GM of the Yankees!—had to give me my MVP Award! Our owners gave David [Ortiz] a car or a truck for doing I’m not sure what, and I’ve got nobody there when I get the MVP. All I got was a handshake.”

This was Pedroia’s theme throughout the early part of the ’09 season. He said the same thing to anyone who’d listen. It never seemed serious; nothing seemed serious when Pedroia was talking.

Ever intent on team-building, Francona decided the best response was a gag gift for his second baseman. He put Pookie Jackson on a mission, and when the Sox returned from an early-season road trip, Pedroia found an electrically charged blue mini-scooter in front of his locker. A pink “AL MVP” helmet hung from the handlebar, and there was a phony note from Lucchino that read: “Sorry we couldn’t make it to the MVP presentation, this is our gift to you. Congratulations, Dustin!”

Caught up in the moment, Pedroia—who had an apartment very close to Fenway—fired up his scooter and drove it out of the parking lot, towing his luggage behind him. He did not wear the pink helmet. His teammates thought it was hilarious.

“He looked like
Dumb and Dumber,
” said Francona.

“I loved that thing,” said Pedroia. “It was like a midget scooter. It went something like 15 miles an hour. It was awesome. I rode it to work every day until John Henry saw me and told me not to do it anymore. It was fucking awesome. I think eventually somebody stole it.”

Dustin and Kelli Pedroia were looking forward to the birth of their first child in the summer of 2009. Kelli Pedroia experienced complications during the latter stages of her pregnancy and was bedridden at Massachusetts General Hospital for many weeks prior to the birth. The Sox second baseman lived at the hospital with his wife when the team was at home, and the mothers of both prospective parents came to Boston to be with Kelli through the difficult time.

By all accounts, Pedroia gets his combative personality from his mother, and Francona witnessed an up-front-and-personal demonstration of the family dynamic when he and Dr. Ronan went to visit the Pedroias at the hospital before the All-Star break.

The American League MVP was in the middle of a wrecking ball weekend against the Royals. In four games against Kansas City, Pedroia went 8–19 with four doubles, a triple, and a homer. He also struck out swinging once, flailing at a curveball and leaving the bases loaded. This unfortunate at-bat was the focus of conversation when Francona and Dr. Ronan tiptoed into Kelli Pedroia’s hospital room after a game against the Royals.

“It was unbelievable,” said Francona. “We walked into the room, and poor Kelli was laying there and Pedey and his mom were going at it over him swinging at that breaking ball in the dirt. I looked at Larry and said, ‘This is like a reality TV show.’”

“All true,” confirmed Pedroia. “My mom just blew me up for swinging at that ball in the dirt. We’re all in the hospital room for Kelli, and my mom was motherfucking me, saying, ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’ and Kelli’s mom was there, and then Tito and Dr. Ronan walked in. If I play bad and the media gets on me, that’s a piece of fucking cake compared to my mom and what I have to go home to. I never hear the end of it. So when Tito and Doc walked in and heard all that while Kelli was laying there, I was like, ‘Welcome to my world.’”

As Kelli Pedroia’s due date neared, Pedroia had Francona’s blessing to leave the ballpark anytime he felt it was necessary to support his wife.

Major League Baseball has lagged behind most of America through virtually every social and cultural change over the last 110 years—the sport did not have any black players until 1947—and big league clubhouses remain the last bastions of the old ways. In 2009 there weren’t many other American workplaces supplying employees with chewing tobacco and beer.

Francona’s sensitivity to family matters was largely due to his own experiences. Cleveland outfielder Tito Francona was in Detroit with the Indians when his only son was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, on April 22, 1959. The elder Francona did not see his son for three weeks. Twenty-eight years later, veteran infielder/outfielder Terry Francona was getting ready for opening day at first base with the Cincinnati Reds when Jacque Francona’s water broke back home in Tucson. He told manager Pete Rose that he needed to go home because of Jacque’s situation.

“That’s fine,” said Rose. “Just don’t come back.”

Terry Francona got the message. He stayed in Cincinnati and hit an opening day home run in an 11–5 win over the Expos. His first daughter, Alyssa, was born the next day, and he was not there. It was the only one of his children’s births that he missed, and he never shed the regret. Pete Rose was a friend and was friendly with Francona’s wife, but none of that mattered in big league baseball in 1987. Francona pledged that he would do things differently if he ever managed, and that’s why he was okay going with an infield of Aaron Bates, Nick Green, Julio Lugo, and Youkilis in a 6–0 loss to the A’s in the summer of 2009.

Pedroia was voted starting second baseman of the American League All-Star team, but he skipped the midsummer classic in St. Louis and returned to be with Kelli at Mass General. When Dylan Pedroia was born August 18, 2009, his dad was there. The Red Sox beat the Blue Jays in Toronto, 10–9, improving to 67–51, seven games behind the scalding Yankees.

For most of the summer the Sox were without the services of Daisuke Matsuzaka. On the heels of his 18–3 season in 2008, Matsuzaka developed shoulder soreness and was placed on the disabled list after going 1–5 with an 8.23 ERA early in the season. The Sox were losing patience with the training methods of the stubborn righty, and things came to a boil late in the summer when Dice-K, rehabbing in Florida, told a Japanese publication, “If I’m forced to continue to train in this environment, I may no longer be able to pitch like I did in Japan. The only reason why I managed to win games during the first and second years was because I used the savings of the shoulder I built up in Japan. Since I came to the major leagues, I couldn’t train my own way, so now I’ve lost all those savings.”

Farrell was livid when he was told of the remarks. Speaking with the media, the physically imposing pitching coach had difficulty masking his anger. Inside the manager’s office—gathered with Francona, Matsuzaka, and a translator—Farrell was allowed to speak freely.

“Normally I would try to settle him down, but not this time,” said Francona. “Dice had spoken out of turn, and John was fucking irate. He wore Dice out. There was nothing lost in translation. Dice knew just from the tone. I was nervous about it, but it turned out to be kind of a breakthrough day. Dice was contrite, and we didn’t have many problems with him after that.”

“I probably didn’t handle that too well,” said a chagrined Farrell. “There were challenges with someone as accomplished as Dice-K. There were differences, and we had concerns about the volume of throws.”

“He had to maintain his shoulder program or he was putting his shoulder at risk,” said Francona. “He believed all the throwing just made his shoulder stronger. That’s where we were banging heads.

“I didn’t pitch, but as a manager, you have to pay so much attention to everything regarding pitchers. I knew the best way to ruin your team was to fuck your bullpen up. You have to watch them. And there were certain things I felt. We kept things monitored very closely regarding usage and the intensity of usage. If I got Alan Embree up quickly some night—you could do that with Embree because he could get ready in a hurry—I’d put a little star next to his name to remind me that he got ready in a hurry and might be a little more stiff the next day. I thought the biggest mistakes a manager could make was not the in-game pitching, it was about warming guys up and not paying attention to that. It was easy to see that you keep the pitchers healthy, they’re going to be more productive.”

Two days after the Farrell-Matsuzaka storm, the Sox took a hit when the
New York Times
disclosed the names of Ortiz and Manny Ramirez on a list of players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003. The tests had been conducted with the approval of the Major League Baseball Players Association as a means of determining the extent of usage of banned substances in baseball. Players had been assured that results would remain sealed and anonymous. Names would never be released and punishments never issued. The union was in the process of destroying the tests when they were subpoenaed by federal authorities in November 2003. One hundred and four players tested positive in 2003, but as of August ’09, the only names that leaked were those of Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Ramirez, and Ortiz. By this time Ramirez was a confirmed cheater, having been suspended by Major League Baseball in May ’09 for 50 games for taking hCG, a women’s fertility drug typically used by PED users trying to restart natural testosterone production at the end of a drug cycle. Seeing Manny’s name on the list did not shock many folks in Red Sox Nation. The inclusion of Ortiz was another matter altogether. Sox fans were being told that there was no Santa Claus.

Francona called Ortiz into his office the day the story broke. He closed the door. He sat at his desk while Ortiz took a seat on the Pesky couch.

“David, look at me,” said the manager. “Tell me the truth.”

“I’m okay,” said the slugger.

“Good enough,” said Francona. “I’m with you. This meeting is over.”

Ortiz had even less to say to the media. The Players Association had told him not to say anything. Ortiz told reporters he intended to get to the bottom of things.

And then there was silence for ten days until a Saturday afternoon when Ortiz, accompanied by Players Association director Michael Weiner, faced more than 100 reporters in the sprawling basement interview room of the new Yankee Stadium. Behind Ortiz and Weiner, who were seated at a table, Francona stood off to the side, in uniform, arms folded across his chest, visible to everyone in the room. Sox players had planned to attend the nationally televised press conference en masse as a show of support, but the team bus was caught in traffic, so it was left to the eternally early manager to stand behind David Ortiz in his moment of need.

“It was important to me,” said Francona. “I’d been with David since 2004, and I believed him.”

A nervous Ortiz admitted only that he’d been “a little careless” when he bought supplements and vitamins over the counter in the United States and the Dominican Republic. He apologized to Sox fans, owners, teammates, and his manager for the distraction. The Players Association and Major League Baseball both issued statements defending Ortiz. MLB’s statement acknowledged that “the names on the list . . . are subject to uncertainties with regard to the test results.”