Red Sox Rule (7 page)

Managing in Boston would be miserable for a man who needs just 10 minutes of silence so he can make decisions in peace. It is not the position for one who believes his word should be accepted as final, with no debate. There is no final word, and there’s always, always a debate. Following the Red Sox is, as Epstein puts it, “a running dialogue.” It’s so much of a dialogue that Epstein sometimes changes the subject when friends and family members bring up the team when he is allegedly off the clock. If he happens to be on an airplane and the person next to him asks what he does, he says, “I’m in the concrete business.” Concrete is a conversation-stopper; sitting next to the GM of the Red Sox, though, leads to an open-ended conversation.

On most days, being popular is a good thing for those who work for the Red Sox. The resources are plentiful, and the payroll ensures
that the team will always have a chance to win. Popularity also guarantees instant analysis and instant ridicule for the manager; his explanations can wait until the morning.

To do the job well, you have to love baseball more than you love anything else. To be a city’s well-paid punching bag, sometimes you have to love baseball more than you love yourself.

T
his was his life plan, not his dream, and he didn’t have to explain the distinction to many people in New Brighton, Pennsylvania. It didn’t matter that the man with the plan was actually a 9-year-old boy. There were none of those condescending pats on the head when the plan was mentioned around adults.

Terry Francona was going to be a big-league ballplayer.

A dream? No, you can outgrow some dreams and be snapped out of and awakened from others. This plan was as solid as the grand pianos that his grandfather, Carmen, tuned in town. It was as clear as Carmen’s booming voice—no mike necessary—when he preached to his congregation, the Italian Christian Center, at the corner of 5th Street and 8th Avenue.

Grandpa was on board, and not just because his son, Tito, already was in the big leagues. Anyone could see that the kid was devoted to the game. He worked at it, craved it, and could only be pulled away from it when he heard Tito’s piercing, two-finger whistle, which meant it was time to run home immediately. He could be in the middle of a great game with the neighborhood kids,
and he’d drop everything and sprint once he heard that whistle. Tito and Birdie’s only son had it figured out early: he didn’t spend his energy disobeying his folks; there was too much work to do.

That work began at home one summer, when Tito was away playing for the Atlanta Braves of Hank Aaron, Joe Torre, and Felipe Alou. Terry came across a contest sponsored by Phillips 66. He perked up when he read that the contest was for kids his age, and the purpose was to find out who had the best pitching, catching, and hitting skills. Birdie, God bless her, couldn’t play catch with him to help hone his skills for the contest. But she was resourceful enough to take an old trash can, a net, and some concrete and build her son a homemade contraption that would help him practice his throwing and catching.

She finished building the mechanical practice partner, and her son became the only 9-year-old in western Pennsylvania with a full-time job. He threw at it daily, determined to be better than everyone else. When the big day arrived, Birdie drove him to town and the two of them watched and talked as dozens of fathers and sons got in their last-minute practice throws. Mother and son spent their time telling stories, and when it was time to perform, Terry put on a show. He blew away the field, and now it was time to take home the first-place…

Uh-oh. What was this? He saw the organizers of the event huddling, pointing, and shaking their heads. What was going on? Turns out, they told Birdie, that they were going to have to disqualify her son because of who his father was. Since he was the son of a big-league player, he was deemed to have an unfair advantage over the other participants.

Birdie was furious. What did that have to do with how hard her son had worked? His father was with the Braves all summer, and she hadn’t coached him up, either. She was a saint—her son joked that he
wasn’t sure how she ever got pregnant—but even saints have fuses. First she promised to write letters to all of the higher-ups at Phillips 66. Then she got so angry that hot tears welled in her eyes. She and her son got back in the car to head home. He had simply wanted to prove that he could smoke the other kids—he couldn’t have cared less about that first-place trophy. Birdie asked him if an ice cream cone would make things better (he said yes), and she continued to vent about the gall of those organizers. She drove with two hands clenched on the wheel, eyes locked on the road, mumbling about the injustice they had just experienced. And then Terry spoke up.

“Mom?” he said.

“Yes?”

“Why are we in Ohio?”

Indeed, she had been so agitated that she had driven into the neighboring state. They both laughed. He had traveled for baseball before, but not quite like that. His traveling had been to the city where his father was playing ball.

Tito Francona was a lefty outfielder and first baseman who had produced his best season in 1959, the year his son was born. He was a 90-minute drive from home, in Cleveland, and he hit as if Municipal Stadium were one of the local Beaver County parks. In 1959, the general rule was that if he was swinging, he was also connecting, and the ball was most likely landing somewhere safely: he hit .415 at home, .363 overall, and finished fifth in MVP voting. By the time Terry was old enough to hang out with him at the ballpark, in the mid-1960s, his father was moving toward the end of his career.

Not that it bothered Terry. Each June, the Franconas would spend 3 months in the city where Tito was playing. Whether that was St. Louis, Atlanta, Oakland, or Milwaukee, it was 3 months of being around Dad and baseball. Terry would wake up early, go outside, and look for a game to play. If no one was around, he’d
take his ball and glove and play catch with the concrete walls of whatever apartment complex they were renting.

When it was time to go the park, he’d hop in the backseat and listen to his father and some carpooling teammates talk shop. They’d arrive at the stadium at 2:30, and Tito would give his son a daily refreshment budget of one dollar. The players got used to seeing him around, even if all of them didn’t know his name. They used shorthand—Little Tito—and the nickname stuck. Terry would shag flies when he was allowed, and sit in the stands when he wasn’t. As game time approached, he’d often choose the 75-cent chicken fillet, add a Coke, and study the game. He sat in the wives’ section, and he found that they talked too much for his enjoyment. He’d sit there, quietly absorbing more game details than his father realized.

One August night in 1970, Tito’s final season, the Brewers were playing the stacked Minnesota Twins. It would have been easy for an 11-year-old boy’s mind to drift: Tito’s Brewers were on their way to 97 losses and the Twins were charging toward 98 wins. They had stars like Tony Oliva, Harmon Killebrew, and the lefty with the delightful swing, Rod Carew. But Terry wasn’t as intrigued by them as he was by the man on the mound. It was a 19-year-old Bert Blyleven, whose impact went beyond his 12 strikeouts and complete-game victory.

“Dad,” an amazed Terry said as they were on their way home, “that was one of the best breaking balls I’ve ever seen.”

Tito paused. His son really had been paying attention, because young Blyleven was on his way to fashioning one of the best curveballs in baseball. It was also obvious how much his son wanted to be a part of the game. He had never, ever pushed baseball on him, yet that’s all Terry thought about, even after Tito retired.

Their son’s singular focus was one of the reasons Tito and Birdie had peace in their ranch-style home. They were spared a lot
of adolescence’s rebellion and drama because Terry wasn’t going to be derailed from his baseball plan. In fact, he didn’t even
know
that he could be derailed. He didn’t particularly enjoy going to class, but he did well in school because he knew that poor grades would take away baseball.

He managed to simultaneously amuse and frustrate his high school guidance counselor, Rico Antonini. Each year, starting in ninth grade, students were required to fill out a sheet with their career intentions listed on it. Each year, Terry Francona gave the same answer:
I’m going to be a professional baseball player.
Mr. Antonini’s response was exasperation the first couple of years, and then understanding after he saw what everyone else in town did. Tito’s son—Terry, “T,” Little Tito—was good.

Anyway, Mr. Antonini should have noticed that Terry was surrounding himself with a group of high achievers, kids who were well on their way to being established in diverse fields. Some of the kids he played pickup ball with, kids like Bruce Schwartzel and Brian Lambert, Tad Mackowicki and Mike Pasquale, had a drive to be great, too. Schwartzel, his next-door neighbor on Mercer Road, probably had an idea back in the 1970s that he would grow up to take over the family’s plumbing business. Lambert, who lived two doors down, was on the path to becoming an eye doctor in New Brighton. Mackowicki displayed the savvy that would one day allow him to have a television production company. And it was clear that Pasquale would become a surgeon, especially after the time they all got in trouble and Pasquale cried out, “I’m not going to get into medical school now!”

If they could work toward their careers, Terry could do the same with his. He was too polite to boast, but they all recognized his disarming smirk. It was their reminder that he never thought he was going to lose. His thoughts were usually correct.

“He came to me as a perfect hitter,” says Greg Fazio, his high school baseball coach. “So when he was a sophomore, I told him he’d have to learn to pitch, too.” He did learn to pitch: his earned run average was 0.33, he threw a no-hitter, and he hit .550.

No one denied that talent and good genes were part of his story. Pro baseball has more father-son combinations than any other sport. But he was exceptional in the categories in which gene pools offer no guarantees. He had Tito’s gift
and
Carmen’s self-made grit. When his grandfather wasn’t taking a hammer to the pianos until they sounded just right, he was off in the hills, covered in the grime of the local steel mills. And when he wasn’t there, he was preaching church services in Italian and English, too. He was always on some clock, even when a time card said he wasn’t.

His grandson saw the effort and respected it. In a sense he copied it, because a running clock and the nonstop sweat that accompanied it didn’t bother him. Fazio learned that it was simple for Terry to accept that baseball practice had a beginning and middle, but he totally rejected the concept of an end. Those closest to him knew that there was a lot of heat lurking beneath his easy smile and jokes. He often thought that he could will himself to be successful, probably because he never met failure in any sport.

He liked basketball enough, but didn’t have a deep passion for it, yet he still could score 20 points in a flash as a 6-foot guard on the New Brighton team. He went out for the golf team as a freshman, made it, and became the school’s best golfer. He was 3 years younger than Joe Montana and 2 years older than Dan Marino—both western Pennsylvania quarterbacks—and he thought of playing football like them, but his father talked him out of it.

Really, his best work was done underground. Between his sophomore and junior seasons, he turned the family basement into a baseball compound. This kid, with his long hair parted down
the middle and red Chuck Taylor sneakers on his feet, had a work ethic that defied his hang-loose exterior. He’d set up his stereo, give some volume to Aerosmith, and practice his swing with a lead bat. There was a light hanging in the basement, and he practiced his throws by perfecting his arm slot so that he could hit the strike zone, formed on cement blocks, and avoid the light. Day after day, Birdie and Tito heard
Toys in the Attic
and baseball in the basement.

All that work led to a season in which getting Terry out was worthy of a headline. Pitchers got him out just nine times in 1976, when he hit .769.

As hard as he worked and as respectful as he was, he was still a teenager. He and his buddies were hanging out at the New Brighton Hot Dog Shop one day, eating away. Then they figured out that they didn’t have any money. So they slipped out without paying and headed to Pappan’s, a family-owned diner in town. The three of them sat in a booth and began looking at a menu, and soon a nice man joined them. He was a police officer. He casually picked up a menu, looked at it, and said to the group, “I think you boys must have forgotten to pay at the Hot Dog Shop; can you take care of that for me?” They rounded up some cash and paid their bill.

It was hard to get away with much in New Brighton. The town was so small and friendly that Terry didn’t have to drive anywhere if he didn’t want to; he could go to the end of his driveway, hold up his thumb, and someone passing by would take him where he needed to go. It was small enough that when Terry was supposed to be eating lunch at school and instead traveled to a place called Eat ’N Park, he ran into the mayor at the time, Paul Spickerman, and the mayor recognized him.

There were moments when he had Tito pacing in the living room, just waiting for him to return home after being out with his friends. That’s exactly what happened one night when Tito’s anten
nae went up early: he became suspicious when he saw his son’s car parked in the church parking lot. Terry had left the car door open, with the keys inside, with a note to his girlfriend. He wanted her to drive his car and meet him at a party. Tito got the note and keys before his son’s girlfriend did. The good news was that at least Terry’s car hadn’t careened into the ditch that his friend’s had. The news that would eventually get Terry grounded for a month was that he was in a car with a few other guys, and they had all been drinking.

There weren’t many positive things about that night, but there were a couple. One was that no one got hurt in the accident. The other was…well, Mr. Wooley’s wife. Mr. Wooley, a young English teacher, had always told his students that if they were ever in any kind of trouble, they should contact him promptly. Since they were in trouble—a car in a ditch is real trouble—they went to his house, banging on the door at midnight. They had always talked about how good looking the teacher’s wife was, and to their surprise, guess who was answering the door in a negligee?

“Whatever happens to me tonight, it’s almost worth it after seeing this,” Terry said.

It was a line, but he knew it wasn’t true. He was going to have problems at home. As he drove back to his house with teammate Johnny Albanese, he kept repeating that his father was going to kill him. Albanese told him not to worry because they always had the option of running away from home. Terry didn’t listen. “My dad is going to kick my ass,” he said. Albanese offered a few more options as he pulled into the Franconas’ driveway. And when he saw an angry man waiting by that front door, he barely waited for Terry to close the passenger door before he peeled out of that driveway and into the night. So much for the runaway plan; Terry would have to handle it alone.