Clash Of Personalities

Exactly two months ago the Red Sox fired the best manager in team history.   Today, after an extensive search that was as mismanaged as it was baffling, the team is set to name Bobby Valentine as its new manager.  Valentine, known best as a manager for being ejected from a game while coaching the Mets and reappearing in the dugout wearing a Groucho Marx mask, is an interesting choice.  Needless to say, he will not be the quiet, player-friendly voice of Grady Little or Terry Francona.  While not displaying the dictator-like qualities of Lou Piniella, he certainly will voice his opinions.  Boston media, eat your heart out. 

Valentine after all is the man who just last season, while working as a color commentator for ESPN, called foul on the speed of Red Sox vs. Yankee games and specifically took issue with Josh Beckett.  The complaint lit up the dials on sports radio stations throughout New England and even resulted in consideration from other players and managers.  I wonder how well that will go over at the first meeting between the burly Texan and the new skipper.   Perhaps the meeting will go smoothly and perhaps Beckett will be shipped off to parts unknown before it can happen.  Either way, Valentine is sure to ruffle some feathers.  He will call players out from not running out ground balls, change lineups daily, and go on “hunches” more than statistical analysis (Carmine beware). 

My guess is that there will be times when his honestly, candor, and know-it-all attitude will please, as he is the type of know it all personality that would make a great traveling salesman.  He did have major success in his latest coaching stint in Japan, and took the Mets to the World Series in 2000.  However, he has found himself at the center of controversy several times.  He was fired by the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Japanese Pacific League in 2005 after a conflict with the general manager.  In 2000 he opened his mouth a bit too wide at a speaking engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, making backhanded comments about the Mets, his employer at the time.  Despite leading the Mets to the aforementioned World Series, his volatile relationship with General Manager Steve Phillips led to his firing in 2002.  He returned to Japan and the Marines, and despite great success and popularity, was fired due to a poor relationship with the General Manager after a brutal smear campaign against him.  He then returned stateside and has been working at ESPN ever since.

As we can see, Valentine's career follows a clear ebb and flow.  He takes a team, achieves moderate success before his personality wears his bosses thin and he is fired, usually in an ugly manner.  In a market like Boston, with a new G.M that appears to have little to no power, Valentine may very well find success.  But if the changes in Red Sox upper management have shown us anything in the past 10 years, it is that team President Larry Lucchino wields power and eats people alive.  A dispute over power led to then G.M Theo Epstein to walk away from his post in 2005.  Terry Francona was smeared on the way out of his position as manager this past June in a historically messy fashion.  If these two highly respected baseball men couldn’t deal with Lucchino, what chance does a personality like Bobby Valentine have? 

So I ask you, what happens when the  unstoppable force of Bobby’s mouth meets an immovable object like Lucchino?  I can’t tell you, but two or three years down the line, it should be fun to watch.

Last Time I Checked

A huge payroll? Check.   

A historic stadium? Check.

Rich tradition and fans willing to pay anything to see a game? Check.

A Hall of Fame manager? Che...oh, that's right, they fired that guy because a few under performing millionaire southern boys played asshole and ate fried chicken in the clubhouse.   But wasn't the guy they fired the same one who led the franchise to its greatest run of success in history, record ticket sales, pink merchandise, and those two diamond studded championship rings that hadn't been seen in Boston since “The Grippe” epidemic of 1918? 

Now that Terry Francona is gone, all that remains are questions, uncertainty, and an uneasy feeling about the direction of the organization.

Flash back to October 16, 2003 when Grady Little walked out to the mound with one out in the 8th inning of Game 7 of the ALCS to make the most obvious pitching change in history.   The World Series was just 5 outs away and calling in lefty Alan Embree to face lefty Hideki Matsui with a runner on first up 5-3 seemed obvious to everyone on the planet.  Remember the feeling of impending doom when Little, going on a "hunch", returned to the dugout without Pedro? How about the ulcer growing in your stomach as Pedro readied to pitch to Matsui, and the enraging scream you let out when his bloop single dropped and Jorge Posada doubled to tie the game?

Aaron Boone's 11th inning series ending home run off of a rolling Tim Wakefield knuckle ball ended it, but Little's decision was to our generation what Bob Stanly's over reliance on fastballs was to the Bill Buckner '86 tragedy -- the prequel to the inevitable end.

When it was all over, a change in manager seem obvious, as Little had bungled the biggest moment of his career.   But who could possibly come into such a situation and succeed?  A team with an 86 year title drought, and a city that was prepared to watch the team fail spectacularly rather than win gracefully, surrounded by as negative a media presence as there is in the sporting world.

When Terry Francona was hired, little was known of him other than that his dad was a great ballplayer, and that he was booed his way out of his managerial job with the Phillies.  Facing the intense Boston media ready to eat him alive, all he did in his first season was approve the trade of the franchises most popular current player(Nomar), and then lead his team of "Idiots" back into Yankee Stadium and vanquish their demons by completing the biggest comeback in baseball history.  As we know they steamrolled the Cardinals in four games to bring the Red Sox their first world series in 86 years.

He went on the lead the team to another World Series win in 2007 and managed the team to a 744-552 record for a robust .544 win percentage, never finishing a season below .500 while establishing himself as one of the best managers in all of baseball.  In his tenure he dealt with diva superstars Manny Ramirez, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, and Josh Beckett and never seemed to bat an eye.  There were few if any clubhouse leaks to the media, and when there were; players were shipped out (see Manny Ramirez vs traveling secretary Jack McCormick).   As a result, throughout these eight years he became known as an excellent clubhouse manager and someone who the players both loved and respected.

But during the last month of the 2011 season something changed. The team limped to a 7-20 September record and missed the playoffs for a second consecutive season. As the season ended something happened that was atypical of Francona's previous seven years -- the ship sprung a leak.  In a front page article by Boston Globe columnist Bob Hohler, multiple insider sources claimed there was widespread drinking and fried chicken eating during games by starting pitchers.  There were also whispers that Francona had lost the respect of the clubhouse and had been unable to motivate a team that boasted the second highest payroll in baseball and had been the league-wide consensus to win the World Series.

Most troubling, however, was the leak that Francona was addicted to pain killers and would spend games in a drug induced haze.  While this claim was denied by Francona, it was not denied by owners John Henry, Tom Werner, team President Larry Lucchino, or acting G.M Theo Epstein.  Whether or not this rumor was true, it was a bit puzzling that this type of personal information was leaked in the first place. In the past seven years clubhouse issues stayed in-house or at least within the organization and the guilty parties were dealt with internally.   So why the change now? 

The only reasonable explanation is that this was an attempt by the ownership group to place blame on their manager for a collapse that was in no small part due to a poorly constructed team.

After all this was the same ownership group that attempted to stop the team's September slide by going over their manager’s head and inviting the team to a private party on Henry’s yacht, giving them all $300 headphones in the process.  This gesture clearly had little effect other than further demonstrating to the players that their on field performance had no bearing on their ability to “live the life”.  It also demonstrated the ownerships desire to control the team and have a hand in the everyday running of the baseball operations. 

In contrast, Francona, the man who managed all of the ownership's investments, was not being given the job security that an elite manager should.  While his contract was in the upper echelon of major league managers, when he was extended at the end of 2008 season, the team held an option of $4.25 million for 2012 and $4.5 million in 2013 that ownership refused to re up or even discuss until days before his departure.  

While his last month was horrid, it seems that one bad month would not erode the good done in seven of the most successful years in the history of the franchise.  And while it seemed clear that changes needed to be made, one would think the players, who were reportedly out of shape and unfocused, would be shipped out of town and new rules would be put into effect.   However, only weeks after the season ended, Francona met with ownership and decided that a "new voice needed to be heard".  In a press conference short on details, one large one emerged.  Francona said, "To be honest with you, I'm not sure how much support there was from ownership." Hours later, ownership did what they do best and attempted to deflect blame from the situation.  Lucchino said he was puzzled by the comments while throughout the next days and weeks Henry and Lucchino expressed regret that Francona had “chosen” to leave.

However, if they tried to keep him as they continued to claim, why not pick up his option immediately after the season ended as a show of support? Why allow personal information to be leaked to the press? Why did John Henry show up at the 98.5 Studio and for an impromptu appearance on “Felger and Massarotti” with the explicit purpose of denying they leaked information or fired Francona, while blaming the signing of Carl Crawford on soon to be departed G.M Theo Epstein?

While these actions, or lack thereof, are enraging to fans, they are on par with this ownership group’s track record.   Both Principal Owner Henry and President Lucchino are good at two things -- making money, and saying all the right things.  It is what has led to the payrolls that have provided championship caliber teams, while also creating questions about priorities with other business ventures piggybacking on the Red Sox success.  In the case of Francona, it was made clear that what the organization wants most of all is a manager who will follow company orders, not step out of line, and keep the players happy and motivated, whoever they are.  It seems that Francona had overstayed his welcome and seeped up a bit too much power.

After all, if the organization were so insistent on a "new voice" and a change in direction, as most teams who make managerial changes are, they would have interviewed someone with major league experience and a "no nonsense" clubhouse demeanor.  As such, it would have surprised no one if they had interviewed either Bobby Valentine, Bruce Bochy, Joe Torre, or Trey Hillman. Instead, they have interviewed low profile candidates Dale Sveum, Pete Mackanin, Sandy Alomar Jr., Torey Lovullo, and Gene Lamont.  New G.M Ben Cherington has stressed that they are looking for someone who is open to the "organizational approach", which means someone who will follow the orders of Carmine, the stat-spewing computer, and President Lucchino.

As the interview process has progressed and Sveum has become the favorite, one has to wonder if Henry has any idea of the pulse of the franchise.  Just as heads shook when Henry signed Miami Heat star and Boston arch-enemy LeBron James to be his business partner; hiring Sveum, a man who was wildly unpopular in his stint as Red Sox third base coach in 2004-2005, would be a public relations blunder. 

While no one knows if Sveum or any of these other low profile candidates will be as successful as Francona, in the past two months Red Sox ownership dismissed the greatest manager in the history of their franchise, lost their G.M to the Cubs, watched their franchise closer sign elsewhere, and are preparing to hire a nobody to put it all back together.  

Terry Francona's situation back in 2004 seemed unenviable. The task awaiting the new manager in 2012 seems virtually impossible.

As the 2012 season approaches, Red Sox Nation is left with more questions than answers.

Impassioned fan base? Check.

Depleted bullpen? Check.

Clubhouse instability? Check.

A seven year veteran manager with two world championship rings? Che...oh, that's right, they fired that guy.