Running Tito’s Worst Week Ever Through the Franconalator
It’s rare that I’m ever right about something. I’m the guy after all who predicted the Patriots would get two 1st Round picks for Matt Cassel, the Bruins would win the Stanley Cup, and no one would ever go see a movie where a vampire stares at a pasty-faced bulemic teenager for two hours. So when I am right about something, people are going to hear about it. And one thing I was spot-on, bullseye correct about was Terry Francona.
I was in on the ground floor about Tito. And by that I mean mid-2004. Before the titles. Back when everyone else considered him to be just another in a long line of incompetent Sox managers... part of the rogue’s gallery of buffoons, racists, drunks, misanthropes, phonies, mental defectives and incorrigible gambleaholics... I figured out that this guy can run a baseball team. I was Dumbledore, seeing qualities in Prof. Snape that the others couldn’t see. If there had been an Initial Public Offering on Terry Francona stock, I’d be sitting on a majority share and it would be worth more than if I’d bought Microsoft in 1977.
I bring this up now because Francona’s talent has never been more on display... or more necessary... than it was over the last week. It’s not uncommon for Tito to find himself being the ringleader in a Cirque de Soliel of pure ridiculousness. Success or no, this is still the Red Sox. But the last week of July threw more chaos at the poor son of a bitch than Jack Bauer gets in seven seasons of “24"s strung together into one preposterous week.
Because in spite of what you read from the joyless creeps who call sports radio or the basement-dwelling, Vitamin D deficient shut-ins who write posts on Sox message boards, being a Major League manager has almost nothing to do with batting orders, pinch running, or righty/lefty matchups. The douchebags who sit there on Opening Day waiting to speed dial WEEI because Francona didn’t have Pedroia bunting in the 1st inning (to steal a line from “Patton”) don’t know anything more about managing a baseball team than they do about fornicating.
It’s been said that the toughest jobs in the world are: President of the United States, Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend, and manager of the Red Sox, in that order. But the President has a problem, he can always fire somebody. One of the Girls Next Door wants no part of Hef’s shriveled, flaccid wang she can always stall him til he falls asleep. Terry Francona doesn’t enjoy those luxuries. When Dice-K bitches about how he’s being handled, when trade rumors are blowing through the locker room like a typhoon through the Andrea Gail, when the most beloved Sox player of our times is implicated in a scandal, when the defense collapses and the bullpen blows a save in the middle of a pennant race, Tito can’t pass the buck or slip a sleeping pill into some old fart’s Metamucil. He’s got to stand up in front of the world and tell us what he’s thinking.
And that is the man’s true genius. Like a certain gray hooded wizard in Foxboro, Francona’s greatest talent is managing a crisis. It takes a rare man to stand before the loathsome, unwashed troglodytes of the Boston media in the middle of a media shitstorm, answer their question, tell the paying customers what they need to know, and not make matters worse. And to do so in a manner that makes everyone believe what you’re saying, respect you for saying it and move on? Especially when everyone asking the questions stands to sell more newspapers, get more listeners and make more money the worse the controversy is? Well that’s just doing the impossible.
Yet Tito does it. Day after pain-in-the-ass day. And last week was possibly his finest hour. The crises and the controversies came at him like fastballs from a Juggs gun and he kept ringing them back up the middle, much to my admiration. I make a living through words, and for the life of me I couldn’t have pulled off the level of bullshit Francona did and make it sound even remotely plausible. I’ve tried for years to make my in laws think I care, but no one’s buying it no matter how many “Howareya?”s and “Nice to see you”s I throw out there. But when Francona says something you believe it. Even though you know he’s covering up the truth, if that makes any sense.
Or maybe it’s just me. I’ve been a fan of his so long, I’m beginning to understand what he’s really thinking. I’ve studied the nuances and the non-verbal clues long enough to read between the lines and deduce what he’s actually thinking. Somewhere in all the nervous fidgeting and oceans of tobacco juice and “That’s a good question, Dale”s, I’ve figured out how to decipher what Tito actually means. I’ve become the Franconalator.
For example, here’s what he said publicly after the story broke about Dice-K:
“I thought we made huge strides in communicating through some of his frustrations and maybe ours, so to hear him say that is disappointing, Not disappointing that he has an opinion, that’s very welcome. Disappointing that he took a meeting that was confidential and decided to air it publicly. Yeah, we’re very disappointed.”
And here’s what he was actually thinking:
“Disappointed? To be minding my own business and then get blindsided like this? Sure I’m disappointed. In the same way the USS Arizona was disappointed when it got attacked from Japan. Do you realize how many hours I spent working with this guy? Ignoring the 3-2 counts on every AAA player and the two minutes between every pitch and the 100 pitch counts in the 4th inning because I wanted to respect his “cultural differences” only to get sneak attacked like this? Well e-goddamned-nuff. As long as John Henry’s name is at the bottom of his check he’ll workout however I tell him to. Besides, I thought it was Japanese “culture” to subjugate the individual to the needs of the whole organization. Am I suppose to believe that “Gung Ho” lied to me?”
And when Dice-K called to apologize, this is what Francona said:
“It actually went pretty well. I let him talk a little bit, which he actually did in English, which I think was making a point of making the effort, which I thought was pretty cool.”
And what he meant:
“You know what Dice-K and a cue ball have in common? The harder you whack them, the more English you get out of them. I would’ve preferred Hari Kari, but I’ll except the apology. Provided he can win us a game in September.”
What he said when the Ortiz steroid story broke:
“I think David felt all day, a lot of caring from his teammates, and hopefully he knows we care about him. He has earned, as a person, that from us. And we will be very supportive... My concern today is David.”
And meant:
“Do you honestly think I care about what was found in Papi’s pee six years ago? Listen, jackass, if he doesn’t hit those walkoffs against the Angels and Yankees in ‘04, I’m standing in a 1st base coaches box right now telling someone to watch out for the hidden ball trick. Are you saying the guys he got those hits off of weren’t “tainted”? That’s ridiculous. It would be like saying you’re grades from college should be changed because you smoked weed in 1979. Assuming Papi... and Manny and anyone else... was juicing, then I will get down on my knees every night and thank God they did and so should you.”
What he said as the trading deadline approached:
"There's a lot of uncertainty this week. Part of what makes Boston so special -- we seem to be a player in everything... I mean, we're not the biggest city in the country. But we're a major market in baseball. That's because we have great fans, we have great ownership. We have a lot of money than more teams to spend, so good for us. Now saying that, on the other side, for about one week out of the year, it creates a lot of uncertainty in players. There's really no way to get around it until it's over. This has generally been a tough week for us since I've been here."
And meant:
“This is the best baseball town in America, with the best fans and the best ownership. Which means we never stop trying to win. Theo and I will lose sleep for a week trying to figure out a way to fleece some GM into giving us what we want. Then we’ll kill the guy and grind him up into Soylent Green and feed him to our minor leaguers if it will help us win more championships. And if someone on our roster can’t handle that pressure, F- him. The guys we want thrive on the pressure. I eat the stuff, and I’ve got the circulatory system of a 90 year old man. If the thought of being traded out of here doesn’t light a fire under a guy’s ass, I don’t want him here in the first place.”
You and I both know Terry Francona thinks this way. How he manages to not say it is a testament to the man. Frankly I don’t think there’s another soul on Earth capable of doing the job as well as he has and without going postal a long time ago. For all this, and not just the two World Championships, he’s nothing less than the best manager in the history of one of the ten most storied teams in all of sports. I’m glad I called it.