Francona is back in the
manager’s seat where he belongs after a short respite in the ESPN booth to
recover from the negative end to his Red Sox tenure, with the manager being
made the scapegoat for the team’s epic collapse in 2011 and a nasty hit put on
him in the Boston media. The former Saux manager gets to start over with a new team in the Cleveland Indians in a town with a sports media that is not as
demanding and vicious as Boston. Plus, his new book is being released and
promises to tell his side of the story of how and why he left the Red Sox
despite leading the team to two World Series titles.
Interestingly enough,
Francona seems to put most of the blame for the collapse of the Saux in recent
years on their image-obsessed owners. It’s hard to tell from just reading an
excerpt, but he seems to imply that many of the personnel moves that sunk the Red
Sox were directed by a marketing strategy rather than a baseball strategy.
Francona also suggested that former general manager Theo Epstein, who protected
his manager from much of the non-baseball nonsense, was frustrated by this type
of thinking and bolted the first chance he got.
I’m planning to read the
Francona book as soon as possible. I’m dying to know the details of how it all
went wrong for the guys who finally ended the curse of the Bambino and pushed past
the New York Yankees on their way to two titles. And even if Francona is
disappointed by the excerpt published by Sports Illustrated, it’s not going to
hurt his book sales one bit, which won’t make his former bosses very happy.
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