Red Sox Rule Read Online Free PDF

his bosses, but at least they didn’t have to cast about trying to diagnose his issues. They knew all his tendencies, and he knew theirs. Now they were on to the unknown.
    Since there was such urgency to move Little out of town, manyNew Englanders glossed over the fact that Theo Epstein, the Red Sox general manager, was going to be making his first managerial hire. Epstein was 28 years old when he was named GM in November 2002, making him the youngest man in baseball history with that title. Right around the time of his one-year anniversary on the job, Epstein began searching for a manager capable of leading the Red Sox to the World Series and actually winning it. It would have been a hilarious assignment if it hadn’t been his. What did he know about finding a manager?
    Before his career took him to Boston, he had worked in San Diego. It seemed that Padres manager Bruce Bochy never so much as twitched in that seat as Epstein arrived in Southern California in 1995, worked in baseball operations, went to law school at night, scouted, and, 7 years later, boarded a flight to Boston to become assistant GM of his hometown Red Sox.
    Funny, but Epstein had been on more rigorous GM hunts than managerial ones. In his last days as an assistant GM, he had recommended Oakland’s Beane for the opening in Boston. Beane agreed to a Boston contract and was on his way to working for an organization where Moneyball would take on new meaning for him. The Red Sox were so bankrolled that they could afford to pay for expensive players and pay off expensive mistakes. If spending money was the question, the answer was usually, “Yes, of course.” But Beane had doubts about leaving the Bay Area, and those doubts led to a professional U-turn back to Oakland. That’s when history and the Red Sox called for Epstein.
    Epstein’s age wasn’t the only thing that made him a notable GM. Nor was it bloodlines that allowed him to say that his grandfather, a Casablanca screenwriter, created some of the greatest one-liners— Here’s looking at you, kid —in the history of American cinema. And although his good looks and savvy once had himon New England’s list of dream bachelors, just after Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, being tall and handsome had nothing to do with sound decision-making. What made Epstein stand out was his balance, a balance that gave him permission to connect with multiple camps and have credibility in all of them.
    He wasn’t all spreadsheet or all scout; he was a little of both. He could hang out with the suits and talk their corporate talk, and he could strum a guitar while admiring the poetry of Pearl Jam. He had a need to examine a situation from all sides, a routine thoroughness that protected him from being a reactionary. No one was as hot-tempered and miserable to be around as he following a loss, but he was smart enough to avoid all decisions while his misery was fresh. It was a good quality for any executive to have, and a requirement for the GM of the Red Sox.
    Really, it was a job of being constantly seduced and lobbied. Everyone in the region had an internal No Championship calendar. Each time the pages flipped from yet another barren year—’86, ’87, ’88, ’89…—the tension increased. People became more cynical and desperate. Implausible trades became plausible. Irrational signings became rational. The word “future” became an occasional f-bomb.
    The GM was always having his shoulder tapped, his jacket pulled, his ear whispered into. Epstein understood it because he had done it and grown up around it. He knew the agenda-setting impact of the sports columnists and sports-talk radio hosts. They were eloquent, sure, but they were selling eloquent frustration, and it all amounted to an immediate call to action. They wrote and spoke to an opinionated and hungry audience, an audience that spanned, at least, the six New England states.
    Sometimes the people wanted management to do something big and do it now;