Red Sox Rule Read Online Free PDF Page B

sometimes they saw a promising prospect, considered him the next great thing, and were willing to walk with him tothe altar. They flashed anger, but they still wore badges of family honor, and those badges covered the heartbeats of romantics. It always came back to a desire to win just once for Grandpa or Nana or old Uncle Roscoe. It was easy for any executive, no matter how brilliant, to be lured into their emotional dance.
    One of the first things Epstein promised himself in November 2003 was that he wouldn’t be pressured to go after a so-called big name to replace Little. Even the men recognized as the best managers in the game, Bobby Cox and Mike Scioscia, might find trap doors in Boston that they hadn’t thought of in Atlanta and Los Angeles. That logic was reversible, too: a candidate might have had trouble with a team in another market, but that didn’t mean the same man wouldn’t be able to thrive in Boston.
    Epstein began making phone calls to find out about Francona, and Francona did the same thing to get a glimpse of Epstein. A few times, they would have been better off doing a three-way conference call. They knew some of the same people and had some of the same sources. One of their mutual friends, Cleveland GM Mark Shapiro, kept it simple when Francona asked about Epstein.
    “Don’t bullshit this guy,” Shapiro warned. “He’s too smart to fall for it. He’ll tie you up in knots.”
    Those words sounded good to Francona. The concept of fooling someone to get a job never crossed his mind. His energy was spent writing and studying. He filled nine pages with notes on how he felt about pro baseball and managing, knowing that if he wrote his thoughts he’d be able to verbalize them. He wrote how important it was for players to show respect for the game simply by being on time, and he wrote about observing players. He wrote that you can peek into the soul of a player early in the morning during spring training, when few people are watching on the back fields; that’s when theplayers who have passion stand out from the indifferent pack. When he was finished writing, he picked up a Red Sox media guide and committed every face he saw to memory. Anyone could recognize all the people from TV, but he wanted to put names with the assortment of unfamiliar faces. It didn’t matter if the employee worked in scouting, public relations, or the clubhouse—if there was a picture in the guide, Francona was going to learn that person’s name.
    Epstein, meanwhile, was trying to figure out how to structure a relevant interview. He knew he didn’t want it to be a traditional question-and-answer session. Francona would be sitting there in a jacket and tie, which in itself was far from reality; this was the same man who once told the Phillies that the most important rule of the dress code was that no one was allowed to look worse than he did. And he was the one known for leaving his sport coats in wrinkled heaps on the floor. Epstein didn’t care if Francona’s pocket squares were coordinated with his ties. He wanted to see how his mind worked and how he reacted to pressure. His plan was to combine the best elements of the standard interview with an experimental technique designed to simulate the intensity of the dugout.
    There would be no business travelers, waiters, or buttered rolls to distract them when they met at Fenway in November 2003. One of Epstein’s assistant general managers at the time, Josh Byrnes, joined them for what was going to be a full shift of talking baseball.
    It was obvious to Francona that these two had done their homework, and their preparation relaxed him. They had talked to enough people to at least get a silhouette of his years in Philadelphia, so when they mentioned specific things it felt more like a conversation than an interrogation. They knew that he had taken his share of hits on talk radio, with hosts and callers labeling him Fran coma . The fans there didn’t like the way he rested