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Books

Why Sox fans can die happy

An account of the team's ascent to the championship focuses on the four Wise Men who reversed years of futility.

By PETER GOLENBOCK
Published July 9, 2006

For Red Sox fans, the story of the team's 2004 world championship is the equivalent of the story of Adam and Eve or Noah and the flood for nonbaseballers. The 2004 season is the story of the beginning of time. Everything before that was a bad dream. Bucky Effing Dent. Bill Effing Buckner. Aaron Effing Boone. Once they were Red Sox bugaboos. Whisper any one of those to a Red Sox fan before 2004, and he would flinch.

Today they are only dim memories, thanks to the four Wise Men: owners John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino, and general manager Theo Epstein.

In Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top, Seth Mnookin chronicles the history of how the Wise Men did it, beginning with the sale of the Red Sox in 2001, not long after the fall of the twin towers.

Mnookin, whose previous book was Hard News, an account of the scandals that hit the New York Times, was given access to everybody and anybody by John Henry himself. So if you're at all interested in the inner workings of the team as it planned and schemed to a world championship, you'll find this recitation more interesting than The Da Vinci Code.

My favorite section is the story of the battle to buy the Red Sox. As Mnookin describes it, the two rivals for the franchise with the deepest pockets were the Henry-Werner-Lucchino trio and a group headed by Cablevision CEO Charles Dolan.

I first met John Henry in the summer of 1989, when he owned the West Palm Beach Tropics in the fledgling Senior Professional Baseball League. The Senior League folded the next year, but Henry continued in baseball. He bought the Florida Marlins from Wayne Huizinga, but after being thwarted by Gov. Jeb Bush in his attempt to build a new domed stadium, he agreed to sell the Marlins to Major League Baseball and look for another team. He turned to the Los Angeles Angels, owned by Disney.

The major sticking point, as described in Mnookin's tidbit-filled book, was Mo Vaughn's $40-million contract. Henry wanted Disney to eat it. Michael Eisner refused.

Henry then considered Oakland. But he was already struggling in a small market. What about the Yankees or the Mets? George Steinbrenner and Fred Wilpon had no interest in selling. He placed a call to Larry Lucchino, formerly CEO of the Baltimore Orioles and the San Diego Padres, who was one of the bidders for the Boston Red Sox. Lucchino said the only thing his ownership group was lacking was money.

"That's what I have," said Henry. They formed an immediate friendship and agreed to go after the Red Sox together. A few days later Eisner called Henry to accept his bid for the Angels. It was too late.

When Henry took over ownership of the Sox from the Yawkey Trust, the first gesture he made was to sit down with each of the beat reporters and convince them that this was a new day in Boston. For years the reporters had suffered abuse at the hands of general manager Dan Duquette, who was more than a tad paranoid and had no use for them. He had ordered all employees from clubhouse boys to trainers not to tell the men and women of the press box anything.

It didn't take long for the reporters to see that Henry, who cleaned house, was bringing a new, relaxed style to the team. Manager Joe Kerrigan was out, and though Henry was against the hiring of Grady Little because he played too many hunches and didn't pay enough attention to statistics, Henry acceded to Lucchino's desire to hire him because the players liked him and he seemed to be the best choice at the time.

The Red Sox would go on to lose the 2003 pennant when Little played a hunch and left star pitcher Pedro Martinez in too long in Game 7 of the playoffs against the Yankees. It was then that Henry got his choice of manager, Terry Francona. No more hunches. No more Curse.

For the general manager spot, Henry was turned down by Toronto's J.P. Ricciardi and Oakland's Billy Beane, but both suggested the same candidate: the Red Sox's own assistant general manager Theo Epstein.

At age 28, Epstein seemed too young for such a key position. Worse, he hadn't even played college baseball. What kind of qualifications did he have? Fortunately, Henry disregarded these concerns. He knew Epstein had the one quality that counted: big-time smarts.

And so under Epstein and Francona, the Red Sox won the pennant and the World Series in 2004. The Red Sox in 2006 appear to be the class of the American League, along with the Chicago White Sox. With so many good teams in the AL Central, it doesn't look like the Yankees will even make the playoffs, unless they can catch the Sox.

Red Sox fans are at peace.

Peter Golenbock's latest book is Miracle: The Life and Times of Race Car Driver Bobby Allison (St. Martin). Next spring he will publish Seven: The Last Autobiography of Mickey Mantle.

[Last modified July 7, 2006, 11:26:01]