As Francona prepares to say goodbye, a tribute to his humor and humanity
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Tim Kurkjian, ESPN Senior Writer
During spring training in 2012, Terry Francona was working with ESPN. It was the year after he was fired as manager of the Boston Red Sox, a year before he was hired to manage Cleveland. Tito has a terrible sense of direction, so that spring, ESPN placed him in my care. My sense of direction is also horrible, but next to Tito, I am Vasco da Gama. Our first night in Florida, we were assigned to stay at a Disney property called Fort Wilderness. It wasn’t a hotel, but individual log cabins in the woods — complete with bunk beds, as if we were Cub Scouts.
“I thought it was a joke,” Francona remembers, laughing. “I thought when I walked in, a bunch of people were going to jump out from behind a curtain, say Surprise! then move us to a real hotel. It didn’t happen. I called room service. The lady at the front desk said, ‘Sir, at Camp Wilderness, room service is the Coke machine you saw when you checked in.'”
Ten minutes after we arrived, Tito called me.
“Do you want to come over to my cabin and make some s’mores?” he asked.
That is Tito Francona. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he always finds himself in the middle of something and he always emerges unscathed, usually with a laugh, often directed at himself. That’s what makes him the funniest, most generous, most grounded, most beloved person that I’ve ever met in baseball. And it is sad for the game, and bad for the game, that this is expected to be Francona’s last week as a major league manager.
Today, the Guardians are honoring Francona with a video tribute, “Thank You, Tito” T-shirts and ticket deals for their last home game of the season. Francona is “expected to step away” after the season, and his self-deprecating sense of humor, vast baseball knowledge and incredible ability to connect with people of all kinds are just three reasons that he will go into the Hall of Fame as a manager as soon as he is eligible. Francona has won 1,948 games over 23 years managing the Philadelphia Phillies, Red Sox and Indians/Guardians. In 2004, he won Boston’s first world championship since 1918. His Red Sox won another World Series in 2007. In 2016, then in Cleveland, Francona nearly led another team to its first World Series since 1948.
His approach to managing is simple: Treat all his players with respect, make them all feel important, talk to them, relate to them. Ask them for their best and you will get their best. Francona’s preparation and observant nature are unmatched, and his preparation for every game, and every day, began with a game of cribbage. He often played with his players, which is highly unusual.
“You can learn a lot about a guy watching a guy play something other than baseball, even cribbage,” Francona said. “You see how someone takes a risk and wins, and you think, ‘I might be able to trust him in the ninth inning.’ I played for fun, but I also learned about my players.”
Dustin Pedroia and Josh Tomlin were among his regulars, and at one point in Boston, closer Jonathan Papelbon, who had never played, asked to play for money.
With his winnings, Francona said, “Pap built me a finished basement in my house.”
Francona had a unique relationship with his players. He poked fun at them, and vice versa. Francona and Pedroia were especially close. Francona thought that ESPN’s John Clayton, the late, great Hall of Fame football writer, looked like Pedroia — because they were both thin and balding. So, Tito arranged to have Clayton, pretending to be Pedroia, videotape a pep talk to the team before a big game. The whole team, including Pedroia, exploded in laughter.
There were so many laughs, and victories, in eight years in Boston. And yet if anything did go wrong with his team or one of his players, Francona was the first to confront the problem. No one could take a tense, stressful situation and smooth it over better than Francona. One night, a Japanese reporter, in a packed interview room after a difficult loss at Fenway, tried to ask a question in English about Daisuke Matsuzaka but struggled to find the right words.
When he was done, Francona said, “You’re from Western Pennsylvania, aren’t you?”
As, of course, is Francona. Everyone in the room howled — including the reporter.
Francona’s touch and feel for people was never more apparent than when he managed the Birmingham Barons in 1994 — the year Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, played baseball. It was a difficult task for everyone, including Francona. Jordan was a diligent worker and a great teammate, but he hadn’t played baseball since high school. Francona taught him to play the game, to respect the game. They were great friends then; they are great friends today.
“So, one night, we get off the bus after a game, our apartment complex was right next to a basketball court,” Francona said. “The guys start chirping at Michael. So he grabs four of us, manager, coaches, trainers, and says ‘We’re playing!’ I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. First time down the court, I set a pick for Michael at the top of the key. He screamed at me, ‘Get out of my way, I don’t need any damn pick!’ The game got chippy, and I’m in charge of Michael, I have to make sure he doesn’t get hurt. He dunked on some guy, nearly tore down the rim, then stood over the guy, screaming at him! I said, ‘That’s it, the game is over!'”
Francona played Yahtzee with Jordan on every bus trip — for money.
“Here I am making $29,000 a year as a Double-A manager,” Francona said, laughing. “Michael is the greatest basketball player, and the richest man in America. And he cheated to beat me at Yahtzee because he couldn’t bear to lose. I loved managing Michael. We had so many laughs.”
There weren’t many laughs in Philadelphia when Francona began his managerial career in the major leagues with the awful Phillies in 1997. He was given a young team full of players he had to teach not only how to play the game, but how to be professionals. One of Francona’s favorites was closer Wayne Gomes. He was young and raw, but no one tried harder than Gomes.
“Gomesy comes into a game to try to get a save, he gets to the mound and he’s got mustard all over his jersey,” Francona said. “I said, ‘Damn it, Gomesy, you can’t come into a game with mustard on your jersey, what are you doing?’ He said, ‘Sorry, Skip, when they opened the bullpen gate for me to go in, a bunch of fans threw hot dogs at me.'”
Years later, telling that story, Francona paused and said, “And we were at home!“
Francona’s sense of humor and his ability to connect with people, and the game, came from his late father, Tito, whom he worshiped. Tito, a left-handed-hitting outfielder/first baseman, was a career .272 hitter in 15 major league seasons with nine teams. When Terry Francona was 10 years old, his dad took him on a 10-day road trip, during which he hung out with the players, worked out on the fields, rode the planes and buses.
“Those were the greatest 10 days of my life,” Terry Francona said, “because I was with my dad.”
The funniest, most educational and most entertaining 10 days of my work life was the spring training tour of camps that I took with Francona in Florida in 2012: that famed Fort Wilderness trip. It was then that I learned so much more about Francona, including that he is exceedingly punctual: If you tell him that we will meet in the hotel lobby at 6:45 p.m. for dinner, it’s guaranteed that he will be waiting for you at 6:35. We went out to dinner five nights in a row; he paid the first four nights, against my wishes. The fifth night, I made sure that the waiter gave the bill to me. Francona wasn’t pleased.
“I always pay for dinner,” he said. “I have to. It’s what I do.”
One day that spring, he had to do a TV report for ESPN on the Yankees, a team he had just engaged in epic battles for the previous eight years.
“I forgot my suit,” Tito said, “so I had to go to Today’s Man to buy a suit. It cost $89. And it was a pinstripe suit! When the day was over, I just threw it in the trash can.”
During another conversation over that stretch, I told him that I have a dog named Tito.
“I bet he poops all over the house,” Tito, the analyst, said.
Which, of course, he does.
Yet another day, Francona and I visited the Blue Jays camp. Pitcher Ricky Romero approached us and told us that Toronto catcher J.P. Arencibia did a Tim Kurkjian impersonation. All 60 Blue Jays players gathered around Arencibia, Francona and me as he impersonated me. It was awful; it was hilarious. Francona, ever mischievous, decided to ambush me on the air. He secretly taped an interview with Arencibia, who was pretending to be me. When [Karl] Ravech, Francona and I did our Blue Jays report on the air that night, the taped interview with Arencibia was dropped in the broadcast to my surprise — and my horror. It was so bad, it was funny.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Francona said on the air. “I’m laughing too hard!”
I once asked him about his health.
“Remember,” he warned, “you asked.”
Francona could always play baseball. During his junior year in high school in Pennsylvania, Francona hit .769; he made nine outs all season. In 1980, at the University of Arizona, he won the Golden Spikes Award, given to the best college baseball player in the country. His major league career included a promising start; he batted .321 as a part-time player with Montreal in 1982. Then the injuries started.
That day I asked, Francona detailed countless surgeries which had led to all sorts of ailments, including blood flow issues. His body, and all the injuries, cut his playing career short. For the past 10 to 15 years, if he doesn’t get in the pool early in the morning to swim, to get the blood moving, his body might lock up by midafternoon, making it virtually impossible to move, or to manage. That, more than anything, is why he is planning to retire. His body, now 64 years old, simply can’t take the rigors of managing.
To me, he detailed his final game. He did so without anger or regret.
“I was in spring training with the Brewers [in 1992],” he said. “My body was falling apart, but they told me that I would make the team if I swung the bat well in our final exhibition game. I drove in eight runs. The final swing I took, I hit a grand slam. I could barely run around the bases, my kneecap was broken. They called me in after the game and told me they were releasing me. They sent me home, but they didn’t even send me back to Tucson. They sent me to Phoenix. I had to get from there to my house in Tucson. I swore then if I ever managed, I would handle the release of a player properly. And I’d make sure he got home.”
It is that sort of warmth and care that have made Francona a Hall of Fame manager — that and his wonderful sense of humor. And in retirement, that’s how I will remember Francona. Not for the nearly 2,000 wins, or the two world championships in Boston, and nearly a third in Cleveland, but for his laugh and the way he treated people — not just his players or his bosses. He still knows the names of production assistants from one year at ESPN 12 years ago.
My final fond memory of Francona will be the scooter that he drove around Cleveland as the Guardians’ manager. He lived so close to Progressive Field, he didn’t need a car. So, he bought a scooter. For a TV piece I did on him, I rode around the inside of the stadium on the back of his scooter, like Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, just without the frozen snot.
Tito looked the camera and said, “Now this really is ‘Dumb and Dumber.'”
Typical Tito. The best story, the best line, the perfect timing, and always finishing with a laugh.
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Alden Gonzalez
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Sometime around mid-August last year, Mookie Betts convened with the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ coaches. He had taken stock of what transpired while he rehabbed a broken wrist, surveyed his team’s roster and accepted what had become plainly obvious: He needed to return to right field.
For the better part of five months, Betts had immersed himself in the painstaking task of learning shortstop in the midst of a major league season. It was a process that humbled him but also invigorated him, one he had desperately wanted to see through. On the day he gave it up, Chris Woodward, at that point an adviser who had intermittently helped guide Betts through the transition, sought him out. He shook Betts’ hand, told him how much he respected his efforts and thanked him for the work.
“Oh, it ain’t over yet,” Betts responded. “For now it’s over, but we’re going to win the World Series, and then I’m coming back.”
Woodward, now the Dodgers’ full-time first-base coach and infield instructor, recalled that conversation from the team’s spring training complex at Camelback Ranch last week and smiled while thinking about how those words had come to fruition. The Dodgers captured a championship last fall, then promptly determined that Betts, the perennial Gold Glove outfielder heading into his age-32 season, would be the every-day shortstop on one of the most talented baseball teams ever assembled.
From November to February, Betts visited high school and collegiate infields throughout the L.A. area on an almost daily basis in an effort to solidify the details of a transition he did not have time to truly prepare for last season.
Pedro Montero, one of the Dodgers’ video coordinators, placed an iPad onto a tripod and aimed its camera in Betts’ direction while he repeatedly pelted baseballs into the ground with a fungo bat, then sent Woodward the clips to review from his home in Arizona. The three spoke almost daily.
By the time Betts arrived in spring training, Woodward noticed a “night and day” difference from one year to the next. But he still acknowledges the difficulty of what Betts is undertaking, and he noted that meaningful games will ultimately serve as the truest arbiter.
The Dodgers have praised Betts for an act they described as unselfish, one that paved the way for both Teoscar Hernandez and Michael Conforto to join their corner outfield and thus strengthen their lineup. Betts himself has said his move to shortstop is a function of doing “what I feel like is best for the team.” But it’s also clear that shouldering that burden — and all the second-guessing and scrutiny that will accompany it — is something he wants.
He wants to be challenged. He wants to prove everybody wrong. He wants to bolster his legacy.
“Mookie wants to be the best player in baseball, and I don’t see why he wouldn’t want that,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think if you play shortstop, with his bat, that gives him a better chance.”
ONLY 21 PLAYERS since 1900 have registered 100 career games in right field and 100 career games at shortstop, according to ESPN Research. It’s a list compiled mostly of lifelong utility men. The only one among them who came close to following Betts’ path might have been Tony Womack, an every-day right fielder in his age-29 season and an every-day shortstop in the three years that followed. But Womack had logged plenty of professional shortstop experience before then.
Through his first 12 years in professional baseball, Betts accumulated just 13 starts at shortstop, all of them in rookie ball and Low-A from 2011 to 2012. His path — as a no-doubt Hall of Famer and nine-time Gold Glove right fielder who will switch to possibly the sport’s most demanding position in his 30s — is largely without precedent. And yet the overwhelming sense around the Dodgers is that if anyone can pull it off, it’s him.
“Mookie’s different,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “I think this kind of challenge is really fun for him. I think he just really enjoys it. He’s had to put in a lot of hard work — a lot of work that people haven’t seen — but I just think he’s such a different guy when it comes to the challenge of it that he’s really enjoying it. When you look at how he approaches it, he’s having so much fun trying to get as good as he can be. There’s not really any question in anyone’s mind here that he’s going to be a very good defensive shortstop.”
Betts entered the 2024 season as the primary second baseman, a position to which he had long sought a return, but transitioned to shortstop on March 8, 12 days before the Dodgers would open their season from South Korea, after throwing issues began to plague Gavin Lux. Almost every day for the next three months, Betts put himself through a rigorous pregame routine alongside teammate Miguel Rojas and third-base coach Dino Ebel in an effort to survive at the position.
The metrics were unfavorable, scouts were generally unimpressed and traditional statistics painted an unflattering picture — all of which was to be expected. Simply put, Betts did not have the reps. He hadn’t spent significant time at shortstop since he was a teenager at Overton High School in Nashville, Tennessee. He was attempting to cram years of experience through every level of professional baseball into the space allotted to him before each game, a task that proved impossible.
Betts committed nine errors during his time at shortstop, eight of them the result of errant throws. He often lacked the proper footwork to put himself in the best position to throw accurately across the diamond, but the Dodgers were impressed by how quickly he seemed to grasp other aspects of the position that seemed more difficult for others — pre-pitch timing, range, completion of difficult plays.
Shortly after the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees to win their first full-season championship since 1988, Betts sat down with Dodgers coaches and executives and expressed his belief that, if given the proper time, he would figure it out. And so it was.
“If Mook really wants to do something, he’s going to do everything he can to be an elite, elite shortstop,” Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said. “I’m not going to bet against that guy.”
THE FIRST TASK was determining what type of shortstop Betts would be. Woodward consulted with Ryan Goins, the current Los Angeles Angels infield coach who is one of Betts’ best friends. The two agreed that he should play “downhill,” attacking the baseball, making more one-handed plays and throwing largely on the run, a style that fit better for a transitioning outfielder.
During a prior stint on the Dodgers’ coaching staff, Woodward — the former Texas Rangers manager who rejoined the Dodgers staff after Los Angeles’ previous first-base coach, Clayton McCullough, became the Miami Marlins‘ manager in the offseason — implemented the same style with Corey Seager, who was widely deemed too tall to remain a shortstop.
“He doesn’t love the old-school, right-left, two-hands, make-sure-you-get-in-front-of-the-ball type of thing,” Woodward said of Betts. “It doesn’t make sense to him. And I don’t coach that way. I want them to be athletic, like the best athlete they can possibly be, so that way they can use their lower half, get into their legs, get proper direction through the baseball to line to first. And that’s what Mookie’s really good at.”
Dodger Stadium underwent a major renovation of its clubhouse space over the offseason, making the field unusable and turning Montero and Betts into nomads. From the second week of November through the first week of February, the two trained at Crespi Carmelite High School near Betts’ home in Encino, California, then Sierra Canyon, Los Angeles Valley College and, finally, Loyola High.
For a handful of days around New Year’s, Betts flew to Austin, Texas, to get tutelage from Troy Tulowitzki, the five-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove Award winner whose mechanics Betts was drawn to. In early January, when wildfires spread through the L.A. area, Betts flew to Glendale, Arizona, to train with Woodward in person.
Mostly, though, it was Montero as the eyes and ears on the ground and Woodward as the adviser from afar. Their sessions normally lasted about two hours in the morning, evolving from three days a week to five and continually ramping up in intensity. The goal for the first two months was to hone the footwork skills required to make a variety of different throws, but also to give Betts plenty of reps on every ground ball imaginable.
When January came, Betts began to carve out a detailed, efficient routine that would keep him from overworking when the games began. It accounted for every situation, included backup scenarios for uncontrollable events — when it rained, when there wasn’t enough time, when pregame batting practice stretched too long — and was designed to help Betts hold up. What was once hundreds of ground balls was pared down to somewhere in the neighborhood of 35, but everything was accounted for.
LAST YEAR, BETTS’ throws were especially difficult for Freddie Freeman to catch at first base, often cutting or sailing or darting. But when Freeman joined Betts in spring training, he noticed crisp throws that consistently arrived with backspin and almost always hit the designated target. Betts was doing a better job of getting his legs under him on batted balls hit in a multitude of directions. Also, Rojas said, he “found his slot.”
“Technically, talking about playing shortstop, finding your slot is very important because you’re throwing the ball from a different position than when you throw it from right field,” Rojas explained. “You’re not throwing the ball from way over the top or on the bottom. So he’s finding a slot that is going to work for him. He’s understanding now that you need a slot to throw the ball to first base, you need a slot to throw the ball to second base, you need a slot to throw the ball home and from the side.”
Dodgers super-utility player Enrique Hernandez has noticed a “more loose” Betts at shortstop this spring. Roberts said Betts is “two grades better” than he was last year, before a sprained left wrist placed him on the injured list on June 17 and prematurely ended his first attempt. Before reporting to spring training, Betts described himself as “a completely new person over there.”
“But we’ll see,” he added.
The games will be the real test. At that point, Woodward said, it’ll largely come down to trusting the work he has put in over the past four months. Betts is famously hard on himself, and so Woodward has made it a point to remind him that, as long as his process is sound, imperfection is acceptable.
“This is dirt,” Woodward will often tell him. “This isn’t perfect.”
The Dodgers certainly don’t need Betts to be their shortstop. If it doesn’t work out, he can easily slide back to second base. Rojas, the superior defender whose offensive production prompted Betts’ return to right field last season, can fill in on at least a part-time basis. So can Tommy Edman, who at this point will probably split his time between center field and second base, and so might Hyeseong Kim, the 26-year-old middle infielder who was signed out of South Korea this offseason.
But it’s clear Betts wants to give it another shot.
As Roberts acknowledged, “He certainly felt he had unfinished business.”
LAKELAND, Fla. — Detroit Tigers outfielder Akil Baddoo had surgery to repair a broken bone in his right hand and will miss the start of the regular season.
Manager A.J. Hinch said Friday that Baddoo had more tests done after some continued wrist soreness since the start of spring training. Those tests revealed the hamate hook fracture in his right hand that was surgically repaired Thursday.
Baddoo, 26, who has been with the Tigers since 2021, is at spring training as a non-roster player. He was designated for assignment in December after Detroit signed veteran right-hander Alex Cobb to a $15 million, one-year contract. Baddoo cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A Toledo.
Cobb is expected to miss the start of the season after an injection to treat hip inflammation that developed as the right-hander was throwing at the start of camp. He has had hip surgery twice.
Baddoo hit .137 with two homers and five RBIs in 31 games last season. The left-hander has a .226 career average with 28 homers and 103 RBI in 340 games.
After the Tigers acquired him from Minnesota in the Rule 5 draft at the winter meetings in December 2020, Baddoo hit .259 with 13 homers, 55 RBIs, 18 stolen bases and a .330 on-base percentage in 124 games as a rookie in 2021. Those are all career bests.
Baddoo went into camp in a crowded outfield. The six outfielders on Detroit’s 40-man roster include three other left-handed hitters (Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter and Parker Meadows) and switch-hitter Wenceel Pérez. The other outfielders are right-handers Matt Vierling and Justyn-Henry Malloy.
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