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.
ATLANTA — Big Dumper helped drive a big boost to ratings for Monday night’s Home Run Derby.
ESPN said Tuesday that viewership for Cal Raleigh‘s Home Run Derby victory was up 5% from 2024, according to Nielsen ratings. Raleigh’s win over fellow finalist Junior Caminero of Tampa Bay drew an average audience of 5,729,000 viewers, up from 5,451,000 viewers in 2024 when Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Teoscar Hernández topped Bobby Witt Jr. in the finals.
ESPN says the combined audience on ESPN and ESPN2 peaked with 6,307,000 viewers at 9:30 p.m. ET. That made the Home Run Derby one of the most-watched programs of the day, including all broadcast and cable choices.
Raleigh’s father, Todd, was his personal pitcher for the event. The Seattle catcher’s 15-year-old brother, Todd Jr., was his catcher. The elder Raleigh is a former coach of Tennessee and Western Carolina.
Raleigh, 28, leads the majors with 38 homers and 82 RBIs and is the American League’s starting catcher in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game.
Raleigh became the second Mariners player to win the Derby, following three-time winner Ken Griffey Jr., who was on the field, snapping photos.
The 2025 MLB All-Star Game has arrived!
Will the American League continue its dominance over the National League with its 11th victory in 12 years?
All-Star newcomers, such as Pete Crow-Armstrong, and veterans, such as Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, will join the rest of baseball’s best and descend on Truist Park, home of the Atlanta Braves, for this year’s Midsummer Classic — and we’ll have live updates and analysis from Atlanta throughout the game (8 p.m. ET on Fox).
After the final pitch is thrown, ESPN’s MLB experts will share their biggest takeaways right here as well. Let’s kick off the day with some predictions for Tuesday night’s game.
All-Star Game live updates
The starting lineups
Who will win the All-Star Game and by what score?
Jorge Castillo: The National League 5-2. The NL has the better lineup and will win the game for just the second time since 2012, when Melky Cabrera won MVP honors in Kansas City.
Jeff Passan: The National League will win 3-1. The NL has a far superior lineup to the AL, and in an All-Star Game where pitchers are unlikely to throw more than one inning each, the ability to pile up baserunners seeing a pitcher for the first time is paramount. The NL is more equipped to do that than the AL.
Who is your All-Star Game MVP pick?
Jesse Rogers: Cal Raleigh. I mean, he’s going to homer … that’s a given. He might even hit two. The “Big Dumper” is going to dump a blast into the right-field stands, putting another exclamation mark on an already incredible season. He won the HR Derby, and he’ll win All-Star Game MVP.
Alden Gonzalez: Pete Crow-Armstrong. He’ll have the most productive offensive night among the NL starters and, at some point, make an incredible catch in center field. Crow-Armstrong is 95 games into his age-23 season and has already accumulated 4.9 FanGraphs wins above replacement. He has become a star right before our eyes — and he seems to love the lights more than most.
What’s the matchup you are most excited to see?
Rogers: Let’s start the bottom of the first inning off with a bang, as Tarik Skubal, the starting pitcher for the AL, will face Shohei Ohtani, who is just 1-for-9 off the left-hander. Does the reigning AL Cy Young winner get an early strikeout of the reigning NL MVP, or does Ohtani finally get to Skubal? Not many matchups are guaranteed in the All-Star Game, but this one is — and it’s about as good as it gets.
Castillo: Jacob Misiorowski against anybody. The rookie right-hander’s inclusion after just five career starts produced a stir across the majors, and all eyes will be on him once he takes the mound. When he does, his 103 mph fastball should certainly play in his one inning. He’s as tough of a matchup as any pitcher in this game.
Who is the one All-Star fans will know much better after Tuesday night’s game?
Gonzalez: The San Diego Padres ended up sending three relievers to the All-Star Game, but there was one clear bullpen representative from the outset: Adrian Morejon. The 26-year-old left-hander doesn’t get much notoriety, but he has been utterly dominant, posting a 1.85 ERA and an expected slugging percentage of .263. He doesn’t strike hitters out at the absurd rates of some of today’s most dominant pitchers, but he gets outs. And he’ll probably get three big ones toward the end of the night.
Passan: Perhaps they already know Misiorowski because his fastball sits at 100 mph and his slider is in the mid-90s, but this is the sort of showcase built for him. One inning, let it eat and show that even though his career is only five starts deep, this will be the first of many All-Star appearances for the 23-year-old.
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Jesse Rogers
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Jesse Rogers
ESPN Staff Writer
- Jesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.
The Tampa Bay Rays will play potential postseason games at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, setting up the possibility of a World Series staged in a minor league stadium with a capacity of 10,046.
The move came after discussion of potentially shifting postseason games to an alternate major league stadium, with Miami‘s LoanDepot Park among the sites considered. The Rays are playing their regular-season games this year at Steinbrenner Field, home of the Low-A Tampa Tarpons, after hurricane damage tore the roof off Tropicana Field and rendered it unfit for play in 2025.
The Rays occupy fourth place in the American League East at 50-47 but are just 1½ games behind the Seattle Mariners for the third wild-card spot in the AL.
Commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday he anticipates the Rays will return to Tropicana Field, which is being refurbished, for the 2026 season.
By then, the Rays could be under new ownership. While an agreement has yet to be signed, the sale of the team for $1.7 billion to an ownership group led by real estate developer Patrick Zalupski continues to progress, sources told ESPN. The change of team control would not happen until after the postseason, sources said, though there could be a signed agreement in place prior to that.
The Rays would likely stay in the Tampa Bay area after being sold by Stu Sternberg, who bought the team in 2004 for $200 million.
Sternberg pursued a sale of the Rays in the wake of the team pulling out of a deal with St. Petersburg, where Tropicana Field is located, for a $1.3 billion stadium. The sides had agreed to the deal prior to Hurricanes Helene and Milton causing more than $50 million worth of damage to Tropicana Field.
The Pinellas County board of commissioners in October 2024 delayed a vote to fund its portion of the stadium. Less than a month later, the Rays said the delay would cause a one-year delay in the stadium’s opening and cause cost overruns that would make the deal untenable without further government funding. In mid-March, Sternberg told St. Petersburg mayor Ken Welch the team would back away from the stadium deal.
Where Zalupski and his partners — mortgage broker Bill Cosgrove and Ken Babby, an owner of two minor league teams — ultimately take the Rays remains a question central to MLB’s future. Manfred has said he wants the stadium situations of the Rays and Athletics — who plan to play in a minor league stadium in West Sacramento, California, until moving to Las Vegas before the 2028 season — settled before MLB expands to 32 teams.
“If I had a brand new gleaming stadium to move [the Athletics] into, we would have done that,” Manfred said. “Right now, it is my expectation that they will play in Sacramento until they move to Las Vegas.”
Potential Twins sale: Manfred also addressed a potential sale of the Minnesota Twins, which had a “leader in the clubhouse” until earlier this summer. Billionaire Justin Ishbia turned away from the Twins, striking a deal to purchase the Chicago White Sox as early as 2029.
That left the Twins to look elsewhere.
“When it becomes clear there is a leader, everyone else backs away,” Manfred said. “A big part of the delay was associated with them deciding to do something else.”
The commissioner wouldn’t give specifics but believes a deal to sell the Twins is moving in the right direction.
“I’m not prepared to tell you today,” Manfred said. “There will be a transaction there and it will be consistent with the kind of pricing that has been taken [lately]. Just need to be patient there.”
Television contracts: Manfred says the sport is in better position to reach national broadcasting agreements for 2026-28 following the Allen & Co. Conference of media and finance leaders in Idaho.
In February, ESPN said it was ending its agreement to broadcast Sunday night games, the All-Star Home Run Derby and the Wild Card Series after this season. MLB’s other agreements, with Fox and TBS, run through the 2028 season, and MLB wants all its contracts to end at the same time.
“I had lot of conversations [in Idaho] that moved us significantly closer to a deal and I don’t believe it’s going to be long,” Manfred said Tuesday.
Gambling integrity: Though another MLB player — Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz — is being investigated for issues related to gambling, the commissioner insists the system is working and that legalization has actually helped protect the sport.
“We constantly take a look at the integrity protections we have in place,” Manfred said. “I believe the transparency and monitoring we have in place now is a result of the legalizations and the partnerships that we’ve made. [It] puts us in a better position to protect baseball than we were in before legalization.”
Manfred is referencing gambling monitoring companies and the league’s agreements with gambling entities that inform MLB if they find suspicious activity surrounding their players. That is what happened to Ortiz, sources close to the situation told ESPN.
ABS implementation: Though not all players have outwardly expressed a desire for the ABS challenge system to be implemented full time, Manfred believes he has taken their input on the subject.
On Monday, All-Star starting pitchers Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes were lukewarm on the idea — at least for it being used in the All-Star Game.
“I don’t plan on using them [challenges],” Skubal said. “I probably am not going to use them in the future.”
Added Skenes: “I really do like the human element of the game. I think this is one of those things that you kind of think umpires are great until they’re not. And so I could kind of care less, either way, to be honest.”
Manfred insists the challenge system idea came via a compromise after talking to players.
“Where we are on ABS has been fundamentally influenced by player input,” he said. “If two years ago, you asked me what do the owners want to do? They would have called every pitch with ABS as soon as possible.
“The players expressed a strong interest in the challenge system.”
All-Star return to Atlanta: After pulling the All-Star Game from Atlanta in 2021 due to new voting laws, Manfred was asked why the return to the city and state.
“The reason to come back here is self-revealing,” Manfred said. “You walk around here, the level of interest and excitement with a great facility, the support this market has given baseball, those are really good reasons to come back here.”
Diversity Pipeline Program: Manfred was also asked about his decision to change wording on the league’s website in relation to its Diversity Pipeline Program. He cited the changing times for the decision but stated the spirit of the programs still exist.
“Sometimes you have to look at how the world is changing around you and readjust to where you are,” Manfred said. “There were certain aspects to some of our programs that were very explicitly race and/or gender based. We know people in Washington were aware of that. We felt it was important recast our programs in a way to make sure we could continue on with our programs and continue to pursue the values we’ve always adhered to without tripping what could be legal problems that could interfere with that process.”
Immigration protections for players: As for new immigration enforcement policies since President Donald Trump’s administration took over in Washington, Manfred said the government has lived up to its promises.
“We did have conversations with the administration,” Manfred said. “They assured us there would be protections for our players. They told us that was going to happen and that’s what’s happened.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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