Feeding the Monster

by Seth Mnookin

  Today, four years later, it’s clear there never was a bag job of the type alleged by so many of the city’s media provocateurs—a Major League Baseball–coordinated effort that guaranteed Henry and Werner would get the team, regardless of how much they bid or who else was involved in the process. That’s not to say that the sale didn’t have its peculiarities, or even that Henry and Werner weren’t given special consideration in the process. “It is to baseball’s advantage for the commissioner to have trust in who he’s selling [a club] to,” says Charles Steinberg, the Red Sox executive vice president of public affairs. “That’s not illicit.” Steinberg also points out that Henry, Werner, and Lucchino all had experience with, and sympathy for, the plight of small-market teams. “That was key,” he says. “These three knew the plight of the small markets. So now you have a small-market conscience in a big-market club, and that was critical to the future of baseball.” These factors obviously contributed to actions Selig took that helped Henry’s bid, such as the promise of a put to Henry when he was trying to sell the Marlins, or Selig’s advocacy of a change in the rules of the sale to allow Henry and O’Donnell to discuss joining forces. Still, the fact remains that if Charles Dolan’s advisors had not panicked and leaked his intention to buy up the entire team; or if Joe O’Donnell and Steve Karp had put together a fully financed bid of their own; or if Miles Prentice had been able to secure approval for his funders before December 20, then one of these bidders would likely be the owner of the Red Sox today.

  In the early afternoon of January 16, Major League Baseball’s owners voted 29–0* to approve Henry and Werner’s group as the new owners of the Boston Red Sox. As soon as the approval was official, Lucchino gave notice that things were about to be run a lot differently over on Yawkey Way. The Red Sox, known for taking their fans for granted and for their needlessly ornery approach to public relations, were about to get a major makeover. In a move that recalled Lucchino’s arrival in San Diego, the Boston press was told how the new owners were planning a “fan-friendly” marketing effort with a theme of “the New Boston Red Sox.”

  At the end of the day, Henry once again addressed concerns that he had put together a group of out-of-towners intent on making money. “What I’d really like to do,” he said from Phoenix, “is to address the fans of the Boston Red Sox and say today that we’re bringing to Boston what I would call a dream team of baseball people. Baseball runs in our veins, like it does yours. We’re excited today, and like we said a month ago, we can’t wait to get started.”

  *The Henry-Werner group ended up with 15 minority partners: Dexter shoe heirs Theodore and William Alfond; TJ Maxx founder Ben Cammarata; Boston International Group and Junction Investors, Ltd. founder Thomas DiBenedetto; Carruth Management partner Michael Egan; Arnold Worldwide Partners chairman and CEO Ed Eskandarian; Boston-based hedge fund manager Michael Gordon; H.P. Hood and Gulf Oil chairman John Kaneb; medical device pioneer and businessman Phillip Morse; The New York Times Company; San Diego money manager Arthur Nicholas; real estate investor Frank Resnek; real estate developer Sam Tamposi; Mast Industries founder and Staples board member Martin Trust; and money manager Jeffrey Vinik.

  *Since John Henry still technically owned the Marlins, he was not allowed to vote for himself.

  Part III

  A Fresh Start: 2002

  Chapter 14

  “Sweep Out the Duke”

  ON JANUARY 10, 2002, six days before baseball’s other owners officially approved the sale of the Red Sox to John Henry and Tom Werner, the Boston chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America held its annual fund-raising dinner at the Back Bay Sheraton. The dinner, which every year is advertised as a chance for attendees to mingle for a few hours with a handful of Red Sox officials and players, began in the 1930s and originally functioned as a fund-raiser for indigent writers and their families. Today, the Boston writers donate the money raised from the meal—in 2002, tickets were $100 each—to various charities. The evening is generally a ho-hum affair, more of an opportunity for a wintertime check-in than an occasion to get serious business done. Henry saw the dinner as a chance to begin forging the kind of relationships he’d had with many of the Marlins writers when he was in Florida.* That afternoon, from three until six, he met individually with many of the beat reporters and columnists who covered the team.

  In addition to introducing himself, Henry wanted to know what the reporters thought of Dan Duquette. Since being awarded the team, Henry had found Duquette increasingly difficult to deal with. When he tried to talk to Duquette about the possibility of his staying on as the Red Sox general manager, Duquette said he thought he deserved to be named the team’s president. “My goal was to help the Red Sox win a World Series championship and I wanted to stay and fulfill that goal,” Duquette says. “I made it clear I wanted to stay.” Henry thought Duquette’s approach was bizarre. For one thing, Larry Lucchino had already been named the Red Sox president and CEO.

  “I tried to convince him that just being general manager, if we ended up going with him, would be a big enough job,” says Henry. Duquette was not assuaged. He began to complain about how little he had been paid while working under Harrington, about how he was unappreciated, about how no one seemed to realize how valuable he was to the club.

  Henry was well aware that the Red Sox front office was notorious for being needlessly combative. The previous year’s disarray—Duquette’s war with former Sox manager Jimy Williams; Carl Everett’s meltdown; the Sox’s precipitous September swoon—had been well documented. “Before we took over,” Henry says, “it seemed as if [the team] was out of control.” Prior to making any decisions, Henry felt he needed to determine the extent to which the Red Sox’s breakdown was due to circumstances that had nothing to do with Duquette. The team, after all, had been in a much-scrutinized state of flux for almost a year and a half.

  The city’s assembled newshounds answered that question for him. Many of the reporters told Henry that they’d never had a single significant—or friendly—conversation with Dan Duquette during the eight years he had run the team. The interactions they did have were marked by an arrogance and elitism they found insulting and obnoxious. With little prompting, they began telling Henry what covering the Red Sox had been like under the previous regime. One writer described how, in the late 1990s, he’d called the Red Sox training facility in Fort Myers to inquire about injured utility infielder Lou Merloni’s physical rehabilitation program. The trainer who answered the phone not only wouldn’t discuss Merloni’s progress, he refused even to confirm that Merloni was in Florida. When asked why he couldn’t comment, the trainer whispered, “If I talk to you, I’ll get fired,” before quickly hanging up. Reporter after reporter described an environment in which the writers, the players, and the team’s management were needlessly at war with one another. One famously feisty scribe said simply, “Get out your broom and sweep out the Duke.”

  Henry’s one-on-one meetings with Red Sox writers gave Henry a fresh perspective on the team. Just as important, they helped to thaw the decades-long resentment that existed between the media and the Sox front office. In the past, taking shots at ownership had been easy (and fun) to do: When a reporter is treated poorly, he doesn’t worry much about being too hard on a subject. Henry, even after emerging from his bruising battle to buy the team, demonstrated immediately his commitment to changing the way business was done in Boston.

  “The media was telling me if they tried to interview a minor league pitching coach they were told, ‘I can’t talk to you because I’ll get in trouble,’ ” Henry says. “I was shocked.” To each reporter, Henry promised that things would soon be different. “We were committed to being open and having open lines of communication,” says Henry. “That was the opposite of Duquette. And I knew that we had to show we were different as quickly and as aggressively as possible.”

  That would be easier said than done. Even after the teams’ owners approved Henry’s group, John Harrington refused to le
t Henry and his partners make any changes regarding the team until the sale had officially closed, which would likely not occur until late February. They couldn’t begin implementing their own plans for ticket sales, or make even the most cosmetic improvements to the Red Sox facilities.* Despite the fact that Henry, Werner, and Lucchino all agreed that Duquette should be replaced, the new owners were forced to begin spring training workouts with a lame-duck GM still convinced he had a shot at retaining his job.

  On Monday, February 18, John Henry arrived at Boston’s spring training home in Fort Myers in a $1 million customized bus he had built when he owned the Marlins. (The bus, which Henry joked that new Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria had lent to him for his trip to Florida’s southwest coast from his Boca Raton home, was adorned with an enormous Marlins logo on the side. Loria, whose eventual ownership of the bus became a bargaining point in his negotiations to buy the Marlins, received the vehicle soon after this final trip of Henry’s.) Even though the sale of the Red Sox would not officially close for nine more days, Henry was eager to introduce himself to the team.

  Henry was, it is safe to say, an owner unlike any the assembled Red Sox fans had ever encountered. He climbed off the bus wearing loafers, pressed trousers, a button-down shirt, a wide-brimmed, pale-cream Stetson Panama hat—Henry is extremely sensitive to the sun—and sporty sunglasses. Before making his way to the Red Sox practice field, he stopped to sign autographs and banter with fans, who seemed almost awed by his presence.

  “You play baseball? What position?” he asked a young boy in his soft, almost gentle tenor.

  “I usually play first base,” the boy answered. “You’re too young to play first,” Henry said, chuckling. As Henry continued to sign autographs and joke with the fans and reporters, Duquette, still lobbying for a place in the organization, strode into the scrum of people, thrust out his hand, and asked Henry if he’d arrived at the park safely.

  The next day, local press reports poked fun of Henry’s choice of headwear and his slight build. “Some wondered whether a truly strong gust of wind would send the slightly built owner airborne,” one reporter wrote. The habits of a lifetime’s worth of antagonism between the media and the Red Sox brass weren’t going to disappear in a single afternoon. For the most part, however, the Boston media noted what a welcome contrast Henry made with the old regime.

  While Henry was determined to change the face of ownership, he was soon to learn the character of the team wasn’t going to change simply because there was a more thoughtful and considerate group of men running the team. Within an hour of Henry’s arriving at the park, one of the team’s PR staffers approached Henry. Manny Ramirez, the staffer said, would like to talk to Henry in the Red Sox clubhouse. The new owner assumed the star slugger wanted to say hello and introduce himself.

  He was wrong. Henry had barely said hello before Ramirez started venting. “I hate it,” Henry says Ramirez blurted out, citing the discord and acrimony that had gripped the team in 2001. “I hate the clubhouse, I hate the pressure…. I gotta get out of here.” Ramirez explained how he didn’t like the team’s interim manager, Joe Kerrigan, how he found the atmosphere in the clubhouse poisonous, how the media never left him alone.

  Henry was taken aback. “It was not how I wanted to spend my first day of spring training,” he says. Henry told Ramirez he’d see what he could do about making the clubhouse more comfortable for the team’s players and alleviating some of the pressure from the media. And Kerrigan, Henry thought to himself, would likely be fired soon anyway. Finally, Henry told his disgruntled star he’d ask around and see if there were any trades that made sense for the team. Henry knew that the relationship between the Philadelphia Phillies and Scott Rolen, their superstar third baseman, was problematic, and half-heartedly inquired about a swap.* But, he says, “I just didn’t want to do it. Manny was too good.”

  As he exited the clubhouse, Henry wondered if the rest of the team’s superstars were equally unhappy. He ran into Nomar Garciaparra playing catch in the outfield. Two-thousand one had been a difficult year for Garciaparra: After hitting .372 in 2000, he sat out all but 21 games of the following season with a ruptured tendon in his right wrist. Now, Henry was relieved to see, Garciaparra was smiling and seemed at ease. “Mr. Henry,” Garciaparra shouted, as he pointed to the Marlins bus, “I hope you’re going to get that painted.” Pedro Martinez was equally upbeat, and the two men joked how they had just missed each other when Henry and Werner visited the Dominican Republic, Martinez’s native country, over the winter. Modern-day baseball players know better than to get too attached to one city or one team, as it is the rarest of players who spend their entire playing career with one organization. There’s also a natural antipathy that exists between players and owners, as both groups fight for a larger share of the game’s revenues. Still, Henry’s reputation as a caring and thoughtful owner was well known, and even the most disengaged members of the Red Sox were optimistic.

  Although the apparent enthusiasm of Garciaparra and Martinez wouldn’t last—both superstars would cause more than their fair share of distractions in the months and years ahead—it was Ramirez who demanded the most immediate attention. Two days after Henry made an appearance at camp, Joe Kerrigan scheduled his first full-squad workout. Still unsure if he would have a contract to start the season, Kerrigan wanted to make his mark on the team from the start. He told the players he wanted to give a short talk; the subject would be the importance of always showing up and always giving your all.

  Ramirez, whom the Red Sox had signed to the second-largest contract in baseball history before the 2001 season, an eight-year, $160 million deal, didn’t show up. By the end of the day, right fielder Trot Nixon, who was named the team’s MVP following Boston’s disastrous 2001 campaign, took Ramirez to task in the press. “You want to know why the Yankees win so many championships?” Nixon asked the Hartford Courant’s Dave Heuschkel that afternoon. “I’ll tell you why: Everybody shows up ready to play baseball…. They don’t come strolling in, pimping around doing this and doing that. Bernie Williams showed up. Derek Jeter made $20 million. He shows up. You can guarantee he shows up on time.” Speaking of Ramirez, Nixon said, “He had enough time in the offseason. He should be here. The last thing he needs to do is come in here with any type of grudge of this, that, or the other thing…. The biggest thing it does is it shows these younger kids that it’s okay, once you start making money, you can come in whatever time you want.” Nixon and Ramirez soon made peace, and before long, Ramirez was back in camp, telling reporters, “Everything is all right. Everything is fine. I don’t have any complaints.” Ramirez then followed these assurances with two patently false lies: that he had met with Joe Kerrigan over the winter and that he had been at Fenway Park on the September 2001 night when the team honored the Baltimore Orioles’ Cal Ripken Jr., who had retired at the end of the season.*

  With Ramirez, it was, as always, hard to tell exactly what was going on. Was he so dumb as to think that people would believe his obvious untruths? Or was he so smart as to be engaging in a kind of postmodern meta-dialogue with the media, in which he countered some of the many platitudes athletes are required to offer up on a daily basis with a kind of coded message, telling those in the know not to take him seriously? There was no telling. If anyone tried to press Ramirez on anything he didn’t want to discuss, he’d pretend his English wasn’t good enough for him to understand the question. This was another obvious lie: When he wanted to communicate with people, Ramirez was perfectly fluent in English.

  *In the coming months, the new owners tried to build bridges to the media outlets that had been the most critical of their bid for the team. When Larry Lucchino went to meet with Pat Purcell, the publisher of the Boston Herald, he brought along a hatchet. “Let’s bury this,” Lucchino told Purcell.

  *Even so, the Red Sox executive team was being put in place, and during this time, Henry and Werner named David Ginsberg one of the team’s vice chairmen and Lucinda Treat the
Red Sox chief legal officer.

  *Before the 2002 season started, Rolen said he would become a free agent rather than accept a 10-year, $140 million contract extension from the Phillies. On July 29, 2002, Rolen was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals.

  *Ripken is best known for his streak of 2,632 consecutive games played, a run that began in May 1982 and went until September 1998. He also holds the record for consecutive innings played, with 8,243—more than 900 games’ worth—spanning from May 30, 1982, until September 14, 1987. The irony that Ramirez couldn’t be bothered to show up for a game honoring baseball’s most diligent player was not lost on local commentators.

  Chapter 15

  “Getting Ready to

  Have a Good Ride”

  ON FEBRUARY 27, the day before the Red Sox’s first spring training game, the sale of the team was, finally, officially completed. Dan Duquette was fired within 24 hours, and Mike Port, who had been a Red Sox assistant general manager since 1993, was named interim replacement.

  Duquette may have been gone, but his fingerprints were all over the 2002 team. In the offseason, as the sale of the team to Henry and Werner was being finalized, Duquette finally made a concerted effort to rid the team of its most distracting players, trading Carl Everett, whom Sports Illustrated had labeled a “clubhouse cancer,” to the Texas Rangers, and ending the team’s relationship with a number of unhappy veterans, including outfielders Dante Bichette, Darren Lewis, and Troy O’Leary, infielders Mike Lansing and John Valentin, and pitcher Rod Beck. * He signed Johnny Damon, a free-spirited center fielder who had spent the previous year with the close-knit, rambunctious Oakland A’s, to a four-year deal worth more than $30 million. He’d also picked up players known for being hard-working and conscientious, like first baseman Tony Clark.