|
|
 |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Hubbub Another day, another crisis: As the roiling Red Sox tuned out skipper Jimy Williams, they hung together and clung to first placeBy Tom Verducci Issue date: July 2-9, 2001
Last Saturday was another typical day in what New England fans call Red Sox Nation. As Williams pounded his daily grounders at Fenway Park, general manager Dan Duquette visited the batting cage but kept a safe distance from the skipper. Duquette did chat with players but not with infielder John Valentin, who for the second time in a week had refused Duquette's request to accept a minor league assignment (this one intended for rehabilitation). The temperature in Boston was 80°, but you had to be wearing an expedition-weight parka not to feel the frost. Throw in the usual mix of infirm players -- in addition to Valentin (plantar fasciatis in his right foot), starting catcher Jason Varitek (broken right elbow), star shortstop Nomar Garciaparra (surgery on his right wrist) and All-Star centerfielder Carl Everett (bruised right knee) were unavailable for the game that evening against the Toronto Blue Jays -- and it was a normal day in what has been a bizarre season for a team that is never confused with Up With People. Red Sox Nation is eminently divisible, a nation in which civil wars rage and e pluribus unum sounds like a box score notation describing the miscue of another hard-handed Boston infielder. Despite the dysfunction, not to mention the Blue Jays' handing them their first series loss in nearly a month, the Red Sox ended the week in first place in the American League East, leading the second-place New York Yankees by two games. "Not a day goes by without something going on," reliever Derek Lowe says. "It's a soap opera, but you know what? This is a veteran team that for three hours every day can put everything aside and play hard." Says righthander David Cone, "What's important is there's never been friction among the players. We've stuck together." What has bonded the players, according to several of them, is a dislike of how Williams has been running the team. That was most obvious in an explosive closed-door meeting (the details of which are previously unreported) before an afternoon game on May 5 in Oakland, one in which several Red Sox shouted profanities at their manager. That meeting in the visitors' clubhouse at Network Associates Coliseum had been called by Williams. Boston had lost the night before, 7-3 to the Athletics, for its fifth defeat in six games. Williams scolded the team for what he considered unprofessional conduct. For instance, righthander Tomo Ohka, the starter in that game, kicked a watercooler and threw equipment in the dugout after Williams removed him with a 3-2 lead in the third inning. Ohka had allowed only four hits and thought he had been yanked prematurely. Williams also was angered by infielder Jose Offerman's attitude, after Offerman had grounded out as a pinch hitter leading off the ninth inning. Instead of remaining on the bench with his teammates, as is the custom, Offerman grabbed his warmup jacket and headed back to the clubhouse. After Williams finished laying out his complaints, he turned to walk toward the short corridor that leads to the manager's office. He didn't make it. As one player puts it, "It was like, Where do you think you're going? That's when it became our meeting." Several players profanely fired back at Williams. Chief among their complaints was Williams's penchant for using different lineups nearly every day and posting them without explanation to the players. "He just stood there and took it," says another player. "I couldn't believe it." "Wow, I've never seen a meeting like that in my life," says outfielder Dante Bichette. The anger had been festering. Everett had run-ins with Williams last season and during this year's spring training. Bichette became peeved at Williams for telling him near the end of spring training that he hadn't hit well enough in exhibition games to earn regular playing time. Bichette was shocked. He'd used a heavier bat than normal in the games to work himself into playing shape, unaware that he had to compete for a job after seven straight seasons with at least 90 runs batted in. A little earlier, according to another player, Williams had told outfielder Troy O'Leary that he didn't fit into Williams's plans. Then, after would-be outfielder Manny Ramirez strained his left hamstring 19 days before Opening Day, Williams had to tell O'Leary that he was needed in leftfield while Ramirez served as the designated hitter. At the time of the Oakland meeting, O'Leary was still seething about Williams's lack of faith in him. Through Sunday he was batting an unproductive .260 with seven homers and 25 RBIs while spending most of his time on the bench since June 4, when Ramirez began playing leftfield. Following the meeting, the Red Sox thrashed the A's 7-1. Boston won the next day too. And the day after that. Until Toronto stung Boston with 4-3, 9-6 and 5-2 defeats last Friday, Saturday and Sunday, respectively, the Red Sox had ripped off a 26-15 run since the gripefest. "It was a turning point," one player says. Says another, "Ever since then, Jimy doesn't say anything. He hardly ever said anything before. But ever since the meeting, he comes in, goes to his office, stays in his office, goes to the field to manage, goes back to his office, goes to the bus -- that's it. You never see him in the clubhouse." Word of the meeting soon reached Duquette, though his relationship with Williams is so frigid that he says he never bothered discussing it with him. "I heard about it from a couple of sources," Duquette says. "Sometimes it's good for people to get things out in the open, right?" Duquette hired Williams in November 1996, after firing Kevin Kennedy. In his first four seasons Williams, 57, never guided Boston to a first-place finish, though the Red Sox did qualify for the postseason twice as a wild card. His .544 winning percentage through Sunday (392-329) trailed Kennedy's .559 (171-135). Several times Duquette has taken a public posture contrary to that of Williams, most famously last season, when he failed to support his manager in Williams's feud with Everett over repeated tardiness and other acts of insubordination. This season Duquette mentioned on his daily pregame radio show that Williams owed the fans an explanation as to why, after only six innings, he lifted ace Pedro Martinez from a game against the Yankees on June 4; New York scored four runs off five Boston relievers in a come-from-behind 7-6 win. (Williams had told reporters after the game, "Pedro had done his job, and it was up to the bullpen. He's been on the [disabled list] each of the last two seasons. He's a very important asset to this club, and we protect him when we can.") A few days later Duquette announced on his radio show that Martinez would have to miss a start because of soreness in his right shoulder, a decision that Williams hadn't felt ready to reveal. On June 15, the same day Martinez missed his start, the Red Sox announced that Duquette had agreed to a two-year contract extension, through 2003, worth a reported $3 million. During a conference call with reporters about the new deal, John Harrington, Boston's chief executive officer, scurried off the phone line before he could be asked about Williams, who, like Duquette, began this year without a contract for next season. On the same call Duquette gave Williams a lukewarm endorsement, saying, "By and large, Jimy Williams has done a good job for the Red Sox." The next day The Boston Globe reported that Williams had turned down a one-year extension. When SI asked that day about such an offer, Williams said, "I don't know anything about it." Duquette, when asked about a contract offer to Williams, said, "I have no knowledge of that." Williams usually is no more expansive with the media than with his players. He typically shoves his left hand inside the waistband of his uniform pants, in a Napoleonic sort of tic, and deflects questions with obfuscation or his favorite rejoinder, "Manager's decision." On Saturday, for instance, Williams put down The Brethren, a John Grisham paperback, to meet with reporters, but it took the same tame question being asked three ways just for Williams to give his opinion on the condition of Valentin, who before his foot woes had missed most of last season with a ruptured tendon in his left knee. Williams finally coughed up this: "He looks O.K. He looks healthy." Of course Duquette had his own take. "We need to find out if he can play," Duquette said on Saturday. "He hasn't played much for the past two years, and when he did, he didn't show very much. When he comes back, he's not going to be an every-day player, so what's the point? It's not that significant." When told of Duquette's comments, the 34-year-old Valentin, who has the longest continuous service (nine years) with the team, said, "I am a member of the Boston Red Sox. That's all I'll say." On the field, meanwhile, the Red Sox have survived since Opening Day without Garciaparra, last season's American League batting champion who started light throwing on Friday, and since June 7 without Varitek, who'll be lost for two more months. On June 12, Boston obtained catcher Doug Mirabelli in a trade with the Texas Rangers; three days later Scott Hatteberg, Varitek's backup for two years, met with Williams to express concern about losing playing time to Mirabelli. Through Sunday, Hatteberg was batting .198. The Red Sox aren't proficient at turning double plays (with 51 in 73 games, they ranked last in the American League), don't take enough walks (only two American League teams had fewer) and have almost no speed (a major-league-low 20 stolen bases). "What we have is the best pitching staff in baseball," Bichette says. "Our pitchers keep us in games every night." Boston's 3.34 ERA through Sunday was the best in the majors by nearly half a run. Duquette's signings of free-agent righthanders Cone, Frank Castillo and Hideo Nomo added depth to the rotation, and the Red Sox were 22-15 in games that the trio had started. Duquette made an even bigger score with the addition of Ramirez, the Triple Crown candidate (.347, 23 home runs, 72 RBIs) who on Saturday smashed two gargantuan home runs, one estimated at 463 feet and the other -- pending confirmation from NASA experts after the bomb hit a light tower 128 feet above ground -- at 501 feet. Says Martinez, "We're in first place, but imagine how sweet it would be without the injuries. We'd be like the 1998 Yankees or the Seattle Mariners this year." Attendance (a near capacity average of 32,274) and anxiety have reached record highs in Red Sox Nation. The urgency is palpable. The team is up for sale. Martinez's shoulder is a reminder of the fragility that lurks beneath his domination. The Yankees are giving off their strongest scent of vulnerability in six years. Goodness, Garciaparra's little game of catch was front-page news in The Boston Herald! The tiny home clubhouse at Fenway, with no lounge for hiding from the media, bubbles like a flask of chemicals over a Bunsen burner, with reporters and players jostled about like molecules. "The dynamic is very different than in New York," says Cone, the former Yankee, "and the size of the clubhouse has a lot to do with it. The media in Boston have raised eavesdropping to an art form. You can have a conversation with the guy next to you, and the next day it's in the papers." Says outfielder Darren Lewis, "From all the lineups we've had to deal with, through Jimy's situation, through everything, we've kept the focus on winning. We have mostly guys in the middle-to-late parts of our careers who know how sweet it will be to be the Red Sox team that wins a World Series." Lowe was almost right. The Red Sox are a bit like a soap opera, but they are more like a reality show. Jimy and Carl. Dan and Val. Jimy and Dan. The players and Jimy. The reporters and the players. Put enough people in a small enough room, and you get conflict every week. Still, you opened the morning newspaper last week and shook your head at the most unusual development of all: The Red Sox were in first place. Issue date: July 2-9, 2001
|
