Sox Ownership Has Lost its Values by Mike Ghika
Closure in managerial search doesn't undo recent Red Sox disaster


At 6 p.m. on Tuesday evening, it was reported that Red Sox managerial candidate Gene Lamont was out of the running for the position. That report came via a tweet from ESPN’s Karl Ravech, who has been a colleague of soon-to-be Sox manager Bobby Valentine for quite some time now.

Less than a half hour later, Sox general manager Ben Cherington refuted that notion by saying there was nothing to report on Lamont.

Then what do you know? Local man Mike Lynch from Channel 5 tweeted at 7 p.m. that a verbal agreement was in place with Valentine.

And with that, finally, the Red Sox are no longer manager-less after what seemed to be an endless 60-day stretch.

But the drama that ensued late Tuesday evening was just the culmination of what has proven to be the darkest chapter this organization has undergone since ownership took over operation in 2002.

The announcement comes despite the fact that Valentine is in Japan (he is supposed to be back in the U.S. on Wednesday), principal owner John Henry is in Liverpool drooling over his futbol club, and fellow owner Tom Werner is probably mulling over his next tacky television venture for NESN to regurgitate over and over again.

Meanwhile Larry Lucchino, the same man of power who forced out Theo six years ago, is fat and happy once again in his role as dictator.

Has anyone ever told those three guys that perhaps they are too driven? For Henry, it’s gone from soybeans to the Marlins to the Red Sox to Liverpool to Roush Racing. For Werner, it’s been a number of sitcom hits – many of which are still in syndication – and now NESN is his bread and butter. And for Lucchino, from Baltimore to San Diego to Boston, it’s been whatever baseball opportunity has come his way.

To be fair, all three are geniuses in their own right. But I wouldn’t trade places with any of them as a result of the last two months. I’d probably have trouble looking in the mirror. In fact, I was holding out sincere hope that the Valentine-Lamont showdown was just a hoax as the Sox tried convincing Toronto general manager Alex Anthopoulos to part with former Sox pitching coach and current Blue Jays manager John Farrell.

Unfortunately, that is not the case, and now Sox brass has hired the perfect puppet in Valentine to help assist in every PR endeavor that ownership decides to carry out next. Meanwhile, stories of disgust have began to circulate regarding ownership’s treatment of poor old Lamont, who shuttled up and down the East coast in recent days for meetings with members of the snobby triumvirate.

Nonetheless, Valentine does seem the type of personality to handle Boston. He’s also a good tactical manager. He might even be the right guy to eliminate the nonsense that occurred in last year’s clubhouse.

But if all those stars already seemed to be aligned, why did ownership entrust Cherington to carry out the managerial process? He was all but ready to hire his own choice before having the door slammed on his fingers by Lucchino and ownership.

Talk about the perfect example of how to mismanage a situation after micromanaging it in the first place. All of this just adds to the cause for concern fans should have for this organization moving forward.

All of the aforementioned goes without mentioning the worst September collapse in MLB history, the departure of the Golden Boy GM (who jumped ship for all – and I mean all – the right reasons), and the firing of a manager who provided stability and covered up countless clubhouse issues in his time with the team.

However, whether he was responsible for creating a laxatmosphere in the clubhouse or a pack of players just genuinely took advantage of him, it’s no matter. It was time for Francona and the Red Sox to pursue other opportunities after what happened the final one third of the season, even if there were no surefire managerial candidates on the open market to replace Tito.

But even that had to be a tough pill to swallow considering how many managerial-worthy individuals Boston has touted on its coaching staff in recent years. From Francona’s tenure as manager to Farrell in Toronto, from Houston’s Brad Mills to Chicago’s Dale Sveum, from other future managers in DeMarlo Hale and Tim Bogar, the Sox have a number of talented baseball people right under their noses but ultimately found themselves forced to delve into this Valentine-Lamont Broadway show.

And just to make things all the more fun, the circumstances regarding Valentine’s departure from the New York Mets 10 years ago were eerily similar to Francona’s exit this fall.

But back to the ownership group, whose trickle effect in the front office made its way onto the field in 2011.

Do recall that Henry bought players expensive headphones and let them have a plus-1 party on his yacht after some were apparently upset about a doubleheader scheduled because of Hurricane Irene.

I speak of the same players who thought they could roll out of bed in Fort Myers in February and win 95 games like it was a sure bet. Turns out they could only muster five victories from September 7 on.

To make matters worse, your cornerstone player blamed the collapse on injuries and religion. It also became clear your clubhouse is more concerned about forming cliques behind the scenes rather than trying to save face on the field.

Other tidbits in outline form (because I don’t know how else to incorporate all of this nonsense):

- The Sox made John Lackey go away for a year with injury because he’s such a colossal depressive mess.

- 45-year-old Tim Wakefield told the media that we, as fans, deserved to see his knuckleball and 5.22 ERA over the past two seasons return in 2012 to set the franchise wins record (seriously, that irked me far more than Gonzalez’s comments did).

- Henry missed the end-of-the-year press conference with Theo and Francona because he had to be hospitalized after a fall on his yacht, only for his wife to tweet how happy he was to be back home from the hospital in time to watch the Liverpool game.

- Henry also publicly denounced Carl Crawford, saying he OK’d the seven-year, $142 million contract despite the fact he didn’t want the left fielder.

- Jacoby Ellsbury, the same man the team tried to drag through the blame tunnel in 2011 for not returning from broken ribs, was this year’s AL MVP runner-up.

- Instead of postseason baseball at Fenway in October, the Sox hosted Spooky World in an effort to keep the turnstiles rotating. I’m surprised they didn’t sell orange jerseys.

So now, an ownership group that was once renowned for revitalizing Fenway Park, winning two World Series championships and allocating the appropriate financial resources in order to win, is now looked upon as a collection of snobs that seemingly knows significantly more than everybody else in the industry.

For a group of rich tycoons that favor brand image and gross profit before all else, the three have created nothing but a catastrophe for its ball club and its fans.

Their GM walked out on a terrible situation for the perfect opportunity, but it’s no secret that it was just a matter of time before Theo separated himself from Henry-Werner-Lucchino to go elsewhere.

And while Epstein and Cubs fans find themselves with a fresh, clean slate and an exciting new future, Red Sox fans are stuck with a hellacious scenario that seems never-ending. The only fresh meal on the docket is the newly hired celebrity manager.

But why should the ownership group care? They know fans are still going to renew season tickets in mid-December. They know they’re still going to sell out Fenway in 2012 and beyond.

All that is the Red Sox has been beaten and torn to shreds, and the corporate nature of its product I would hope is no longer desirable for many fans.

Follow @mghika


Published on November 30, 2011

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