Banging the drum loudly

Two new books parse the rise of the Red Sox as, gulp, frontrunners

Manager Terry Francona (left) and GM Theo Epstein celebrating the 2007 World Championship win. (Barry Chin/Globe Staff)

Red Sox Rule: Terry Francona and Boston's Rise to Dominance
By Michael Holley
HarperCollins, 207 pp.,illustrated, $25.95

Dynasty: The Inside Story of How the Red Sox Became a Baseball Powerhouse
By Tony Massarotti
St. Martin's, 300 pp., illustrated, $24.95

The Red Sox are a team, as Michael Holley observes, whose press contingent on the road rivals the size of the corps of correspondents covering the president at the White House. During home stands, that number is even bigger.

Holley, a sports talk radio personality, also draws on a decade's experience as a Globe sportswriter, a background that shows in his new book, "Red Sox Rule: Terry Francona and Boston's Rise to Dominance." His story centers on the team's manager. Offering a different look at the recent happy years is Tony Massarotti, a 13-year veteran of baseball coverage for the Boston Herald. Massarotti's book, "Dynasty: The Inside Story of How the Red Sox Became a Baseball Powerhouse," is the broader history, but still restricts its scope to covering the stretch from 1994 through 2007. Both offer insight, and a healthy dose of information not familiar to most fans.

It's one thing for a reporter to cover the ongoing soap opera of Boston baseball in the columns of a daily newspaper, but another thing altogether to convey the larger picture in a satisfying study. Both books accomplish this, and are sufficiently complementary so as not to be redundant.

The team's recent successes have validated the unconventional choice that Sox ownership made in selecting Theo Epstein as general manager. Midway through "Dynasty," however, Massarotti suggests that Epstein predecessor Dan Duquette might well have merited one of the many championship rings distributed in 2005, for laying the groundwork for the team that won it all in 2004. He's aptly documented the moves Duquette made from the time of the 1994 work stoppage, from free-agent signings to draft choices, and his transformation of the ball club into a truly international one that also overcame the stain of racism from prior decades. Massarotti shows how rapidly Epstein acted in 2003 to reshape the team, and how some moves paid off serendipitously - for instance, how trading Shea Hillenbrand for Byun-Hyung Kim opened up playing time for one David Ortiz.

Clearly, the combination of moves by those two GMs has resulted in a team well positioned to be competitive for a third title in a still-young century. "Dynasty" tracks the story throughout, with a wealth of detail that helps the reader better appreciate the complexity of the baseball business while recounting the career stories of selected key players such as pitchers Jonathan Papelbon, Hideki Okajima, and Josh Beckett.

"Red Sox Rule" begins with the team's disappointing 2003 pennant defeat and manager Grady Little's controversial game-losing decision. It then goes on to describe how candidate Francona prepared for his interview with GM Epstein and how Theo prepared for his first managerial hire - one that would prove fateful for the team.

In this age of prolific publishing, Holley's book is, remarkably, the first portrait of Francona's career - a manager who has won two World Series titles in four years for Boston, both times by beating the odds with come-from-behind playoff-series victories. Holley teases out some of Francona's innovations. For instance, he implemented a change in the team's advance scouting system in which the scout who studies a team now sticks with that ball club as the Sox play against them instead of moving ahead. Holley sketches a portrait of a manager not given to panic under adverse circumstances, one who relies on a predetermined process and plan.

Holley also gives us a broader sense of Francona's life and career. As the son of 15-year major leaguer Tito Francona, the future Sox manager grew up with baseball round the clock. Terry would eventually become quite a prospect, signing as a first-round pick of the Montreal Expos in 1980 and eventually playing in 708 major-league games. As a bonus baby and a starter - as well as a player who'd suffered serious injuries - Francona has had personal experience with many of the same issues that the players he's managed face.

After his playing days ended, Francona became a coach and was named Baseball America's Minor League Manager of the Year in 1993, ironically the year after Grady Little was accorded the same honor.

Holley suggests that Francona is also a better manager for having been released, or "granted free agency," some six times. He's also suffered some horrendous and near-fatal medical reverses: an anti-clotting filter installed in his body itself became clogged with clots.

We learn a fair amount about Francona's family and the strong relationships he's had over the years with coaches Brad Mills, DeMarlo Hale, and John Farrell, and Sox sports psychologist Don Kalkstein. "Red Sox Rule" is not a complete biography, but is perhaps a better book for not attempting too thorough a study. One leaves it satisfied but not sated.

After the 2004 championship, there was a predictable deluge of more than 35 books inspired by the long-awaited triumph. After 2007, one knew not to expect nearly as many, but here are two that Bosox bibliophiles will likely find illuminating enough to merit some fairly easy and, given the second Series title, enjoyable reading.

Bill Nowlin is the author of "Day by Day With the Boston Red Sox" and "Ted Williams at War."