Hale must be hearty

ARLINGTON, Texas -- This was on an Opening Day when Terry Francona was still wearing the uniform of the Texas Rangers, the team the Red Sox face today in the first game of the 2006 season. It was before the game. Francona, who was Jerry Narron's bench coach at the time, was on the field, and the public address announcer wandered by, pointed at another coach, and said, ''Hey, what's his name?"

Four years later, Francona still laughs at DeMarlo Hale's bad luck.

''They asked the wrong guy," Francona said. ''I think I told them 'DeMarco.' Another time they called him 'Hale DeMarlo.' 'DeMilio.' It was hilarious."

It happened, DeMarlo Hale said, pretty much on a daily basis when the team was on the road. DeMilio, that one really got him. ''DeMilio -- the black Italian," said Boston's new third base coach, adding there was no special reason his mother gave him the name she did when he was born in Chicago, though he's never come across anyone else with the same appellation. ''You can keep it simple -- just call me D."

The first time Francona saw Hale's name was in 1999, when Francona was managing the Phillies and Hale was managing Trenton, then the Sox' Double A team. The Phillies were having a terrible season. Hale, meanwhile, was managing a Trenton team that starred Adam Everett and David Eckstein, Shea Hillenbrand and Tomo Ohka. That team would finish 92-50 and be named the Minor League Team of the Year, with Hale tabbed as Manager of the Year. Francona at the time lived in Jersey -- ''probably only five minutes from DeMarlo," he said -- and many mornings the local paper would be filled with rips for him, praise for Hale.

''I used to think, 'Who is this [expletive] DeMarlo Hale guy -- he's running for mayor," Francona said. ''So, sure, I knew who he was. 'Damn,' I used to think, 'He ought to come down here.' "

Hale may still be unfamiliar to most Sox fans, but that won't last long, given the job he's been hired to do. Just ask Dale Sveum, his predecessor as third base coach. Or Wendell Kim. Or Rene Lachemann. On the talk shows, ''Who is this [expletive] DeMarlo Hale guy" is likely to rival ''What was that [expletive] Francona thinking?" as the most popular line of inquiry.

''I understand the passion of the people of New England," Hale said the other day in Florida, before the Sox broke camp. ''I understand what coaching third base brings. You know it's 35,000 third base coaches and managers."

Those 35,000 critics, some assume, helped to drive Sveum out of town after several celebrated instances -- among others, Devil Rays outfielder Rocco Baldelli threw out two Sox base runners sent by Sveum in the same inning, and four runners, including Dave Roberts, were nailed in a six-game span over a couple of weeks, while David Ortiz banged his shoulder at the plate on another ill-fated, Sveum-inspired journey home.

Francona insists outside pressure did not force his hand, that Sveum left for personal reasons. Sveum took another job almost immediately with the Milwaukee Brewers, who train in Arizona, close to Sveum's offseason home.

''People think I covered for him and then we pushed him out," Francona said. ''That's not true. Theo [Epstein] and I both wanted him to stay. He wasn't pushed out of here. I thought Dale was a good coach. He had a couple of guys thrown out at the plate, but he was a good coach."

Hale cut his teeth in the Sox organization. A star at Southern University in Louisiana, Hale was a 17th-round draft pick of the Sox in 1983 and lasted four seasons in the organization as a first baseman/outfielder, making the Single A Carolina League in 1984 and spending time as Ellis Burks's teammate in Double A New Britain in '86. But while Burks went on to the big leagues, Hale plateaued in Double A and wound up his playing career in the A's organization in '88.

Hale, who by then had made his home in south Florida, worked at Bucky Dent's baseball school, with its ''Little Fenway," for the next few years before Ed Kenney Jr. gave Hale his first coaching job, with New Britain in '92. The next year, he was managing, in Single A Fort Lauderdale, and steadily rose up the ladder until peaking in '99. But when then-GM Dan Duquette made the puzzling decision to fill a Triple A vacancy at Pawtucket with Gary Jones, Hale left to manage the Rangers' Triple A team in Oklahoma City. After second-place finishes in 2000 and '01, he was promoted to the Rangers' staff in '02, and coached first base for the last four seasons.

After the Sox did not renew Grady Little as manager, they interviewed Hale before hiring Francona. That they did may have been just to satisfy baseball's rules on minority hiring, but Hale came away from the six-hour interview with a positive feeling about the process. He also interviewed in Arizona before Bob Melvin was hired, and retains ambitions to manage.

''We'll see," he said. ''It's still the decision of the owners and the general managers who they want. You can't send a résumé in, like for a regular job. They've got to come looking.

''I realize you're not going to be a fit for every team. Ain't nothing wrong with that."

Hale, like Sveum before him, is a low-key presence in the Sox clubhouse. Unlike in Texas, where he worked with the outfielders, Francona had him working with the infielders this spring. But that's the part of his job that mostly goes unnoticed. So does the other part -- coaching third, which he did regularly in the minors and a handful of games as a fill-in in Texas -- until the first time he gets someone thrown out.

''Talking to other third base coaches," he said, ''there are 29 other guys in the big leagues with similar thoughts and preparations. Is Boston slightly different? Yeah, I realize that. That's where it's about my preparation and understanding the situations, my confidence in my instincts and decision-making.

''You almost have to be like a closer. You've got to have a short memory. You've got to have a short memory for the things that don't go right, and the things that do go right, because you can get caught up in the success of your good decisions, too. You've got to look at what's next."

There are so many things that go into the decision to send a runner, Hale said. His secondary leads, his jump, his speed, who's in the outfield, who charges the ball well, the outfielder's arm strength, whether an outfielder's arm slot tails, whether an outfielder has a sore arm, the situation in the game, whether it's the right moment to be aggressive, which could be the catalyst to a big inning.

''I'm not trying to make it complicated, because it's not. But my approach is to do my research and be prepared.

''With this offense, the biggest thing is when you get someone thrown out . . . It ain't 'if' you get someone thrown out, it's 'when.' That's why you have to be like a good closer -- have a short memory."

And -- what he didn't say -- a thick skin, especially in the Fens.