At top of his game

There are still references to "Fran-coma" by those who believe the Red Sox manager has nothing to do with the team's success. He knows he will never change the minds of that ferocious segment of Red Sox Nation, even though he is the team's only manager since 1918 to have won a world championship.

But even the skeptical minority would have to say Terry Francona is managing this year about as well as any manager in the history of the franchise.

You can make a case for Dick Williams with the Impossible Dream team, but those were far different circumstances, taking a band of youngsters who didn't know any better and molding them into winners. This is an era of millionaires, complicated players with complicated contracts and often complicated lives.

In the old days, managers like Williams held the hammer. If you weren't shipshape, you were gone. Now the manager has to be psychologist, personnel director, father, and friend. Francona seems to have perfected a way to get into the head of each player. He has to understand Manny being Manny. He has to deal with J.D. Drew's reputation for not playing hurt, Coco Crisp's mind-set, Jason Varitek's workload.

He seems to rile those who feel he should manage with a firmer hand, but whatever his method, it works. It worked in 2004. It is working in 2007.

Francona uses statistics, a human touch, a tremendous knowledge of his players, and his feel for a game he keeps saying he never played very well. He grew up in baseball and learned the game from his father, Tito, who played for nine major league teams. He's seen a lot of baseball. He played for a lot of managers, including Williams.

I first got to know Francona on the Michael Jordan junket in 1994.

Francona managed Jordan at Birmingham (Ala.) and then in the Arizona Fall League. He was a young manager then, but I came away impressed at how well he handled the media circus. Nobody could have prepared him for that, but he was able not only to manage the biggest sports star of this generation but also to perform his primary job -- developing players for the White Sox organization.

So when the Red Sox hired him after the Grady Little fiasco in 2003, he was identified as the right choice on a couple of fronts. He was a second-time major league manager who had learned from his mistakes during his tenure in Philadelphia, where he didn't have the talent he has now.

He had gone back to being a bench coach, serving under Ken Macha, Buddy Bell, and Jerry Narron. He also spent a year in the Indians front office. He will tell you he keeps learning and finding new ways to head off problems at the pass.

Probably the best acquisition Francona made for himself in the offseason was pitching coach John Farrell. Pitching -- specifically, relief pitching -- is what ultimately decides a manager's fate.

The first major -- and correct -- decision was to get Jonathan Papelbon back to the closer role. Whether it was Papelbon who came to this revelation on his own or whether it was Francona who pushed for it, it doesn't matter. It was a team-saving, manager-saving move. It allowed everything else to fall into place.

Francona won a championship with the estimable Dave Wallace as his pitching coach. He thought the world of Wallace. But when he was told by the front office that he had to let Wallace go, he appointed Farrell, the highly regarded farm director of the Indians.

Farrell has been a magician.

It was a great month of April. But things sometimes turn bad after great months.

"Yeah," said Francona, "but a bad week wouldn't change that. I hope we always have good months. But I'm pretty much gonna do what I'm gonna do."

Francona is winning at most every turn. And, folks, he has a lot to do with it.