Francona goes to bat for Torre
Before coming upstairs to the Fenway Park interview room yesterday afternoon for his press conference, Red Sox manager Terry Francona delayed his arrival so he could watch a few minutes of the press conference Joe Torre was conducting at a hotel in Rye, N.Y., explaining why he was no longer the manager of the Yankees after 12 seasons.
"It's almost like 'The Bronx is Burning,' " Francona said, alluding to a recent ESPN miniseries about a Yankee team of an earlier generation. "You're watching something unfold that's just unbelievable. My feelings haven't changed since yesterday or the day before or the day before when you guys asked. My answers are pretty much hopefully consistent. I hope Joe is very content and happy moving forward because I feel like he was - in this game, organizations not only have the right, but they have a responsibility to do whatever they want with their teams. That's the way it goes.
"But to do it very publicly, which Joe had to endure, I think was difficult. I'm sure it was difficult, and I feel for him."
Torre rejected an offer of a one-year contract from the Yankees for $5 million, a cut of $2.5 million from what he was making as the highest-paid manager in baseball. The contract also contained incentive bonuses that stipulated Torre would be paid an additional $1 million for each round of the postseason the Yankees advanced.
Torre said the length of the contract was unacceptable, the incentives an "insult."
Francona was asked whether the Torre/Yankee parting, and the way the Yankee offer to Torre was structured, was a reminder of how expectations of the men who manage the Yankees and the Red Sox are different than for managers of other teams.
"I'm sure they are," Francona said. "Theo [Epstein] and I have talked about this a lot lately. It's probably a conversation for a different time, you know, in the winter when everybody is taking a deep breath . . . because I somewhat understand what you're asking and probably agree.
"Because of the money that's spent and all the passion that's been - I've only been here four years. I know it started before I got here, but things have gotten a little bit skewed around here, and sometimes the big fight for me . . . is not losing sight of what's important, what's meaningful to you. And here - like I said, sometimes that's a fight.
"Being a part of what we're doing I absolutely love, and I really love who I'm doing it with. But it is a fight sometimes to keep the perspective. I mean, we're sitting at 101 wins, and people don't seem to be very happy very much of the time. So again, that is a little perplexing, but that's the way it is.
"So you deal with it the best you can, and sometimes it is a fight to deal with it correctly. But that's our responsibility."
They're survivors
Sox PR man John Blake notes that Boston has a record of 22-11 in games in which it could have been eliminated from a postseason series. In that situation, the Red Sox have gone 3-0 or better in five series: 4-0 in the 2004 American League Championship Series vs. New York and 3-0 in the 1903 World Series vs. Pittsburgh, the 1986 ALCS vs. California, the 1999 Division Series vs. Cleveland, and the 2003 Division Series vs. Oakland . . . The Sox have four bases-loaded walks in the postseason, all in this series, tying for the most ever by a team in one postseason with the Philadelphia A's in 1931 and Detroit in 1945 . . . The Sox have grounded into 10 double plays, tying an LCS record set by Baltimore in 1997 (six games).
