It is something Bill Russell -- as great a winner as American professional sports has ever known -- once famously said about Joe Morgan -- who Russell knew as a kid when they attended high schools by each other in Oakland -- one of the great players baseball has ever known: “Isn’t it funny how good teams seem to follow Joe Morgan around?”
That is a question worth asking right now about Terry Francona, now that he has the Reds knocking on the door of a NL Wild Card bid. Isn’t it funny how good teams seem to follow the guy known as Tito around?
“Here he is again,” Buck Showalter -- both a contemporary of Francona and an admirer -- said on Thursday.
Francona was the manager of the Red Sox when they ended the Curse of the Bambino in Boston in 2004. He did that in style after falling behind the Yankees, 3-0, in the American League Championship Series. The Red Sox won the last four games of that series and then swept the Cardinals in the World Series, finishing a magical and historic season with an eight-game winning streak.
Three years later, Francona’s Red Sox nearly pulled off the same feat. They fell behind Cleveland three games to one in the ALCS that year. Then Francona gave the ball to Josh Beckett, and Beckett beat CC Sabathia in Game 5, and the Red Sox won the last three of that series before sweeping the Rockies in the World Series. So the ’07 Sox finished with a seven-game winning streak that time and were World Series champs again.
Nine years later, Francona was the one managing in Cleveland. His team got ahead of the Cubs, 3-1, and that close to bringing a World Series title to Cleveland for the first time since 1948 before the Cubs were the team that came roaring all the way back to win. Even then, Francona’s team made it all the way to the 10th inning of Game 7 before falling to the Cubs.
Tito retired from the Guardians after the 2023 season. But then it was as if he missed baseball as much as baseball missed him, and it was announced last fall that he was coming out of retirement to see if he could bring the Reds back. Now, going into this weekend, with less than a quarter of the season left to play, he finds his young team one game behind the Mets for the third NL Wild Card spot. So here he is again.
And here is one of the things he said when he was introduced as Reds manager last October, as a baseball postseason had already begun without Francona as a part of it:
“I firmly believe that players enjoy being coached, as long as there is always a solid reason and you’re ultra-organized," Francona said at the time. "And that we will be. My promise to the organization and to the fans is I will spend all my energy ensuring they spend all of their energy trying to play the game correctly and with respect.”
It was as much a mission statement as anything else from him, one that has never changed, all the way back to when he was even managing Michael Jordan in the minor leagues one crazy time. He started out as a big league manager in Philadelphia. But it wasn’t until he arrived at Fenway Park that he began to put together what will eventually be a Hall of Fame resume as a manager.
I asked Showalter, someone who was Manager of the Year in four different decades, why he thinks Francona, at 66 years of age, is still as good as he is at what he does.
“This is going to sound like an over-simplification,” Showalter said, “but start with the fact that he’s always been very good at identifying baseball players. Of course it’s a lot more than that. After doing this for as long as he has and as long as he has, all of his energy and all of his focus, is directed at just one thing: Winning that day’s game.
“He’s just always been a very consistent force. The baseball version of a gym rat. A lifer immersed in the day-to-day of our game, and it shows. He’s even legendary with visiting clubhouse guys. You used to find him in there playing cards with the clubbies after everyone else was gone.
“But he’s always been great at managing his own clubhouse, wherever he’s been. Always known who he is and who he isn’t. And if there’s one thing you knew about him from the other dugout, it was this: He was never going to beat himself.”
Now, Francona is trying to make the playoffs with gifted young players, like Elly De La Cruz. He’s got other young guys like Spencer Steer and TJ Friedl and Matt McLain. He has four starting pitchers with eight or more wins so far this season: Brady Singer and Nick Martinez and Andrew Abbott and Nick Lodolo. He has already seen baseball cities like Boston and Cleveland rise up with his teams. Now, it is happening again for him in Cincinnati. And it will keep happening.
There's a lot of season left and a long way to go, but his Reds have come a long way already. A long road for Tito. He knows the way.