CLEVELAND — Terry Francona — Tito to you and everyone else — would rather everyone stop making such a fuss.
The Cleveland Guardians manager purposely avoided formally announcing his retirement to avoid the farewell tour the baseball industry would have foisted upon him. Even on Wednesday, hours before the team honored him at his final home game as its manager, even as his players and coaches walked around in the same “Thank You Tito” T-shirts that would soon be handed to fans, the most Francona would acknowledge is that he planned to “shut it down.”
But try as he might, the attention is here as Francona’s 11-year tenure as manager of Cleveland’s baseball team heads toward its conclusion. Because the thing Francona would not say, the Guardians yelled from every corner of Progressive Field. They put giant “Thank You Tito” signs on the massive video board in left field, wrote “Thank You Tito” on all the smaller scoreboard space, painted “Thank You Tito” on the field. They printed “Thank you Tito” on bright red T-shirts, then handed them out to fans as they walked through the gates. In the Guardians’ final home game of a season that will not extend into October, he was the highlight, the reluctant but undisputed star.
“It’s uncomfortable,” he said. “I know it’s coming from a good place, which is always a nice thing. But when you become a coach and a manager, it’s always about everybody else, as it’s supposed to be.”
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Maybe, in some ways, Wednesday was still about everyone else, about all the baseball people who came to know and love Francona during his 23 years as a major league manager and more than four decades in professional baseball. He was the son of a big leaguer — a Cleveland big leaguer, no less — hit .274 in 10 major league seasons of his own, managed Michael Jordan in the minors and gave the green light on the steal that changed the trajectory of the Boston Red Sox forever. He won two World Series with Boston. He won three manager of the year awards, all with Cleveland, as the winningest manager in that franchise’s long history. He will end his career 13th in wins as a manager and first in laughs generated at his own expense.
“The most frustrating part of today is I can’t wear the T-shirt because it’s me!” he moaned in a fitting example. “I mean, it’s a nice T-shirt. I love when we get free stuff. But I can’t wear it!”
Nearly everyone else in the Guardians’ clubhouse was wearing it, from star José Ramírez to the clubbies. One member of Francona’s staff customized his shirt, taping over the word “Thank” with a handwritten “Screw,” which probably made the message far more tolerable to Francona, all things considered. Some of Francona’s old colleagues and former players, such as longtime former bench coach Brad Mills, were around for the celebration. They got shirts, too.
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“That’s not friendship,” Francona clarified. “That’s just, he wants a free T-shirt. Don’t let that fool you for one minute.”
Francona, whose extensive room-service ice cream order during the 2016 World Series is the stuff of legend, is in some ways inelegant by nature but perhaps also by design. He is so determinedly relatable and so relentlessly self-deprecating that it almost certainly required more effort than he wanted anyone to see.
“Everyone he’s ever worked with loves him. … That’s pretty much everything you need to know about Tito,” said Cincinnati Reds Manager David Bell, whose father, Buddy, has been a close Francona friend for decades. “To be in the game that long and be respected and liked by everyone you’ve ever come across I believe, it’s amazing. As a player, I would have loved to play for Tito, and I think his players do. To be able to get the most out of your players and be respected by your players but also be well liked by so many people and players? In this game, that’s everything.”
Francona, 64, insisted he hasn’t given much thought to which part of his managerial career he will look back on most proudly. As for what he hopes other people will remember? He said he doesn’t think about that, either. He said all the joy he needs is in the hidden routine, in playing cards (and losing), in the quips and in the trenches.
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“Part of the joy of this job is coming to the ballpark, seeing the same people every day, kind of doing the same thing, and I’ve enjoyed it,” Francona said Tuesday, when the farewell visitors started passing through his office and the questions started to come about how it would feel.
“I just enjoyed coming to work today. And I’ll do the same tomorrow. Then I’ll hit the casino Thursday and enjoy the weekend,” he said with a smile that by no means suggested he was kidding about his plans. “I’m not all that caught up in what I’m doing. I took enough time to think it through that I get a lot of enjoyment out of just doing our normal day.”
To the extent that he has reflected, Francona said, he did that in June and July, when he allowed himself to wonder whether this season should be the end — “Grinded on it,” he said in hindsight, looking back on the months when the reality of his health collided with the extent of his commitment to the game. He thinks he got quieter during those months, and that made him uncomfortable. He said he apologized to the players for that reticence Tuesday, when he held a meeting to acknowledge what he called “the worst-kept secret ever” before he acknowledged the end publicly Wednesday. And despite his reluctance to say it in so many words, Francona does think this will be the end.
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“I think it has to be. Once you give out T-shirts, you can’t be going back,” he joked, and indeed a sea of those red T-shirts awaited him as he delayed the inevitable curtain call before the game, waiting a long while after the video tribute had finished before he finally stepped out of the dugout for a brief wave of his cap. Try as he might, he couldn’t cut the moment short. Players gathered around him and didn’t move. Fans refused to stop clapping. Eventually, he came up the steps again, waved his cap at fans and players, then disappeared back into the dugout as if to signal that enough was enough.
Enough for him, maybe. But not for everyone else. By the end of the Guardians’ 4-3 win over the Reds, fans were chanting his name. And when the final out was recorded and the postgame handshakes done, Ramírez blocked the entrance to the dugout, forcing his manager to stay on the field and listen to the cheers a little longer.
“I was like, come on, man, enough,” Francona said later. “I think that’s why they were doing it.”
Enough because Francona had decided long before this that he did not need to linger any longer. There were signs that the time had come. The scooter that became his trademark transportation — his “hog,” as he calls it — got stolen again a week or so ago, beaten up and defecated on, he matter-of-factly told reporters. And Francona has multiple surgeries on his fall calendar, reminders of the physical ailments that have forced him away from his job for stretches in recent years. Baseball schedules are demanding, built to be endured, not enjoyed. For decades, Francona made it easier for everyone around him to do both.
“I’ve had a really good time living through it,” Francona said. “I’ve probably had more fun than you’re supposed to.”
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