Alaska Employment Law

Red Sox Rule: Terry Francona and Boston’s Rise to Dominance, the latest sports book by former Globe reporter Michael Holley, is in some ways misleadingly titled.  It’s not just another Red Sox book – though it certainly looks like just another Red Sox book, the kind you could find in a pile on a separate table at Barnes & Noble, along with 30 or 40 other Boston baseball books.  Instead, it’s really a short biography of manager Terry Francona. Unless you already know Mr. Francona’s particulars, expect to be surprised by this rather touching story of a man with a promising future as an athlete that was in large measure upended by very significant medical problems, a man whose father, Tito (I had Tito’s baseball card), was a teammate of Joe Torre when Terry was just a 9-year old kid hanging around the Atlanta Braves clubhouse in 1968 looking for his dad.   Small world.

Clues to Francona’s style as a manager can be found not only in the way in which he has dealt with and (for the moment, anyway) overcome physical adversities, but also in the way he managed a famous but not very good baseball player by the name of Michael Jordan, who played under Francona for the Birmingham Barons, the double-A minor league team for the Chicago White Sox.  How Francona successfully rode the bus with one of the most famous sports figures in the world offers considerable insight into how he deals with, oh, say, a Manny Ramirez or a Curt Schilling.  I enjoy Holley’s writing style.  Many Amazon reviewers were not so happy with this book. Maybe their expectations were wrong.  I recommend Red Sox Rule as an enjoyable summer read, but do think of it as a book about Mr. Francona first of all.