WORCESTER—March was almost over and the players, coaches, managers, and instructors inhabiting the Red Sox spring training camp at JetBlue Park were all anxious to get out of town even if the weather was warm and sunny and the orange juice fresh from the tree.
So, Worcester Red Sox manager Chad Tracy was happy to take a long lunch break. He sat in one of tents Boston’s minor leaguers used for classroom instruction and conferences, and answered questions about his profession.
Managing is not for everyone, although almost everyone thinks he or she can do it better than whoever is running the hometown team. The second-guessing is perpetual, the criticism constant. In the 1970s, when Don Zimmer managed a disappointing Red Sox club, the calls to Eddie Andelman’s talk show were so overwhelming that the opinioners had to refer to him as Chiang Kai-shek or be cut off.
Welcome to the major leagues, Mr. Tracy.
His arrival there was sudden and unexpected. Boston manager Alex Cora was fired Saturday in Baltimore. Tracy was named his interim replacement that night with no indication of long he would have the job.
The thinking is the Red Sox will give him a realistic chance. Tracy has an idea of what to expect. His dad, Jim, managed three different major league teams — the Pirates, Dodgers and Rockies. It is not an easy job, but it is rewarding in a couple of ways.
That’s why Chad Tracy has persevered.
“Why do you put yourself through this?” he said. “Number One, I feel like just getting there speaks to everything you’ve done before that. Like, this person worked their ass of to get to that sppot, then you get rewarded for getting to that spot. You can take of your family, things like that.
“If you become a big league manager, earned that title, if you get let go it’s a helluva lot easier finding another job. Once you’ve earned that job, it changes the dynamic.”
As a player, Tracy was never in the right place at the right time when it came to making the major leagues. It has taken a while as a minor league manager and happened at what may be an historic time for the Boston Red Sox.
The team was off to a dreadful start. Cora was highly regarded and had been rewarded for his efforts with a lucrative contract. He might not have deserved to be fired, but needed to be fired as unfair as that was.
Head of baseball operations Craig Breslow’s actions during his time in charge of the Red Sox had been understated, just like his demeanor. This was an uncharacteristically dramatic move. He could have fired hitting coach Peter Fatse, but that would have been only a band-aid. Breslow could have just fired Cora. Instead he fired the manager and five coaches — an amputation, essentially, unlike anything the Sox had ever done before.
WooSox fans are aware of Tracy’s managing style. It has been very successful here.
“You’ve got to be confident in what you do,” said Tracy. “You’ve got to be steadfast when you make a decision. Anybody worth their salt is going to go back and think, ‘Could I have done that differently?’ and I think that’s healthy. But you can’t dwell on it. It’s like being a field goal kicker who misses a kick. You can think about it, but if you dwell on it’s gonna take you into the next day and affect your decisions.”
Jim Tracy was fired by the Pirates and Dodgers but walked away from the Rockies job. Chad Tracy has a favorite line about the tentative nature of managing from Clint Hurdle, whose career intersected with Jim Tracy’s on occasion.
“He had a line,” Chad Tracy said, “and it was that ‘As long as God wants you in that chair, there ain’t nobody that can take you out of it’. And the second was that if God wants you out of that chair their ain’t nobody that can keep you in it.
“I love that line. Why would anybody want to be a manager? That humanizes it in some way so it’s like, you know what…some things happen and it’s not your fault. It’s just not your time to be in that chair.”
Cora’s time came last Saturday.
Tracy reviews every game he manages, often over a glass of bourbon in his apartment or hotel room after a game.
“I don’t have this formal, sitdown process for it but I evaluate every night,” he said. “I go home, even if we’ve won a game, I go home, and I want to feel that I’ve put everybody in the best possible position to succeed, or did I miss anything?
He evaluates, but does not second-guess, saying, “There are a whole lot of people outside who are gonna do that for you.”
Considering the circumstances that got Tracy hired, he should have some sort of honeymoon with fans and media types. He is on one of the biggest stages in major league sports. If he can turn things around Tracy will never have to pay for a glass of bourbon in Boston again.
However..
“Davey Johnson called them the Big 5 markets,” Tracy said. “They were New York, Chicago, Boston and the two LAs. He said they were relentless.”
Johnson’s exact words were, “If you fall on your face in those markets, you’re never gonna get that chance again. If you get the opportunity and mess it up, it’s probably never gonna happen again.”
Having spent four-and-change seasons 40 miles west of one of those Big 5, Tracy must have a sense of what to do with this particular chance of a lifetime, a chance he never had as a player.
Bill Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
