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Jesse Rogers
Goodyear, Ariz – Alyssa Francona had several missing calls from her father. Then her sister sent her.
“Dad is trying to communicate with you,” I read the message. “Be supportive. It’s really excited.”
Alyssa – the eldest daughter of MLB manager Terry Francona – was not sure what to do with that. Her father was retired and happy and felt for the first time in years. He was traveling more, and his golf game was improving, and with the argument of all accounts, his time with family and friends was fulfilling.
If Franicona, 65, is woven to manage again, he was not offering it.
Not surprisingly, his daughters were happy because Francona seemed to grind the game, but they knew their father better than anyone else: he liked to be in the hideout and in the club. There is nothing, “Nothing is like this ninth half,” says Francona later.
Alyssa called her sister Lea before she invited her father back.
Alyssa recently recalls: “She said that the men of Cincinnati were talking to him,” Alyssa recently recalled. “His bubble does not explode.”
Kim Bushi was A similar experience in 2022.
Director Bruce Bushi’s wife was looking forward to her husband’s retirement. Bochy, 69, resigned from the baseball after the 2019 season, but the two did not fully enjoy their newly discovered freedom so far, as the world soon closed the world, the world, and like Francona, Bochy had many health problems to be addressed. Just as the two had begun to enjoy the fruits of life in the game, New Texas Rangers GM Chris Young came.
“Once CY comes to visit – as soon as he walks across the door – I was like my God, I think this will not be good.” “In my view, I was very satisfied and very happy.
“Why do you want to return? “
Kim eventually came to the idea of her husband’s return and did not take long until Bochy accomplishes this goal, prompting Rangers to his first title in 2023. Now Francona has the same desire to restore glory to a privilege like the new director of Cincinati Reds. When Francona left the Cleveland Garrste’s hideout after the 2023 season, I swear it was done. The baseball game was opposed.
“I was not planning to return,” he told ESPN. “I’m really not.”
by the time Frankana Cleveland left, after 10 years, his body was collapsing. Ask him what is more than others, and he shakes his head.
“This is the problem, there were about 12 things,” said Francona, smiling from his office in Spring. “I got the knees, both of them are hips, and my right writing. After about a week of the season in Cleveland, my shoulder was replaced and I had three hernia.
“I am bloodshed due to blood clots. So when we fly, Q —, the right legs, we start, my cyclone is suitable. When we play, it does not fit my pants.”
These issues finally occurred with him. He felt that he was very dependent on his coaches and did not achieve his No. 1 – those that may have affected his health.
“I think if you run properly, you put the players and the institution first and you put yourself as if it were very far away,” said Francona. “You need to be far away. When you know you need to be far away, you may be late.”
Francona’s short retirement consisted of time with his grandchildren, golf trips to Mexico, issues in Hawaii and took some university football.
“I am no longer married to my phone,” said Francona. “My biggest decision was I should get another cup of coffee?”
He even offered to watch the grandchildren while his daughters spent a vacation in Europe last summer.
“I went back at that time,” said Francona.
Watching a 7 -year -old child and 9 -year -old may have been more tax than administration, according to his daughter. Soon after his arrival in Europe, Alyssa wrote one text of children, asking what the grandfather does.
“It is like,” the grandfather needed a day of rest. “He takes a holiday and we are like 48 hours on a 10 -day trip!”
Francona recounted that story in the winter meetings of the Bibul in December, and it was not long after taking over the mission in Cincinnati. The RDS team had traveled to Toxon to see it from its opening after the team, David Bell, allowed the approach to the end of the season. Francona was “enjoying some beer” in a football match when he received a call that Cincinnati was interested – former broadcaster Marti Brinaman put him for him for the first time – and after a short time, the head of the baseball operations Nick Curral and GM Brad Medor were in his home. After a day, the owner Bob Castillini was also there.
“I am sitting on a vocal chair that I am talking to and I have already caught myself several times,” Francona recalls. I said, “We can do this or” we can do it. I like, “stand, stand, stand. Slow down.
But it was not too early. The job was for him if he wanted to – and on October 4, before it. Four years after the Philadelphia Velez hide, eight others in Boston and 10 in Cleveland, followed by one day, Terry “Tito” Franicona was. The news came unexpectedly even for his family.
“We used to make jokes about the golf degree,” Alyssa said. “If he started shooting at over 80 years, he may take a job, but from all accounts he was shooting well in the cycle as well. It is it. He was A little surprise. “
Many Frankona Contemporaries, starting with Bochy, were less surprising. Even after achieving his goal of winning another world series after his return, Bochy is still ongoing, as his seventy birthday will come early in the 2025 season.
He said: “I just passed it.” “I know the feeling. You are going out. You miss him. You think,” My God, I went out early. “All of these ideas go through your head.
Like Frankana, Bushi did not search for a job as much as he sought. For this reason, his wife knew that there was a problem with fermentation as soon as Chris Young walks through this door. A team needs you. It is difficult to get away from it.
“I am very happy because he returned, and he did not surprise me when Bushi returned,” said the captain of the Colorado Rockez Bod Black. “Don’t ask me why. I just know these men and knew that they did not end.”
Black, 67, has been the director of Colorado since 2017.
“It is not just one thing, everything,” said Black. “It is a passion for the game. I don’t think it leaves you at all. When you have the desire to stay in it, to stay in the fight, it feels comfortable.”
Many ESPN managers spoke with Black comments. Even those who were a little surprised to clarify Francona understand what he pays – what keeps men who do not need money or glory from getting away from good.
“I wrote to him immediately and said, are you crazy?” Said Bob Milvin, director of San Francisco. “But there are just youths of the basbol. It is in their blood. This is what they must do. It is one of them.
“It is a legend.”
Melfin is looking to exchange the squad cards before the first match in the regular Francona season in the hideout later this month, as the REDS team hosts the opening day. Before the match, which includes two managers in the 1960s, Melvin, 63, was asked why the teams returned to some of the largest guards to lead their clubs after a period when young children were all over the sport.
“Because of the success,” Melfin said, citing Borik Baker and Beche’s Both, who won this contract. “At any time there is success, there is a wave that goes in this direction.”
Francona hopes to fall into that wave. It has a fiance young team, apparently reduces last season when he won only 77 games and ended in fourth place in NL Central.
Infielder Jeimer Candelario is among the players in RDS CAMP who believe their new manager will save what the team needs to change this next season.
“Leadership”, Candalerio said. “I think it’s the Famir Hall. He did this for a long time. When it was called a manager, he came to the Dominican Republic to see the players. It was different. The way I see with great respect because we know he is a leader.”
After replacing retirement leave with preliminary trips to meet his new players, Francona admits that he was not sure how his spare time was filling out if he did not return. There is only a lot of golf and travel a person can do. Moreover, the administration revolves around the only thing he knows.
“Other than taking a two -week real estate course, this is all I have never done,” said Francona. “I’m comfortable here.”
