December 5, 2011
Cherington carrying on a Red Sox tradition
New Sox GM is a New Englander like his predecessors
by Lenny Megliola/
Ben Cherington (Meriden, N.H.) will have his hand on the controls of his boyhood team as the Sox' new GM. (photo: Getty Images)
Ben Cherington, the new Red Sox general manager, was a baseball-lovin’ kid growing up in the small New Hampshire hamlet of Meriden. He couldn’t get enough of the game. He’d play it until dark; he’d get locked into his baseball cards. He’d digest the boxscores in the morning paper and, like many fans of that time, young and not so young, he couldn’t wait to devour the baseball notes penned by Peter Gammons in the Boston Sunday Globe.
“I used to make my mother drive me (to get the paper). I used my own two dollars.” Little Ben Cherington had to feed the beast.
He played high school ball, and then at Amherst College. His predecessor — Brookline, Mass.-bred Theo Epstein — went to Yale. Smart kids, these two. You could see them winding up on Wall Street, or captains of industry in a career far removed from baseball. But baseball was all they wanted. And the Red Sox were their passion.
So, we’ve got the New Hampshire native taking over for the Brookline native, who took over for the Dalton, Mass., native Dan Duquette, who took over for the happy-go-lucky man from Providence, R.I., Lou Gorman.
All New England blood. Was there something in the water? Is it coincidence that the last four Red Sox general managers had to take only a few giant steps from their home turf to land in their Yawkey Way office? Were they on the job because it would be immeasurably helpful for the occupant of said office to be home-grown, and easily be able to understand the culture of the Red Sox? That way, there would be no rude awakening regarding the grip the team had on the tax-paying citizens of Red Sox Nation. The Red Sox were everything to many. It was a generational thing.
Well, the answer is yes, it helps to be from around here to run the Red Sox, but that’s no stamp for success, although Gorman’s and Duquette’s teams had their moments, and Epstein reigned over two World Series titles. But all three understood they were on the hot seat.
That seat — sometimes a throne, sometimes an electric chair — Cherington, 37, knows better than anyone, having been an eyewitness to all the good and bad, the joy and heartbreak, of recent Red Sox history. But, boy, did he want this job. It’s a tough time to step up. The general consensus was that the 2011 Red Sox were a surefire playoff team and a likely World Series participant. But instead of preparing for a parade, the team wound up in damage control mode.
This is where Cherington comes in.
“It’s my job to manage this transition … to move forward and identify the things we need to do differently to get the kind of success Red Sox fans deserve,” he said.
On that matter, much will depend on how he meshes with tough-minded president/CEO Larry Lucchino. Lucchino clashed with Epstein. We’ll never know how often or how vehemently, until one of them writes his memoirs. Epstein had his own ideas, Lucchino his. Upper management disagreement in any business is nothing new, but when it happens with the Boston Red Sox, it generally becomes public knowledge.
If Cherington has a trade in mind, or a free agent he’d like to pursue, will it be a hard or easy sell on Lucchino? One thing is certain: Cherington has been around Lucchino, around the entire front office machinations, long enough to know what to expect from Lucchino, or anybody else in the organization.
Lucchino did say: “I have trouble imagining the Red Sox without Ben Cherington.”
It didn’t take long in his introductory press conference for Cherington to apologize for the team’s horrid September, followed by the fried chicken and beer follies.
“We’ve let our fans down in some important ways recently,” he said. “The last few weeks have been painful.”
It was nothing Red Sox fans didn’t know, but the new general manager starting with a mea culpa wasn’t a bad idea. Then he said, despite the healing that had to be done, “I’m left with an incredible conviction that the Red Sox will be the best organization in baseball.”
In September, it was a house divided organization. But the failings and personality clashes aside, Cherington knows the Red Sox aren’t bereft of talent. This time, no preseason polling of “experts” will pick the Red Sox to win the World Series. And that’s a good thing.
Cherington will get to know the players better this offseason. In fact, he’d already started the process before his official appointment.
“I know from talking to players there’s a great motivation to clean up whatever does need to be cleaned up in the clubhouse and moved forward to 2012,” Cherington said.
A new season closes in, and Ben Cherington is The Man. “My eyes are wide open,” he said. There is nothing he doesn’t know about this team, but implementation is another matter entirely. He has to be an agent of change.
“I never assumed the job would be mine,” he said. But he knew this much. “It’s the job I wanted.”
And so it begins.
This article originally appeared in the November-December 2011 issue of New England Baseball Journal.
Lenny Megliola can be reached at feedback@baseballjournal.com
