Why Terry Francona just couldn't stay away from baseball: ‘I probably love it too much'

New York Times

22-04-2025

They met in the fall of 1978, in the lounge area of a University of Arizona dormitory. Brad Mills was a straight-laced junior baseball transfer from College of the Sequoias, a school near his Central California hometown, where his father was an orange farmer. He introduced himself to Terry Francona, his new teammate and the hotshot freshman first baseman with long brown hair, frayed jean shorts and red Converse Chuck Taylor high tops.
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They've been attached at the replaced hip for nearly half a century since then. They played together in Tucson and with the Montreal Expos. As Francona established his major-league managerial career, Mills coached on Francona's staff in Philadelphia, where they were chased out of town, in Boston, where they ended a famed curse, and in Cleveland, where it seemed like they'd reside forever. No one knows the future Hall of Famer better. Francona says Mills can predict every decision he will make before he utters a word to him in the dugout.
They didn't talk much last summer. Mills figured that would change, as it always did, when their alma mater's basketball season ramped up in the fall. Mills wanted to give his friend space as Francona navigated his new reality: retirement.
After all, those who know Francona well had struggled to envision him in any environment that didn't include four bases and a mound.
'I don't know what the hell else he would do,' says Rays manager Kevin Cash, who played and coached under Francona.
Health concerns convinced Francona to step away after the 2023 season, his 23rd as a major-league manager. He spent his first summer in decades leaning back and watching ESPN in his living room rocking chair, rather than leaning against a padded dugout railing, where he savored every debilitating pang of anxiety during a close game. No, this was a new chapter, one marked by quiet mornings on the golf course. He played four times a week — in Arizona, Hawaii and Mexico. On a rare rainy day, he turned to the top-of-the-line simulator in his garage.
Marty Brennaman, the former Hall of Fame broadcaster for the Reds, forged a friendship with Francona during his lone season as a player in Cincinnati in 1987. In February 2024, Brennaman and his wife, Amanda, visited Francona at his Tucson home for four days. Brennaman and Francona golfed each day, and Francona was as focused and calculated as he would be if he were constructing a lineup ahead of a World Series game.
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After purchasing pots and pans for Francona's empty cupboards, Amanda cooked them red beans and rice. Brennaman taught Francona how to ignite his grill, one so fancy Brennaman said it could 'do everything but chew tobacco,' so they could cook steaks. They sat around and sipped gin and beer and talked about grandchildren and curing slices off the tee.
When they left to head back to Reds spring training in Goodyear, Ariz., about two hours northwest of Tucson, Brennaman looked at his wife.
'He's never coming back,' he told her. 'He's never going to put on a uniform again.'
At no point did Francona hint at the possibility, and Brennaman felt he knew him as well as anyone.
Francona estimates he's undergone at least 45 surgeries. He's had heart-related health scares, ICU stints and, for the last few years of his tenure in Cleveland, was either hospital-bound or hobbling around. But last year, he had dropped weight and recovered from his latest round of surgeries, this time a shoulder replacement and double hernia procedure.
The time away re-energized him. Even his golf buddies couldn't believe how well he was moving around the course. Between rounds, he watched his beloved Arizona Wildcats from courtside seats and traveled east to babysit his six grandkids.
He was enjoying the tranquil, late stage of life that most anyone would welcome — the same life those who know him best thought he could never accept.
They were right. It wasn't enough.
'Nothing is like the ninth inning of a baseball game,' Francona says.
He needed to be back in the dugout, agonizing over a late-game pinch-hit decision with his stomach lodged in his throat. That fine line between agony and glory has a magnetic pull on him. This baseball lifer with nothing left to accomplish, no elusive feat to pursue, no reason to race back to employment, simply cannot stay away.
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Francona ranks 13th on the all-time manager wins list, and every name ahead of his — luminaries like Leo Durocher and Sparky Anderson — resides in the Hall of Fame, or, in the case of Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy, should one day. Francona's legacy persists through a cadre of former understudies, such as Cash and Royals manager Matt Quatraro, but it's not enough for him to watch his disciples thrive.
At 66, with figurative and literal scars from nearly 4,000 games as a manager and 700 as a player, he can't quit that ninth-inning high. The onus of another grueling season appealed to the man who never wanted to know another way of life.
To those who understand him, it's equally surprising and predictable.
Mills crawled into bed one night in late September. At 10:30 p.m., his phone buzzed. His son had texted him a headline about Francona becoming the new Reds manager. Ten seconds later, another buzz. 'Hey, we just became Reds fans,' Mills' brother-in-law texted.
Mills, befuddled, sent his lifelong baseball companion an exploding mind emoji. 'What's this?' he wrote.
Francona replied almost instantly.
'I couldn't help myself.'
Francona's father, Tito, spent the final years of his life in a 1,500-square-foot century home perched atop a hill in New Brighton, Pa. From his back windows, he could view the action on a middle school baseball field. Baseball was Tito's life. He played for nine franchises over 15 years, including a six-year stint in Cleveland. The sport was embedded in his son's DNA.
'From the minute I could walk,' Francona says, 'I never thought of (baseball) as a job.'
He spent summers developing his skills on the diamond and following his dad. Tito's workplace eventually became his son's sanctuary.
'When you grow up in a baseball clubhouse like he did, it's home to him,' Cash said. 'I think he doesn't want to move out of his house. That clubhouse is his space, his comfort zone.'
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Three times, Francona has tried to escape. Three times, he locked himself back in and buried the key.
In 1991, as a decade-long MLB career as an injury-plagued, singles-hitting savant sputtered and his knees begged for mercy, he failed to break camp with the St. Louis Cardinals. He went home, sprawled out on the couch, binged reruns of 'Gilligan's Island' and half-heartedly studied some real estate textbooks.
Really, he knew he was meant to be on a baseball field, not entering a new field, especially one that required more schooling. In college, he had once hastily marked all 300 answers on an exam as true, hoping he'd get at least half correct, and, more importantly, allowing him to hustle out of class and head to his haven, where Arizona baseball had a game that afternoon.
Six weeks into his uncharted life 34 years ago, Francona received a call from Buddy Bell, his former Reds teammate and roommate on road trips. Bell recruited him to Sarasota, Fla., to launch his coaching career in the White Sox farm system. It didn't take much convincing, even though he'd be earning a pittance and making long bus rides between overlooked, minor-league towns.
He didn't have another summer free until 2012, following a messy departure from the Red Sox. He joined ESPN as an analyst, and as the season wore on and he visited clubhouses to collect intel for broadcasts, he found himself missing the banter, the camaraderie, the rhythms of a 162-game journey. By October, he agreed to become Cleveland's manager.
In late April 2023, during his 11th season at the helm with the Guardians, Francona caught up before a game with Colorado reliever Daniel Bard, who pitched for him in Boston. Bard recalled an outing during their Red Sox days in which Bard got shelled. Francona approached him in the outfield the next day during batting practice, playfully jabbed Bard in the stomach and asked if he was ready to pitch again that night. Bard needed that vote of confidence.
'You have no idea what that meant to me,' Bard told him.
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But that moment opened Francona's eyes to something else. He hadn't ventured to the outfield during batting practice in years. More than any aspect of his job, he cherished those sorts of interactions with his players, but his health and his declining mobility had limited how often he could engage.
'I walked away, like, 'F—,'' Francona says. 'It hit me hard.'
For weeks, he wrestled with his future. He'd stumble into bed at night and contemplate whether he could continue. In August, he reached a decision. He would step down at the end of the 2023 season and said he couldn't envision himself managing again.
'It probably killed him more to be away from baseball than to be at it,' said Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan.
Once again, his break lasted less than a year. He says it was healthy not to have the gravity of a win or a loss hanging over his head each night.
'At the same time,' he admits, 'I missed it.'
'That fuel is the most addictive drug you can have,' Kwan says, 'just to be able to be the top at your sport and be the best in the world. How can that not fuel somebody?'
Part of it is Francona's competitive fire, whether he's angling to win a World Series game, a nondescript Tuesday game in April, a round of golf or a board game with his grandkids — 'I'll probably cheat so I can win, because they're smarter than me,' Francona says — and part of it is the passion for the game he inherited from his father. His love of baseball has endured since he was a toddler in a Cleveland Indians uniform, waiting to watch the spectacle that has always had a spell on him.
He keeps coming back, baseball's most reliable boomerang, unable to resist the grind, unwilling to accept a paradisiacal golf course as his new reality. The dugout remains his Eden.
'Somebody asked me if I have perspective (after a year away),' Francona says. 'I'll never, ever have perspective. I know that.'
Brennaman, 82, retired from broadcasting following the 2019 season. Like Francona, he knew the wear and tear that spring training, a 162-game season and, often in Francona's case, postseason play can take on the body and the mind.
Since retiring, Brennaman and his wife have traveled the globe. They've taken trips to see old friends, visit exotic countries and play the finest golf courses in the land. If anyone knows the perks of retirement, it's Brennaman. But Brennaman also knows Francona.
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If — and as much as Brennaman thought this was only an 'if' — Francona ever wanted to give managing one more go, Brennaman knew this was a team that could thrive under his old friend's leadership. Brennaman still lives in Cincinnati and serves as an ambassador of sorts for the Reds. He knew they were the right landing spot if Francona wanted to leave behind his new life of salads and sand traps. Cincinnati, with young talent and modest, small-market expectations, had plenty of parallels to his previous stop in Cleveland, where he spent 11 years as manager.
When Brennaman picked up the phone on Sept. 22, 2024, he was convinced Francona had no designs on managing again. He deemed it 'a shot in the dark.' But he had to be sure.
'Are you ready to come back?' Brennaman asked him over the phone.
'Ready to come back where?' was the response.
'Are you ready to come out of retirement?' Brennaman asked.
But Francona wasn't following.
'The Reds fired David Bell today,' Brennaman told him. 'Now, I'm going to say it one more time real slow because sometimes you have trouble understanding English. Are … you … ready … to … come … out … of … retirement? Or at least talk to somebody?'
'Well,' Francona replied, after a pause, 'I never say no to anybody.'
Especially when the invitation includes a potential seat in the dugout.
In August, Francona started to mull his future. He didn't specifically have managing in mind, but he thirsted for baseball. As his track record illustrates, when he ponders a return to the game, there's nothing that can stand in his way.
Brennaman played matchmaker. He asked Nick Krall, the Reds' president of baseball operations, if Francona was on the club's candidate list. Two days later, when the Reds traveled to Cleveland, Krall and GM Brad Meador initiated their homework on a target who hadn't offered any indication he was serious about managing again.
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Francona doesn't have an agent, so Krall called him directly on Sept. 28. Francona was rooting on Arizona's football team in Salt Lake City during their upset of No. 10 Utah, and he had enjoyed a few alcoholic beverages. He asked to put off the conversation for a day.
When they eventually connected, Krall and Meador told Francona they would fly to Tucson the next day to meet in person. With Krall submerged in the old, broken-down couch in Francona's living room, Meador beside him and Francona in his rocking chair, it didn't take long before all three knew Francona wanted to reside in the home dugout at Great American Ball Park.
Golf could wait. His grandkids could visit Cincinnati. He'd catch up with the Wildcats in the fall.
When Francona arrived at spring training, Robyn Cohen, the team's mobility director, introduced herself and told Francona, 'I think I can help you.' Francona was confused. 'Well, I see you walking, and it hurts me,' she added.
'You should've seen me about three years ago,' Francona told her. 'This is about as good as I've been in 12 years.'
Now, in addition to daily morning workouts in the SwimX machine, Francona does Pilates. Anything to help him survive another 162.
The 162-game schedule is the team sport's version of a marathon, with the distance being both the challenge and the appeal. The grind is what forced Francona away, but also what pulled him back. Those who know him best didn't see it coming, but they couldn't imagine him anywhere else.
'Some of us, like myself, probably love it too much,' Francona says. 'I mean, it's just … I don't know how to change it. I just love it.'
(Top illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; Photos: Emilee Chin / Getty Images; Ric Tapia/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images; Jed Jacobsohn / Getty Images)