As Terry Francona makes his Cleveland return, the relationships he's built ‘never change'

New York Times

2 days ago

CLEVELAND — There's a long, narrow hallway that connects the visitors clubhouse to the visitors dugout at Progressive Field. It's straight out of Apple TV's 'Severance,' a seemingly unending path with white walls and no artwork or personality or life.
You can walk for miles and occasionally pass by a room. Maybe it's where umpires get dressed. Maybe it's full of baby goats or number-crunching innies.
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The hallway is part of sweeping renovations the Cleveland Guardians completed over the last year and a half. Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona was dreading the march down that hallway Monday afternoon. He quipped that he'd have to ice his knees once he finally reached the dugout.
A lot has changed since Francona last roamed the ballpark he called home for 11 years.
The final week of the 2023 season, coincidentally with the Reds in town, Francona reluctantly stepped out of the home dugout in the same building for one final ovation from Cleveland fans who donned 'Thank You, Tito' shirts.
'Half of them probably want their T-shirts back,' Francona joked Monday, his first day back as the enemy in his old stomping grounds.
Francona says he didn't intend to manage again when he stepped down after the 2023 campaign. He spent last year golfing in Hawaii and Mexico, guzzling beers at University of Arizona football games and chasing his six grandkids.
He spent the year getting healthy.
By August, he started pondering his future. By late September, he was the Reds' new skipper.
In the time he was gone, plenty changed. A year and a half is an eternity in baseball.
The pedestrian-only street he resided on for years in downtown Cleveland, East Fourth Street, has undergone a slew of restaurant transformations. The nook where he'd park his famed scooter — with no fear of a heist until someone not only stole the vehicle but also defecated on it in 2023 — borders a restaurant that has changed several times since Francona stepped down. Now, it's a country-themed establishment with phrases such as 'Hootin' leads to hollerin'' printed on the glass-window front.
The ballpark looks different, too, with blue seats, a left-field hub that no longer sits dormant all summer and redesigned clubhouses. The Guardians unveiled a new, more spacious interview room Monday afternoon just for Francona's arrival. As Francona scanned the room full of reporters from across Ohio, he locked eyes with his former closer, Cody Allen, who has spent the homestand providing analysis on the Guardians' pre- and postgame broadcasts.
The Cleveland Guardians tribute video to Terry Francona.
Knowing how he wants the focus to be on the game, not his old team, they acknowleded his Cleveland accomplishments, and take a middle ground approach.@CleGuardians hat tip to y'all.@daverivera440 pic.twitter.com/eQnYNGtuBy
— Sean Fitzgerald (@fitzonsportsbsr) June 9, 2025
Francona dubbed Allen his least favorite closer of all time, saying the reliever's attitude drove him mad. Of course, that's the antithesis to the truth, and Francona's ribbing really just reveals his affection for the guy who ranks second in franchise history in saves.
In Cleveland, Francona played cribbage every afternoon with Bryan Shaw or Josh Tomlin or Mike Napoli. 'That's how Napoli got the (Reds staff assistant) job,' one former player joked. 'Tito needed someone to play cribbage with.'
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Francona couldn't find a cribbage board Monday, so Cleveland's equipment staff rummaged through closets to try to locate one. No one has played cribbage at Progressive Field since 2023, though.
'We had to go buy one,' Francona said, pausing for a moment before smiling and adding: 'Bastards.'
His old team is different, too. Well, not the personnel. Carlos Santana is back. Many of the young players who started under Francona have remained under Stephen Vogt. José Ramírez is still posting all-world numbers.
'This kid made himself into one of the best players in the game,' Francona said. 'When I came (to Cincinnati), that's the first guy everybody asked about.'
Francona's last season in Cleveland was the team's worst under his stewardship, with a 76-86 record. Then, the Guardians nearly went wire-to-wire in the AL Central in 2024 and made a run to the ALCS.
Francona said he watched more baseball last summer than he ever has. He flipped between games that were close in the late innings. Eventually, he started to perversely miss the agony of helplessly leaning against the dugout railing while praying his team could find a way to win.
He missed the steady beat of the 162-game schedule. He missed the camaraderie. Most of all, he missed the people.
Then, the Reds called.
Sunday night when the Reds arrived at their hotel in downtown Cleveland, Francona received a text from the security guard who was stationed outside of his old office at Progressive Field. As he relayed the story Monday, he beamed. It took a second for Francona to go through his mental Rolodex to pull the security guard's name (Tyrone), but he did.
'That made my night,' Francona said. 'To me, that's baseball. That stuff never changes. The people in the game make it really special.'
Everywhere Francona went Monday, there was a familiar face, a kind word, a handshake. After a lifetime in Major League Baseball, that reception isn't just in Cleveland or Boston, but everywhere the Reds go. When the Reds go to Detroit later this week, there will be another security guard, another clubhouse attendant, another coach, another hotel bartender who will greet Francona with a smile or hug.
Francona has repeatedly said he was happy at his home in Tucson, Ariz., last season, arm's length from the game that'd consumed nearly every day of his 66 years on earth. He did it again Monday. The life he led in Tucson, surrounded by a small group of friends with plenty of golf, drinks and laughs, was the picture-perfect portrait of retired life.
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'It was a really good year,' Francona said. 'I did stuff I've never done before.'
The retired life was like sitting still in the middle of a merry-go-round, with the world revolving around him. Surviving a major-league season is like hanging off the end of the merry-go-round as it spins for eight months. Like the toddler who pleads to go again and again once the spinning stops, Francona craved that pit in his stomach that surfaced anytime the game hung in the balance in the ninth inning.
For Francona, those stakes are addicting. They always have been.
'You used the word addicting, which really isn't a bad word,' Francona said. 'That ninth inning. At some point, when you do it for so long, that also can become a burden. The losses were weighing on me more than I was enjoying the wins.'
That was in 2023, when Elly De La Cruz, now his shortstop, hit two home runs to give him a loss in his final game at Progressive Field as the manager of the Guardians.
Last spring, he wanted to hop in his car and drive the two hours to see all the people in the Guardians organization whom he'd gotten to know and care about over the previous 11 years. He stayed away, though, in deference to those who had taken over.
'It didn't feel right,' Francona said. 'I thought for the new staff here, they needed to be able to do things. They didn't need me telling them how to do it or acting like I'm gonna tell them how to do it.'
Telling people what to do has never been the part of the job Francona's enjoyed the most. Instead, it's finding a way to make people want to do what you think they should do. Francona's calling card has never been as a strategic mastermind, though it's a bigger part of his success than the sport's chief self-deprecator will admit. It's about building relationships and finding out how to help his players be better than anyone thought they could be.
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Baseball to Francona is giving a baby-faced shortstop from the Dominican Republic his first taste of the big leagues as a pinch runner in a tie game just days before his 21st birthday, and then watching from his couch a dozen years later as Ramírez continued to showcase why he's among the best players in baseball.
It's watching former players of his, such as Kevin Cash or Dave Roberts, become two of the best managers in the game. It's the hours spent huddled with his players around a cribbage board in his office or on a plane.
Baseball, for Francona, is more than baseball.
Returning to managing only entered his mind when an old friend, former Reds announcer Marty Brennaman, called to gauge Francona's interest. His response was that he'd always listen.
Days later, Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall and general manager Brad Meador were on Francona's weathered old couch at his house in Tucson, and it didn't take long for all three to realize Francona was energized to return to the dugout.
The wins are still important and the losses still sting. Francona has had plenty of both in his lifetime in the game, but it's the comfort level, the ease with which he sits in front of an audience and plays his greatest hits. Monday, in a familiar but changed venue, he delivered his customary array of one-liners and self-effacing punchlines and conveyed his desire to spoil the week for his old friends.
'I had 11 really fun years here and I had some great relationships. That never changes,' Francona said. 'But now, we're trying to figure out a way to beat them tonight. That's why we're here.'