Two seasons ago, the Boston Red Sox loaded up and signed Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and a host of other big names. The teams salary cap bloated, their heads bloated, the wins disappeared.
Some two years later that team has been blown up, and the Red Sox are starting over. Former Red Sox manager Terry Francona is the co-author of a new book titled “Francona: The Red Sox Years,” and in it details of an organization looking to change it’s image and increase ratings instead of wins is chronicled according to the New York Post.
Management according to Francona wanted a “Sexy Team,” and made it known to then general manager Theo Epstein to get it done.
A “sexy team.”
“They told us we didn’t have any marketable players, that we needed some sizzle,” Epstein is quoted as saying. “We need some sexy guys. Talk about the tail wagging the dog. This is like an absurdist comedy. We’d become too big. It was the farthest thing removed from what we set out to be.”
Francona said in 2010 after a marketing research firm determined that women are interested in sexy images on TV, management set out to change the teams image.
“They come in with all these ideas about baseball, but I don’t think they love baseball,” Francona said. “I think they like baseball. It’s revenue, and I know that’s their right and their interest because they’re owners … and they’re good owners. But they don’t love the game.
“It’s still more of a toy or a hobby for them. It’s not their blood. They’re going to come in and out of baseball. It’s different for me. Baseball is my life.”
“One thing the players were always asking for was getaway day games,” he said. “The owners would never go for it. They couldn’t have more day games because the ratings were already suffering, and that would have hurt worse.”
If all this is true, nevermind.