The Man Who Saved the Red Sox How Did They Regain the World Series Trophy? by Sending Their Executives to Obedience School
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The Man Who Saved the Red Sox How did they regain the World Series trophy? By sending their executives to obedience school. By Geoffrey Gagnon he two-out dribbler off the bat of Edgar Rente- ria trickled up the infield in the way that mean- Tingless grounders do. It hopped, ever so rou- tinely, into the glove of White Sox shortstop Tadahito Iguchi, who made a quick toss to first. An unspec- tacular play by baseball standards, it was a kick in the balls to the Boston Red Sox. While the visiting White Sox spilled onto the field at Fenway Park, Renteria and his Boston teammates dropped their heads and made for the showers. Eleven months after sweeping the 2004 World Series and capturing their first title in 86 years, Boston had been unceremoniously bounced in the first round of the 2005 playoffs. Down in the losers’ locker room, general manager Theo Epstein was trying to put the best face on it, congratulating players on a good season—they were 95–67, after all. But it was a tough reversal of fortune for the heartthrob of New England, the local boy who had finally exorcised the curse of the Bambino the year before. Epstein, who had grown up less than a mile from Fenway, was just 28 when team president Larry Lucchino named his one-time protégé general manager in 2002. Lucchino, meanwhile, who recently celebrated his 63rd birthday, is one of the most suc- After all, this was not how it was supposed to go cessful baseball executives of his generation. When he down. The world-beating Red Sox, with the second- was with the Baltimore Orioles, he’d been the driving highest payroll in the league, had been swept by the force behind Camden Yards, the gorgeous retro-ball- White Sox, a team whose own epic losing streak was park that ushered in a new era in intimate, fan-friendly notable only for the fact that nobody cared. But, as facilities. During his tenure with the San Diego Pa- the world would soon discover, being bounced from dres, he had done the seemingly impossible, pumping the playoffs was the least of Boston’s problems. With up revenue for a small-market club in a region with the Red Sox out of contention for the first time in 18 no natural affinity for baseball. With the Red Sox, he months, a season’s worth of pent-up bitterness and faced the challenge of adding to an already rabid fan frustration between Lucchino and Epstein was about base—and he’d accomplished that as well. But on to explode into public view. Within days, each had October 7, 2005, Boston was not focused on Epstein’s accused the other of disloyalty. Epstein was convinced or Lucchino’s achievements. that Lucchino’s relentless focus on the bottom line had The Man Who Saved the Red Sox become a distraction in the hothouse atmosphere of including Lucchino and the men in charge of New Boston sports; Lucchino argued that Epstein had no England Sports Ventures—were on the third floor. appreciation for exactly why he was able to afford that By the time Epstein’s contract came up at the end of $120 million–plus payroll. 2005, the rift had been bubbling under the surface for more than a year, and a scathing October 30 column in On one hand, Epstein’s crew in baseball operations the brdy that criticized Epstein for not “respecting his were charged with fielding a winning squad, and elders” proved to be the proverbial final straw. Epstein had become the darling of the Boston media by succeeding mightily at that task. But a team is also The next day, Epstein quit. As the news trickled out a business, and since buying the team in 2001, a new of the Sox offices, a media throng descended upon ownership group headed by John Henry and Tom Wer- the 93-year-old stadium. No one was surprised to see ner had set lofty goals for boosting profits. “We spent a man in a gorilla suit shuffling through the crowd— the first few years building the brand and focusing on it was Halloween, after all. But under the mask was the outside world,” says Sam Kennedy, senior vice Epstein, evading the cameras. After slipping past the president of New England Sports Ventures, the corpo- press, the wunderkind architect of the world-cham- rate entity that owns the team. pionship squad spent the next few weeks following Pearl Jam around South America. Across New Eng- By the end of the 2005 season, Lucchino had been land, hard-bitten Red Sox fans wondered how their enormously successful in his efforts to build the Red club had fallen apart. Sox “brand” by attracting casual fans, known derisively among die-hard loyalists as “pink And they wondered if it could ever be put hatters” for their nontraditional headgear. back together. In the wake of the team’s Series win, five players even appeared on a special edition Today, of course, many fans would have to of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. New strain to recall those bleak weeks of confu- seats were added to seemingly every avail- sion. Epstein returned to the club after less able nook of Fenway, the oldest park in the than three months, and this year, the Sox majors, and the team aggressively courted have been among the best teams in the ma- corporate sponsors. All of these efforts brought in new jors. Just as in 2005, they’re working toward the play- money, which was necessary to field a team of super- offs this fall as the defending World Series champs. stars. But Epstein, both because he personally shies The big difference this time around? That front-office away from the limelight and because he’s convinced acrimony is ancient history. That’s because while the more attention only makes things more difficult for organization was still reeling from the fissures that had players in the already suffocating Boston atmosphere, divided it, Sox management had the good sense to call viewed many of these efforts as distracting. in some expert help. That might have been fine—after all, what workplace Eddie Erlandson is not your standard, made-to-order doesn’t have its share of philosophical differences?— executive coach—which is to say he’s not some toothy but personal disputes between Epstein, who had grinner with a salesman’s laugh and a bunch of canned started his career as a college-age intern at the Orioles motivational quips. Instead, Erlandson is a former under Lucchino, and his former mentor added to the surgeon and an ultra-long-distance runner; a guy who split. When the Sox failed to land Alex Rodriguez drives himself hard and who has honed a special tal- following the 2003 season, Lucchino felt that Epstein ent for understanding what makes men like him tick. had been blaming him, sotto voce, in the press. When With his singular insights (and his medical training), Epstein was raked over the coals for trading team icon Erlandson and his wife, Kate Ludeman, run an Austin, Nomar Garciaparra midway through the 2004 season, Texas–based executive consulting firm called Worth the situation was reversed. Even the layout of Fenway Ethic, which specializes in taming hypercompetitive, Park exacerbated the rift: Epstein’s baseball operations aggressive alpha leaders—a breed of executive of staff worked in the basement of the Sox office at Fen- which there is no shortage in corporate America, or, way Park, while the rest of the team’s executives— for that matter, professional sports. Best Life October, 2008 The Man Who Saved the Red Sox In the past few years, Erlandson and Ludeman have mouthed self-help games. Erlandson explains that become gurus to a litany of heavy hitters, from Hol- while we do our thinking in the cerebral cortex of the lywood über-agents to business titans at companies brain, we’ve evolved in such a way that our emotional such as Coca-Cola, eBay, and Dell (where the firm’s responses can bypass the normal systems. This made namesake, Michael Dell, has become so smitten with sense when, say, a lion was chasing a man across the the approach that he has put most of his senior staff savannah and he didn’t have time for cool analysis. through intensive one-on-one sessions with the pair). It doesn’t work so well when the sales team reports The central irony that animates their approach is weak numbers for Q3. Anger can trigger irrational that the very traits that help men become leaders in reactions. Erlandson calls the physiological response business—assertiveness, confidence, ambition—are “brain hijacking” and says composure breeds the neu- pretty much the same ones that can make them hor- rological balance that business leaders need to make rible leaders. Unchecked egos will derail productivity, complex decisions. communication lapses will calcify into grudges, and jerk bosses with piss-poor attitudes can sink entire In addition to being true, this explanation has the add- companies. Reprogramming these guys—that’s where ed virtue of presenting the alpha male with an implicit Erlandson and Ludeman come in. Despite Erlandson’s challenge: If you can stop that hijacker and maintain aversion to corporate bromides, he occasionally un- control of your brain, you’ll improve your results. leashes a bumper-sticker-worthy slogan: “We curb the Erlandson transformed Red Sox doubters into devo- belligerence and unleash the brilliance,” he says. You tees by tapping into the singular goal he knew they all might say they run an obedience school for bosses.