Pedro Martinez was still chirping about it<\/a> when he visited Fenway last week to take part in a 125th anniversary celebration of the first home game in franchise history.<\/p>\nDespite that, the all but unknown Tracy has brought calm to the chaos. So relaxed is Tracy\u2019s demeanor, so confident and clear are his answers to nonstop questions about the starting rotation, batting orders and the status of injured Sox stars Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony, that you\u2019d think he\u2019s been running the big club for years.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not the case, of course. So quickly was Tracy summoned to Baltimore to take over for Cora that a lot of his stuff is still lying about at his old apartment in Worcester from his time managing the Triple-A WooSox. His old Worcester roommate, WooSox pitching coach Dan DeLucia, now has the place to himself. Those couple of Coors Lights that Tracy left in the refrigerator? \u201cDan likes to have a Coors Light every once in a while, so I bet he drank those,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That Tracy can bring some light banter to his daily tasks doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s the right choice to run the shop for the next five years; it does suggest he\u2019s not overwhelmed by all this. As such, it makes this promotion to manager, be it interim or otherwise, a case in which a modern-day baseball executive \u2014 that is, Breslow \u2014 availed himself of a practice that\u2019s been going on in front offices for more than a century. He gave a big-league manager\u2019s job to a minor-league lifer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tracy, who turns 41 on the Fourth of July, logged parts of nine seasons as a minor-league player, including some time in indy ball. And like all minor-leaguers who\u2019ll do whatever it takes to survive, he played just about everywhere. Catcher. First base. Outfield. He managed minor-league teams for the Angels for three seasons, and then, after serving three seasons as a minor-league field coordinator with the Angels, was hired by the Red Sox to manage the WooSox. This was his fifth season in Worcester.<\/p>\n
In 1984, when I was covering the Triple-A Maine Guides, four managers from the International League wound up running big-league clubs. Doc Edwards, the Guides\u2019 manager, went on to manage the Cleveland Indians for parts of three seasons. Stump Merrill of the Columbus Clippers managed the Yankees for a couple of seasons. Eddie Haas of the Richmond Braves managed the Atlanta Braves for a year. Bob Schaefer of the Tidewater Tides had a couple of stints as interim manager of the Kansas City Royals.<\/p>\n
Before managing, Edwards gutted out parts of five seasons in the big leagues as a backup catcher. Haas was an outfielder who logged a total of 79 plate appearances over parts of three seasons with the Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Braves. Merrill was a catcher who played six seasons in the minors but not one game in the big leagues. Schaefer\u2019s pro playing career consisted of three minor-league seasons as an infielder in the St. Louis Cardinals organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The point here is that while their playing careers were unremarkable, these men morphed into crusty, weather-beaten, minor-league managers who rode the buses and bedded down in the cheap hotels, hoping for a chance to manage in the big leagues.<\/p>\n
Edwards, Haas, Merrill and Schaefer didn\u2019t have much success as big-league managers. Still, they were giving it a go with troubled clubs, as Tracy is now. Not one of them turned down the job to wait for a better opportunity. They were in the right place at the right time, and they knew it. If these examples don\u2019t do it for you, Earl Weaver and Jim Leyland never played in the big leagues but managed themselves right into the Hall of Fame. And the aforementioned Morgan, who played parts of four seasons in the big leagues and then managed in the minor leagues for 20 seasons, finally got to manage in the big leagues at age 57 and guided the Red Sox to two division titles.<\/p>\n
All of these guys mentioned looked like they\u2019d just stepped off an oil rig. Bus rides will do that. Late-night diners will do that. Somehow, Tracy has avoided the perils of life in the minors. The guy looks like he does Pilates and trims the fat off the meat. Good for him. Being a minor-league lifer shouldn\u2019t mean sacrificing your life.<\/p>\n
I do wish Tracy had a couple of former big-leaguers on his coaching staff. Aside from pitching coach Andrew Bailey, nobody else on Tracy\u2019s staff has played in the bigs. Consider that Cora, upon being named manager of the Red Sox for 2018, had the wherewithal to recruit Ron Roenicke, a former big-league manager, to be his bench coach. Cora played 14 seasons in the big leagues, and yet as a newly minted manager, he sought somebody who had been there, done that.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a knock on Tracy, what with Boston\u2019s post-Cora coaching staff being assembled on the fly, but when Tracy gets his first permanent managerial job, it\u2019ll serve him well to hire a couple of seasoned lieutenants.<\/p>\n
And if the early vibes offer any clues, there absolutely will be a permanent managerial job for Tracy. If not with the Red Sox, then somebody else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON \u2014 Sounding more like a manager for Tripadvisor than manager of the Boston Red Sox, Chad Tracy…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":789382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1281,1266,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-789381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-boston-red-sox","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116557535660456176","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}