How would you feel if Billy Beane was your Red Sox general manager?
I would imagine not all that great considering he was your GM for twenty minutes or so in November 2002 when THE Billy Beane agreed to a four-year deal with Boston to GM the Red Sox. He even negotiated the A’s side by himself — serving as the Oakland rep and determining the price the Red Sox would pay Oakland for releasing him from his current contract.
How would you feel if Beane could have resisted the alluring-draw of Oakland’s concrete jungle and $40 million dollar payroll? Would life as a Red Sox fan be good right now? Beane signed a deal and backed out at the last minute because he wanted to stay near his daughter and ex-wife. But some wondered if he didn’t just chicken out.
In Oakland, Beane’s legacy is a free roll. Success using his ‘advanced’ statistical metrics with limited dollars adds to his legend and brilliance. Moneyball lives on.
Failing with $100 million more dollars under the spotlight and scrutiny of Boston scuffs the shine on his storied life. The new Red Sox owners knew that a GM was more important than any one player and more important that the manager as well. The fact that Beane could do more with less enticed the franchise because it would allow them to help close the financial advantage of the New York Yankees.
Landing Beane appeared to be a coup until the turnabout occurred. At the time, I don’t think anyone ever though there was such thing as a ‘sure’ thing with Boston Red Sox. It had become a common occurrence to stand at the edge of victory only to see it crumble horrifically by the wayside. It was an underlying psychology of the ‘Curse of the Bambino’ and Larry Lucchino watched it happen right in front of his eyes. Beane would not take the money and he ran back to the Oakland where things were safe for him.
It sounds wrong to say anything in Oakland is safe. Oakland is a crime-zone littered with shell casings, chalk outlines and crime scene tape. But its home to Beane and there he remains a gleaming diamond amongst a pile of coal.
His wish was to stay out West in the Pacific time zone left the Red Sox searching for a new GM and it ended just fine because the Red Sox had Mike Port who admirably warmed the throne for a young prince named Theo Epstein — the real boy genius who would sweep into Boston Red Sox fans’ conscience and take the franchise to a heartbreaking Game 7 ALCS defeat in his rookie year.
Epstein is credited with making several key acquisitions, including David Ortiz, Kevin Millar, and Curt Schilling, during his first tenure as Red Sox GM, who were regarded as instrumental in breaking the so-called “Curse of the Bambino” and winning the Red Sox their first World Series Championship since 1918. – Wiki
But this is not about Theo and the awesome 2004 and 2007 seasons. It’s about the day ‘Billy Beane’ spurned the Red Sox after a last-second change of heart. Where would we be now? Would we have any championships in Boston? Maybe we would have won all of them? Maybe Beane is the superlative sabermetric-friendly GM, and with $100 more million he could have destroyed the Bronx, where $50 bills are used to wipe Steinbrenner’s ass.
Maybe ‘Billy Beane’ would have been awesome, but we’ll never know. He made the playoffs two more times since turning away the Red Sox gig. In 2003, his Oakland A’s won 96 games but came up short in the ALDS against Boston in what marked a poetic ending to the Red Sox-Billy Beane saga. Epstein was a young prodigy and Beane was a footnote in history.
“I really do harbor absolutely no ill will toward Billy. … He’s not going to be part of our team, but we’re going to watch with great interest the success he has going forward.” – Larry Lucchino, 2002
One season after the Red Sox beat Beane’s A’s in the 2003 ALDS, they would win the World Series ending an 86-year drought. Beane could dig his toes into the sand and stare out at an ocean that points towards Japan – but he to had have wondered — what would have things been like if he had just taken that job in Boston?