The Red Sox have more General Managers than shortstops.
It’s not yet Christmas, but it’s already been a strange off-season.
Ben Cherington has been with the Red Sox for eight seasons, and was one of the few baseball people to survive the transition from the old Red Sox ownership group. In 2002, he hired Jed Hoyer, who quickly became a top confidant of General Manager Theo Epstein. Now, Cherington and Hoyer are sharing the GM title and duties.
This continues an impressive trend of New Englanders running major-league baseball teams.
In fact, the tiny Granite State has cornered the market on big-league General Managers. New Hampshire has only produced 47 major leaguers in the history of the game, but it has given us five men who are calling the baseball shots for four teams.
In addition to Cherington and Hoyer, Mike Flanagan (Orioles), Allard Baird (Royals), and Brian Sabean (Giants) all live by the motto “Be a GM or die.”
If you want to expand the search to all of New England, the results are even more staggering. Seven teams have GM’s that come from our six-state region. Dave Littlefield of South Portland (Pirates) is the only Mainer running a team right now. J.P. Ricciardi (Blue Jays) and Jim Bowden (Nationals) are both from Massachusetts.
And that doesn’t include ESPN’s Peter Gammons, a Massachusetts native who has as much power in the game as anyone sitting in a team’s corner office.
“I think it has something to do with the Red Sox,” said Cherington. “People here really care about baseball, and it’s a long winter.”
Cherington and Hoyer are about to find out how short that winter can be.
Pitchers and catchers report in 9 1/2 weeks, and the Gang of Two has plenty of holes to fill. Like center field, where Johnny Damon is up for grabs to the highest bidder.
Or shortstop, where Alex Cora sits atop a thin depth chart right now.
Or left field, where an unhappy Manny Ramirez may or may not play this year.
There wasn’t much hard news on any of those fronts this week. Damon was quoted as saying the Sox are one of three teams still in the hunt for his services. Former Sox reliever Mike Myers, now a member of the Yankees, stumped for Damon publicly when he met the New York media. Yankees manager Joe Torre even called Johnny.
No word if they talked about a shave and a haircut.
There is also word that a possible Manny-for-Miggy swap was still alive. Miguel Tejada, one of the few players who could make us forget about Ramirez, says he wants out of Baltimore. He wants to go to a winner. The Sox won 95 games last year, they need a shortstop, and they’ve got their own disgruntled superstar to deal.
In other news, the Sox said they have placed a call to the representatives of Roger Clemens, who is unsigned and cannot pitch for Houston again until May.
“If lightning strikes, we want to be the tree,” said Red Sox President and CEO Larry Lucchino. Of course, Lucchino’s been a lightning rod himself this fall, taking most of the blame for running former GM Theo Epstein (another New Englander) out of town.
We expect Epstein to be back, sooner rather than later. He’ll probably take a supervisory or consulting role that will allow him to stay out of the limelight. Cherington and Hoyer can deal with the media, Epstein can deal with other GM’s.
Each summer, millions of New Englanders think they can run the Red Sox. We live to second guess, and now the new GM’s are in the line of fire. There’s no question they can handle it, but the rise to the top of Red Sox Nation comes at a price.
Just ask the guy who had to run off in a gorilla suit on Halloween night.
Lewiston native Tom Caron works for NESN.
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