Free Red Sox Rule by Michael Holley

seen.”
    Tito paused. His son really had been paying attention, because young Blyleven was on his way to fashioning one of the best curveballs in baseball. It was also obvious how much his son wanted to be a part of the game. He had never, ever pushed baseball on him, yet that’s all Terry thought about, even after Tito retired.
    Their son’s singular focus was one of the reasons Tito and Birdie had peace in their ranch-style home. They were spared a lotof adolescence’s rebellion and drama because Terry wasn’t going to be derailed from his baseball plan. In fact, he didn’t even know that he could be derailed. He didn’t particularly enjoy going to class, but he did well in school because he knew that poor grades would take away baseball.
    He managed to simultaneously amuse and frustrate his high school guidance counselor, Rico Antonini. Each year, starting in ninth grade, students were required to fill out a sheet with their career intentions listed on it. Each year, Terry Francona gave the same answer: I’m going to be a professional baseball player. Mr. Antonini’s response was exasperation the first couple of years, and then understanding after he saw what everyone else in town did. Tito’s son—Terry, “T,” Little Tito—was good.
    Anyway, Mr. Antonini should have noticed that Terry was surrounding himself with a group of high achievers, kids who were well on their way to being established in diverse fields. Some of the kids he played pickup ball with, kids like Bruce Schwartzel and Brian Lambert, Tad Mackowicki and Mike Pasquale, had a drive to be great, too. Schwartzel, his next-door neighbor on Mercer Road, probably had an idea back in the 1970s that he would grow up to take over the family’s plumbing business. Lambert, who lived two doors down, was on the path to becoming an eye doctor in New Brighton. Mackowicki displayed the savvy that would one day allow him to have a television production company. And it was clear that Pasquale would become a surgeon, especially after the time they all got in trouble and Pasquale cried out, “I’m not going to get into medical school now!”
    If they could work toward their careers, Terry could do the same with his. He was too polite to boast, but they all recognized his disarming smirk. It was their reminder that he never thought he was going to lose. His thoughts were usually correct.
    “He came to me as a perfect hitter,” says Greg Fazio, his high school baseball coach. “So when he was a sophomore, I told him he’d have to learn to pitch, too.” He did learn to pitch: his earned run average was 0.33, he threw a no-hitter, and he hit .550.
    No one denied that talent and good genes were part of his story. Pro baseball has more father-son combinations than any other sport. But he was exceptional in the categories in which gene pools offer no guarantees. He had Tito’s gift and Carmen’s self-made grit. When his grandfather wasn’t taking a hammer to the pianos until they sounded just right, he was off in the hills, covered in the grime of the local steel mills. And when he wasn’t there, he was preaching church services in Italian and English, too. He was always on some clock, even when a time card said he wasn’t.
    His grandson saw the effort and respected it. In a sense he copied it, because a running clock and the nonstop sweat that accompanied it didn’t bother him. Fazio learned that it was simple for Terry to accept that baseball practice had a beginning and middle, but he totally rejected the concept of an end. Those closest to him knew that there was a lot of heat lurking beneath his easy smile and jokes. He often thought that he could will himself to be successful, probably because he never met failure in any sport.
    He liked basketball enough, but didn’t have a deep passion for it, yet he still could score 20 points in a flash as a 6-foot guard on the New Brighton team. He went out for the golf team as a freshman, made it, and became