Free Red Sox Rule by Michael Holley Page B

he pulled into the Franconas’ driveway. And when he saw an angry man waiting by that front door, he barely waited for Terry to close the passenger door before he peeled out of that driveway and into the night. So much for the runaway plan; Terry would have to handle it alone.
    Tito waited for his son to slog up the driveway. As soon as thedoor opened, Tito picked Terry up—he had meant to drag him—and took him to the kitchen for a real talking-to. Mom and Dad mentioned taking baseball away from him, but Terry got off with the far easier sentence: a month of no social activities.
    Besides, the professional scouts and college coaches would have been disappointed if that had been the end of his baseball career. He was going to be drafted, and he was going to be pursued by some of the top college programs in the country. He heard from Florida State, North Carolina, Wichita State, and Arizona. Of all of them, boy, did he ever love North Carolina. On a visit there, he was able to see a basketball game at the famous Carmichael Auditorium. It was beautiful to be sitting near a court, trimmed in baby blue, watching players like Phil Ford and Mike O’Koren carry out Dean Smith’s instructions. The head baseball coach, Mike Roberts, was a young guy and Terry would be one of his first recruits.
    That was the plan in his heart, and although clichés celebrate romantic decisions, Terry’s unemotional baseball sensibilities knew what was best. If he wanted to stay on the sure big-league path, it probably made more sense to sign with either the University of Arizona or with the Chicago Cubs, who had taken him in the second round of the 1977 draft. Arizona’s head coach was Jerry Kindall, who had played in Cleveland with Tito. Despite that, Coach Kindall was blunt in a phone conversation with Fazio: “We don’t recruit in Pennsylvania.” What he should have added was that the Wildcats didn’t normally recruit there. They were going beyond making an exception for Terry; he had never seen the school and they had never seen him play. In both cases, with individual and institution, their reputations had preceded them.
    As summer got closer to fall, the Cubs were making Terry’s decision even easier. The magic number in his head was $40,000.If the Cubs weren’t willing to give him that to sign, he would pack up and fly to Tucson. The Cubs offered $18,000 and then upped their offer—$19,000!—before school started. Oh, well, he thought. What a wasted draft pick. He was going to Arizona.
    He was alone when he flew to Tucson as a prized 18-year-old recruit. He had made the decision to attend Arizona and reject the insulting Cubs offer, and those were both grown-up decisions. But he was a kid, in body and in thought. Wait until the people in Arizona saw that they were pinning part of their future on a 6-foot-1, 160-pound package of bones. He wasn’t ready for the college fastball, he wasn’t prepared for the college workload, and he wasn’t prepared to be away from home. Back in New Brighton he had a cute girlfriend, a stable home life, and an entire town that supported him.
    What had he done? He spent a lot of time on one of those dormitory pay phones, leaning against the wall and crying to his folks. The other top recruit, a junior college transfer named Brad Mills, was nothing like him. This guy was serious: he was 2 years older, he was stronger, he was organized, and he was already engaged to be married. Mills had looked forward to meeting the Terry Francona that everyone had raved about, and when he finally saw him, frankly, he thought the program was in trouble. In his opinion, those red Chuck Taylors were a pair of red flags.
    Neither recruit had any idea how much their baseball lives were going to change under Kindall. He was a stickler for fundamentals, and he’d hold practices for 41/2 hours sometimes. He knew everything there was to know about baseball, and his mission was to make sure his players did, too. If they