Red Sox Confidential

IN 2001, I BECAME one of the Globe’s first buyout babies, offered a full year’s salary and all benefits to leave the paper. After two decades in journalism, it was my intention to take the time to write my screenplay, become a rock star, or just live like a retiree for a while. Two months later, though, I was convinced to join the public relations firm Rasky Baerlein by its affable chairman, Larry Rasky. I was a little hesitant to switch to the “dark side” of PR, but Rasky dangled one especially persuasive carrot: His firm was doing work for two guys who were trying to buy the Red Sox, Les Otten and Tom Werner, and if they managed to get the team, I’d be working for the firm that repped the city’s most beloved institution.

And for the most part, that’s exactly what happened. From the winter of 2001 until the end of 2007, I was a flack for the Sox. In my capacity as senior vice president at Rasky Baerlein, I consulted with the team’s owners about their public relations and strategic communications. For a New England kid, six seasons of reporting to Fenway Park each morning kept me in a constant state of exhilaration. I was the envy of colleagues and family members. I had a badge that gave me total access to Fenway Park at any time. I was present at nearly every major Sox milestone in the first six years of the new millennium — including two World Series. I was on a first-name basis with the top executives and sometimes rubbed elbows with players. Though I tried to maintain some semblance of professional behavior, most of the time I was just thinking: “How the fuck did I get here?”

Those days have been running through my mind quite a bit lately, now that there’s so much turmoil swirling around the club again. Francona’s gone. Theo’s gone, supposedly driven out by a meddling Larry Lucchino — who, if the rumors are to be believed, then turned around and threw Theo’s replacement, Ben Cherington, under the bus by rejecting his choice for a new manager. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had any knowledge of the goings-on over there on Yawkey Way, but I tend to doubt it all went down like that. I got to know these people pretty well over the years, got to see them at their best and their worst, and if there’s one thing I learned, it’s that when it comes to the Boston Red Sox,
nothing is ever as  simple as it seems.

I STARTED AT Rasky Baerlein on Tuesday, September 4, 2001, assigned to help build a crisis communications practice. For exactly one week, things were pretty slow. The Tuesday after I started, though, was 9/11, and the next thing I knew I was reviewing security contingencies for the giant LNG tanker that Mayor Menino felt was a terrorism target; writing a crisis plan for a junk-mail company whose business was threatened by the anthrax scare; and consulting with several other organizations whose crisis-planning policies were suddenly sorely lacking.

Rasky may have lured me with promises of the Red Sox, but it was turning out that my involvement with the group trying to buy the team was minimal at best. Thankfully, that changed pretty quickly. Because of my newspaper background, I was wrangled one day to help “media train” Les Otten, a guy I eventually got to know a little and like, but who needed some polishing as he prepared to make the case that he and Tom Werner were credible buyers for the Sox. Otten was essentially a ski bum who’d done well and bought a string of New England ski resorts in a novel quest to consolidate and conglomerate that fractured industry. Successive snowless seasons had all but ruined his plans, however, and shares in the company had fallen below $2.

Otten and Werner’s plan to buy the team took an abrupt turn when the bidding price went from around $300 million to $700 million, an amount beyond the financial wherewithal of both men. That’s when corporate titans John Henry, Larry Lucchino, and the New York Times Company entered the scene, eventually overshadowing the original Werner/Otten group. They wound up getting the team, of course, but Otten’s role was severely diminished. His sometimes-clumsy attempts to involve himself in team governance — arriving uninvited for management meetings, and even showing up at spring training in full Red Sox uniform to take grounders from Johnny Pesky — made him persona non grata, and his eventual severance from the team was awkward and a bit messy. That was unfortunate. The world needs dreamers, and Otten dreams big.

 Illustrations by Kagan McLeod