As the Red Sox are about to reboot for a second time this fall by hiring a new manager I figured I would reboot this blog and drop the Charlie Pierce 'This Blog' stuff since it's so clear he hated working at the Globe where he did the blog I was paying homage to in the first place.
If you've been paying attention at all to the Boston sports scene you know there is currently a search on for the new manager of the hometown team. The candidates are as follows: Tim Wallach, Tony Pena, DeMarlo Hale, the negotiating rights to John Farrell and Brad Ausmus. Maybe it's because Ausmus' New England roots have come up from time to time, or just that I always heard on the Fat Boy Slim into to 'The Rockafeller Skank ' instead of "WBCN who's this? Hey this is brad (this is brad this is)" as "WBCN who's this? This is Brad Ausmus Brad Ausmus." For whatever reason I have latched on to Brad Ausmus as the guy for the Red Sox future. Thus I set out on a wondering journey across the internet to see if these reports of people touting him as a manager for his whole career are true.
The first place I looked was the Sports Illustrated vault. This cornucopia of sports history will eat your whole afternoon if you're a sports nut, so enter with caution. From there I hopped on a couple other sites through the glory of Google and found a complicated baseball man.
From a September 1993 SI story:
"Ausmus, who became the talk of the sports-writing profession earlier this season
when he used the word malevolence in an interview, said that when it came to
communication, he and Seminara were on the same wavelength. "Like our signs for
pitches," he said. "It's fingers times pi squared plus half the distance of the baseline."
The Dartmouth College educated ball player showed his cerebral side early. More on his sense of humor to come.
The Red Sox start to become strangely intertwined with Brad Ausmus starting with this SI story from May of 1997. The story starts out all about Nomar and Mo Vaughn calling him 'Spider Man' for his ability to get to balls in the hole. Who knew his defensive deficiencies would lead to the ultimate baseball nirvana for Red Sox fans? Anyhow, Ausmus's defensive prowess is profiled by touting his ability to throw out basestealers. The story notes he had thrown out Kenny Lofton three times already in early '97. Very interesting, according to Baseball Reference Kenny Loften led the AL in stolen bases in each of the five years prior to 1997. He moved to Altanta in '97 and promptly led the league in being caught stealing. Kenny never led any league in stolen bases again. The Brad Ausmus effect? Hmm.
So far we can see Ausmus is a tremendous defender with an Ivy League brain who might be the gong that rang the decline of Kenny Lofton's career. What else came along?
Randy Smith, former GM for the Tigers and Astros, tells Sports Illustrated in 1999 of his unrequited love of Brad Ausmus:
"Brad's one of the best defensive catchers in baseball," [Smith] says. "He's
great at handling a pitching staff and has a knack for putting down the
right finger."
Huh. I thought all the players who needed the finger were packaged to The Dodgers in late August. Oh wait, there's still a jackass or two left.
Another Red Sox related SI story, Pedro on the cover in all his year 2000 bad-ass glory. Short and sweet, Ausmus is a heck of a defensive catcher.
This is where it gets a bit tricky. Brad Ausmus has had his very own Bobby Valentine moments, with Roger Clemens. Roger flippin' Clemens. Does it get any more cringe worthy from a Sox fan perspective? To whit:
"One game Roger Clemens had to call Brad out [to the mound] three times
because he kept messing up the signs," says Lidge. "I think at least two times
Brad didn't know how many outs there were."
Not to go all ESPN faux paux on you, but first chink in the armor Ted.***
Boring but informative, Brad placed in some pretty select company as the smartest men in baseball are voted on by MLB players in 2007.
Oddly enough, this is the oldest article I could come across linking Ausmus with managing. A 2007 Houston Chronicle piece about Ausmus being an unofficial assistant to manager Phil Garner with his Varitek-esque preparation and attention to detail. Manny definitely would've mocked Ausmus going over all his charts in the dugout.
Lastly we see a video from Brad Ausmus' last day in Houston in 2008. The strange thing about this short clip is Cecil Cooper's comments at the end. Check it out, Cooper was honestly worried about Brad Ausmus not liking him. A sign of Ausmus being too dry and sarcastic? Or maybe this was just Cooper's issue. He didn't do so well there after all.
So Ausmus isn't an iron clad choice. He was a great catcher by all accounts, considered very smart and well prepared. He's closer to David Halberstam than Terry Francona, who's to say how his clubhouse would be run? One might think he'd never not know whether the opposing starting pitcher were left or right handed a few hours before the game, but what's up with that Brad Lidge Roger Clemens story? And is it a good or bad thing that you couldn't swing a cat without hitting an Ivy Leaguer on the Red Sox team bus if Ausmus were the choice? I'd still be willing to give it a try, but John Farrell looks just a little bit better after going through this exercise.
Until next time,
The SAHD
***Upon 2nd thought perhaps Ausmus was just messing with Clemens, which would be freakin' awesome, and too far above both Clemens' and Lidge's heads. If that's the case I am all in on Ausmus, although reports are pointing to a Farrell arrangement with Toronto.
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