Bostoned-out Tito reborn with Tribe

CHICAGO — You can beat up John Henry and Tom Werner and even departed president Larry Lucchino over everything from the commemorative bricks to that crazy NESN dating show whose name I’ve happily forgotten.

You can blame the big bosses for Bobby Valentine, for Carl Crawford, for the three-day Big Adios for David Ortiz that seemed to place the entire season on the back burner.

Oh, and this one is very personal: You can, and you should, blame Henry, Werner and Lucchino for the so-called “Monster Seats,” which I’d be OK with if they’d just call them what they are: overpriced, obstructed-view bleacher seats.

But it’s time to close the books on the owners’ decision, back in the fall of 2011, to ease Terry Francona out the door. Oh, there were lots of whispers about Francona after he left, and a lot of those whispers were unfair. And in the interest of disclosure, I was among the pundits who howled with indignation over the sacking of Francona, who happens to be the greatest manager in Red Sox history.

Yet we now know that leaving Boston is the best thing that’s ever happened to Terry Francona. Hate to keep bringing this up, but just as Francona once said that Nomar Garciaparra was “Bostoned out,” the reality is that Francona, too, was Bostoned out.

We remember how a loss could somehow age Francona 10 years, especially during that last season. Little things set him off, such as a reporter’s cell phone going off during a press conference.

And now? He’s back in the World Series, and his assignment is pretty much the same as it was in 2004: Take a team that hasn’t won in a long, long, long time and guide it to a championship. Back then it was the Red Sox, who hadn’t experienced that ultimate October celebration since 1918. Now it’s the Cleveland Indians, who haven’t had one since 1948. Yet, somehow, Francona looks 12 years younger than he looked 12 years ago. His Indians are banged up, forcing him to make all kinds of exotic pitching moves, yet he doesn’t look weighted down by the pressures of the job. Maybe his World Series rings with the Red Sox have given him a measure of security he didn’t have before. Maybe it’s simply that he’s older, wiser, doesn’t sweat the small stuff.

He certainly seems to be having more fun. Take, for instance, his appearance at a press conference yesterday at ancient Wrigley Field in advance of Game 3 of the World Series tonight against everyone’s heartthrobs, the Chicago Cubs. While being escorted to a makeshift media room under the stands by Indians public relations director Bart Swain, who kept saying, “Watch your head, watch your head,” Francona cracked jokes as he bobbed this way and that to avoid the many pipes and beams in his path.

And when he finally made it into the room?

You’d have thought he was preparing for a spring training game against the Cubs in the Southwest, not a World Series game against the Cubs on the North Side.

When asked about the many renovations that have taken place at Wrigley Field in the years since he played for the Cubs in 1986, Tito said, “When I was here, they didn’t have the new clubhouse, so it was fun being at the ballpark until it was time to shower or go to the bathroom or something.”

On the charter flight from Cleveland to Chicago following the Indians’ 5-1 loss to the Cubs in Game 2: “We had a bigger plane. I wanted the guy just to fly around for a while. I thought it was pretty cool.”

And when he stepped away from the microphone in order that Cleveland’s Game 3 starter, Josh Tomlin, could speak to the media, Francona said, “Get out your English-to-Texas dictionary.”

Francona’s 2004 and 2007 Red Sox teams swept their World Series foes, and his 2016 Indians won Game 1. That means the Indians’ Game 2 loss was Francona’s first as a World Series manager. And, yes, of course he knows this, “because I’m the manager, my name gets put there. But it’s so much more than that. It’s (bench coach) Brad Mills doing his job. It’s (first base coach) Sandy (Alomar Jr.) doing his job. It’s everybody collectively doing their job, and that’s what I enjoy the most.”

No. What he enjoys most is managing, period. Even if he didn’t look it, act it, sound it, for much of that last season with the Red Sox.

But this is a new and improved Terry Francona, unburdened by history. And no longer Bostoned out.