MLB exec led retro ballpark revolution, Bosox rebirth
• Larry Lucchino, the hard-driving force behind baseball’s retro ballpark revolution and the transformation of the Boston Red Sox from cursed losers to World Series champions, has died. He was 78.
Lucchino, who was a three-time cancer survivor, died early Tuesday morning of congenital heart failure. His death was confirmed by his family and the Triple-a Worcester Red Sox, where he had most recently been the primary owner and chairman — the last project in a career that was also linked to three major league baseball franchises and one in the NFL.
“Larry leaves behind a giant baseball legacy full of historic accomplishments with three different organizations,” said Theo Epstein, who worked for Lucchino in Baltimore, San Diego and Boston — the latter when he became the youngest general manager to that point in baseball history.
A Pittsburgh native who played on the 1965 NCAA Final Four Princeton basketball team, Lucchino went on to Yale Law School and worked on the House Judiciary Committee investigating the Watergate scandal. He landed a job with Washington lawyer Edward Bennett Williams and soon found himself working on Williams’ sports teams, the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington NFL franchise now known as the Commanders.
Lucchino rose to president of the Orioles, and led the effort to replace Memorial Stadium with a downtown, old-style ballpark that ended the fad of cookie-cutter stadiums. Camden Yards became a trendsetter, and Lucchino himself would follow up with a new ballpark for the Padres, whom he served as president and CEO.
Lucchino’s next stop was Boston, helping to assemble the new ownership group led by John Henry and Tom Werner that bought the franchise in 2002. Their move to update Fenway Park preserved one of baseball’s jewels.
“We just wanted to build a nice little ballpark,” he told The Associated Press in 2021.
After hiring as Red Sox GM the 28-year-old Epstein, who’d started with the Orioles as an intern and followed Lucchino to the Padres, the Red Sox ended an 86-year championship drought — vanquishing the archrival New York Yankees.
Lucchino was said to be unique in his possession of five World Series rings — having collected one with the Orioles in 1983 and another in 2018 as the Red Sox president and CEO emeritus — a Super Bowl ring from Washington in ’83 and a Final Four watch.