As former GM, Duquette knows the drill
Picked-up pieces while covering Syracuse’s dugout TVs with shatterproof glass in case things don’t go well for Chris Sale in his Sunday rehab start . . .
Dan Duquette is one of the few folks in the world who knows exactly what it feels like to be Chaim Bloom. Like Bloom, the Duke took over as baseball boss of the Red Sox when he was 36 and incurred the wrath of Boston fans and local media when things didn’t go well.
“There was one point in time when I had to park my car in center field so that I could get safely in and out of the ballpark,” Duquette said from his new home in Wilmington, N.C. “It’s a very passionate and emotional fan base. You need to make sure you’re all-in to understand how they feel.”
Now 65, Duquette took over the Red Sox in 1994 and his first team finished fourth, 17 games out of first place.
“You can take the temperature of the fan base anytime you want in Boston,” he said. “Just take a walk around the ballpark and they’ll let you know. That’s the way it works in Boston.
“The position of the team in the standings determines how the fans in Boston feel about the chief executive. When you have a good team, everyone loves you. When you don’t have a good team, people aren’t loving you so much.”
Duquette got the Red Sox into the playoffs in 1995 and again in ’98 and ’99. He was cut loose when John Henry & Co. bought the team in 2002, but is remembered fondly as the man who assembled half of the 2004 world champs, including Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez, Johnny Damon, Tim Wakefield, Derek Lowe, and Jason Varitek.
Duquette made the greatest deadline trade in Sox history when he got Lowe and Varitek from Seattle for Heathcliff Slocumb in 1997 — a sharp contrast to Bloom not doing anything major this past week.
The Duke won’t criticize Bloom.
“I had enough trouble when I was trying
to run my own ball club,” he said. “The Red Sox have a decent ball club, but right now they are not the class of the American League East. They’re not. They’re a very competitive team, but in that market and the New York market, fans expect excellence.
“There’s no time for a rebuild in Boston or New York and there’s no patience from the fan base, either. Those aren’t towns where you can throw up a shingle and say, ‘We’re rebuilding.’ That doesn’t compute in Boston. Because the value of the [ticket] prices they’re charging, the fans expect a premium product.”
It should be noted that Duquette — still active as an MLB consultant — built a major portion of the Baltimore team that currently sits atop the AL East and looks positioned to compete for many years. Duquette was boss of the Orioles from 2011-18, and his fingerprints are on Cedric Mullins, Ryan Mountcastle, Austin Hays, Anthony Santander, Grayson Rodriguez, Félix Bautista, Michael Baumann, and Dean Kremer. (Duquette also drafted Mike Yastrzemski, who has worked out great for the Giants.)
“The foundation we left the Orioles was pretty solid,” the Duke said with a chuckle. “We left some groceries in the cupboard.”
Hmmm. As Bob Lobel would say, “Why can’t we get GMs like that?”
■ Quiz: Since 1960, five MLB teams have had four former MVPs on their roster at the same time. The last two were the 2021 Dodgers (Mookie Betts, Cody Bellinger, Clayton Kershaw, Albert Pujols) and the ’22 Dodgers (Betts, Bellinger, Kershaw, Freddie Freeman). Name the four MVP players on each of the other three teams: The 1978 Reds, ’82 Angels, and ’96 Red Sox.
■ Think it was dark here in Boston in the hours after the trading deadline? Try Gotham City. The headline over New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro’s Wednesday piece was, “Goodnight, Baseball — Sun sets on 2023 season in NYC.”
■ The pitch clock has shaved a full half-hour (2:40, down from 3:11 in 2021) off big league ballgames and has us back to 1984, when games were played in an average time of 2:39 (in 1952, it was a glorious 2:25). Baseball attendance is up 9 percent — more evidence that the clock is the game’s most important innovation since Larry Lucchino and Janet Marie Smith changed the way ballparks are built when they gave us Camden Yards in 1992.
Smith, who rebuilt Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium, is also the architect of Worcester’s Polar Park and visited the site just last week. Smith should be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
■ A video of Don Orsillo interviewing Jerry Remy on NESN after the Nomar Garciaparra (deadline) trade in 2004 surfaced this past week, and it dramatically demonstrated how far Sox broadcasts have fallen. In the clip, we hear Remy say, “What the Red Sox are trying to do by dealing one of their prize chips is improve their defense, which has been terrible through the first five [months] this season. If the Red Sox do end up in postseason play with that defense that they had, they were not probably going to go very far.”
That was NESN in 2004: straight talk to smart fans. A stark contrast to 2023’s excuse-making, Baghdad Bob happy talk.
■ It was somehow perfect that NESN cut to one of its betting shows immediately after its Tuesday evening trade deadline special.
■ At the very least, Bloom should have traded Bobby Dalbec just to set him free.
■ Jack Jones’s next court date is Aug. 18. He has the Patriots’ full support. Because they need him.
■ Former USWNT star Carli Lloyd, now an analyst for Fox, ripped into the ever-annoying US women’s soccer team for their antics after an uninspiring 0-0 performance vs. Portugal lifted the US into the Round of 16.
“I have never witnessed something like that,” said the two-time World Cup champion. “There’s a difference between being respectful of the fans and saying hello to your family. But to be dancing, smiling? I mean, the player of the match was that post [a Portugal shot that could have beaten the US hit the post]. You are lucky not to be going home right now.”
■ Three days after his son Bronny survived cardiac arrest at a USC workout, LeBron James worked out with AJ Dybantsa, the 16-yearold from Brockton who starred at St. Sebastian’s as a high school freshman last winter.
A 6-foot-8-inch forward, Dybantsa has transferred to Prolific Prep in Napa Valley for the upcoming school year. Dybantsa’s father, Ace, is a Boston University police officer.
■ According to the Worcester Telegram’s intrepid Bill Ballou, 92year-old Walpole Joe Morgan, skipper of the Red Sox from 198891, is the fourth-oldest living exmanager, topped only by Billy Gardner (96), Billy Hunter (95), and Bob Lillis (93).
■ I was fine with ESPN’s threeman broadcast table of Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy, and Mark Jackson for 15 NBA Finals. Van Gundy and Jackson have been dismissed and are probably going to be replaced by Doris Burke and Doc Rivers.
■ Wednesday marked the 44th anniversary of Thurman Munson crashing his private plane and dying at the Akron-Canton, Ohio, airport. On that same day, the White Sox hired unknown Tony La Russa as interim manager and Edward Bennett Williams bought the Orioles for $12 million. This marked Lucchino’s entry to Major League Baseball. Lucchino was Williams’s trusted aide-de-camp at the Williams & Connolly law firm in Washington.
■ St. John’s hasn’t won an NCAA men’s basketball tournament game since 2000, but new coach Rick Pitino has a full new roster (including Harvard grad transfer forward Chris Ledlum), and the Johnnies have been working out all summer. They could be a preseason top-25 pick.
■ Season 2 of HBO’s wildly entertaining “Winning Time” premieres Sunday night. The new season is extremely Boston-centric.
■ The Cape Cod Baseball League, which had 373 alumni playing in the majors last summer, is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The league has honored more than 180 individuals in its Hall of Fame. There’s a $1 million fundraising drive afoot to permanently house the Cape League Hall of Fame Museum in Yarmouth. Information about contributing to a “Bring Back The Hall” fund can be obtained by contacting league historian Mike Richard at mikerichard0725@gmail.com.
■ Former NHL star Kevin Stevens, who has battled addiction, now is helping others via the Power Forward program (powerforward25.com). Stevens will host NHLers and celebs in his golf tourney at Indian Pond CC in Kingston Monday. Guests include Ted Donato, Joe Mullen, Derek Sanderson, Andy Brickley, Brian Leetch, Tony Amonte, Mike Mottau, Barry Pederson, Chris Nilan, and Bob Beers.
■ Congratulations to Roxbury native and former Boston English/ Holy Cross basketball star Ernie Floyd, who created Pride Productions in Central Massachusetts and is the founder and executive producer of Unity Radio, 97.9 FM Worcester. Drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in the fifth round in 1984, Floyd has devoted his life to being a champion for young adults across the city of Worcester.
■ We lost the great Pete Frates to ALS in 2019, but his legacy lives on. The Frates family is hosting the ninth Ice Bucket Challenge Wednesday on the steps of the State House at 11 a.m.
■ Quiz answer: ’78 Reds: Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, George Foster; ’82 Angels: Reggie Jackson, Rod Carew, Don Baylor, Fred Lynn; ’96 Red Sox: Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco, Kevin Mitchell, Mo Vaughn.