ROSS’ AXING STUNG LESTER
Ex-Cubs lefty says he has no interest in joining a team in an official capacity
Jon Lester, who retired two years ago after a brilliant career, winning three World Series rings and being selected for five All-Star Games, plans to come to spring training to visit his former teams.
But for now he has no interest in joining a team in an official capacity.
“I’ve bounced around a couple of ideas, spitballing,” Lester told USA Today Sports, “but I don’t want to coach and get back in all of that. I don’t want a formal role.”
Lester still feels closer to the Cubs than the Red Sox with friends still working in the organization, but he concedes his passion toward the Cubs has slightly waned with the firing of manager David Ross, his former teammate and close friend.
“Talking to some people, I understood,” Lester said. “I saw Rossy over New Year’s and kind of understood their decision. But you don’t want buddies to lose their job. It sucks. It kind of stung.”
He’s still emotionally invested in the Red Sox, where he won two World Series, with former teammate Craig Breslow as their new general manager and his former boss, Theo Epstein, joining the ownership group.
The only job Lester is interested in now is coaching his sons’ baseball teams in Brookhaven, Georgia.
Lester will be on the Hall of Fame ballot in three years, and with a 200-117 record, 3.66 ERA and 2,488 strikeouts, he’ll certainly receive serious consideration for election.
“You hear all of the hoopla of it,” Lester said, ‘‘but if it happens, it just puts the cherry on top of the privilege I had playing. But it’s not why I played. I played to win. I can sit at home now and see the World Series trophies we won together.”
He and good friend Adam Wainwright, who retired a year ago, each ended up with exactly 200 victories on the last start of their careers.
“It sucks getting old and all of this nonsense you deal with, but I always kept in touch with him,” Lester said. “When he got to 200, I said, ‘You better not make another start.’ That’s such a cool number. I can’t imagine that too many more guys will get to that number.”
Lester is content coaching his oldest son, and if there’s ever a day he could be perhaps an adviser or involved in a special assistant role, he might consider it.
“Really, I just miss the competitiveness of it,” Lester said. “I don’t miss the grind, the day-to-day and preparing, but I do miss the dinners, the flights and just the [trash]-talking and all of that stuff.”