The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
For Stamford’s Lessard, third title has a nice ring to it
Paul Lessard was there at Yankee Stadium, 30 miles from where he grew up, when George W. Bush threw out the first pitch at the 2001 World Series and a nation began to heal. He was there again in 2007, in one of the duck boats when hundreds of thousands lined the streets and Jonathan Papelbon did his “Riverdance” as the Dropkick Murphys played “I’m Shipping Up to Boston.”
Lessard has the World Series rings to prove it.
The Arizona Diamondbacks’ 2001 ring has the “A” logo with four diamonds in the corners that represented the first four years of their existence. Inside is the 9/11 inscription: “Never forget.”
The 2007 ring has the Red Sox logo with the red rubies and 42 total diamonds.
“Totally different rings,” Lessard said, “but they both mean a whole lot to me.”
He wears them to Winter meetings or family get togethers. Otherwise, they remain locked up.
As the Washington Nationals’ director of athletic training, there is now an opportunity for another world championship. The Nationals’ stirring wildcard comeback against the Brewers was followed by an NLDS victory over the favored Dodgers and an NLCS sweep of the Cardinals that has led them to the World Series against the Houston Astros. What would a third world championship ring mean to Paul Lessard of Stamford?
“You can’t understand until you’ve won the first one,” Lessard said. “You’re just driven mentally to get the second one. You get a second one, you can’t wait to get the next one. It’s the inner drive. That’s why I still love going to the ballpark every day — for that next ring.”
Lessard was a big Yankees fan growing up and gave thought to a career in physical therapy.
“I used to see Gene Monahan (who worked on the Yankees’ training staff for 38 years) going out there all the time taking care players and thought maybe I should look into athletic training,” Lessard said.
Graduating from Stamford High, he decided on Northeastern University in
Boston. He got an internship with the Atlanta Falcons in 1985 and 1986. After that, Lessard worked in a clinic for a few months and “it drove me crazy because there wasn’t the adrenaline of the training room.”
The Yankees called. There was an opening with the minorleague club in Fort Lauderdale of the Florida State League.
“I had a blast,” Lessard said. “I was young and single, eating and sleeping
JEFF JACOBS
baseball. I was at the field all the time. Enjoyed every minute of it.”
After a couple of years, he gave some thought of returning to school to get his master’s degree. He was offered a job at Boston University to work with its hockey program and would be at BU for six years. In 1994, he became the head trainer at Holy Cross.
“But always I was falling back to my love for baseball,” Lessard said.
The tie that would send him from Worcester, Mass., to Phoenix’s new adventure in major league baseball? Buck Showalter, the original manager of the expansion Diamondbacks, had been Lessard’s manager at Fort Lauderdale.
“I was actually hired as the minorleague coordinator and a few months later they were doing interviews for the head job,” Lessard said. “About 10 guys came in and the committee members couldn’t come together on one guy. They suggested I interview. Right place. Right time.”
So what’s the intense Showalter like to work for?
“Buck has his opinions,” Lessard said, “and everyone kind of abided by them. But, no, Buck was great. He was like a brother to me. We had some great arguments over the years, but we always love each other at the end of the day.”
Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and Diamondbacks was one of the most memorable in history. In the end, Mariano Rivera blinked. The Dbacks won Game 7.
“What was going on in the world at that time, it was a nice escape from reality,” Lessard said. “That’s why I think that series will be remembered for a long, long time. It gave people a chance to enjoy their baseball for a couple hours and there were great games.
“I got like four hours of sleep each night over those seven games. The adrenaline was flowing. You couldn’t help it.”
A reorganization of the Red Sox’ training and medical staff after the 2005 season sent him East.
“Growing up in New England it was a chance to get back closer to friends and family,” Lessard said. “That was the reason I threw my name in the hat. The four years in Boston were just tremendous. Terry Francona, all the coaches, great guys, the players, it was a good fit.”
That fit brought the Red Sox their second title in four seasons. A 31 comeback against the Indians in the ALCS and then a World Series sweep over the Rockies led to the duck boats.
“I still show people pictures,” said Lessard, who lives in Arizona in the offseason. “It was 10 feet deep, shouldertoshoulder for five miles. It was crazy. I was lucky enough to have my daughters with me. At the beginning they were intimidated. By the end they were screaming, ‘Yea! Yea! We’re the champs!’ ”
Lessard would move on to the Reds from 2010 to 2015 where he worked for manager Dusty Baker.
“Again, Dusty was like a brother to me,” Lessard said. “We got along great.
He is a great guy.”
Lessard likes to tease he brought Baker, fired by the Reds after the 2013 season, along with him to Washington. With an interview scheduled the following day in the fall of 2015, the Nationals’ assistant general manager picked up Lessard. They went to get something to eat. Lessard asked if the manager’s position had been filled.
“He said, ‘We’re really hoping Dusty takes it,’ ” Lessard said. “So I called him right at that point. The assistant GM talked to him a little bit. Twothree days later, Dusty was having a press conference.”
Two trips to the postseason, two NLDS losses, Baker was unceremoniously replaced. There was another press conference late in 2017. This one to introduce Dave Martinez. So here are the 2019 Nationals, without Bryce Harper, doing what their predecessors hadn’t. Win in the postseason.
“This team reminds me so much of the ’01 Diamondbacks,” Lessard said. “Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg, they remind me a lot of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson. Not necessarily in stature, but just the way they go about their games and their personalities are very similar.”
There was one out in the seventh inning of Game 3 of the NLCS. The Nationals were up, 81, when Strasburg reached for his hamstring after his 109th pitch. Oh, no.
“After watching him pitch for four years, I can kind of read Stephen’s body language,” Lessard said. “He has a history of cramps. I could tell he was probably cramping up. Dave said let’s go talk to him. We walked out and he basically told us to get off the field and that he was fine, maybe with a little different wording. We turned around and went back to the dugout.”
It was a cramp. Strasburg struck out Matt Wieters and Dexter Fowler to end the seventh. He allowed no runs and struck out 12.
There is an art in dealing with players and pain versus injury, navigating the sensitive areas of gutting through something and the need to rest.
“A bunch of that is through experience, but also being honest and upfront with everybody,” Lessard said. “It’s probably why I’ve lasted as long as I have. Some guys don’t like that I’m brutally honest. But your relationship with a player grows as the season goes on and I guess I’ve developed a knack of reading people and who does what and why they do it.”
The frustration level for a trainer has to be enormous when injuries mount. The Yankees put a majorleague record 30 players on the injured list in 2019.
“It’s definitely taxing on a trainer,” Lessard said. “We started out this year, our whole infield was on the IL. My wife would talk me off the cliff now and then. We had a bunch of key guys go out early and when they came back and played to their level, that’s when our season kind of turned around.”
And a third ring was possible.