DALLAS — Terry Francona remembered the specific moment that sparked his return to the dugout.
“My girls went to Europe for 10 days, and I watched the grandkids,” he said Monday. “That was the one day I thought maybe I’ll go back to baseball.”
A three-time manager of the year who turns 66 in April, Francona was hired to run the Cincinnati Reds on Oct. 4.
“I haven’t had a surgery in like 11 months,” he said, laughing. “It’s like I’m on borrowed time.”
Francona led Cleveland for 11 seasons before retiring at the end of the 2023 season, when he needed a shoulder replacement and double hernia surgery.
“It just physically was really hard and I felt like I was starting to shortchange people and I didn’t feel good about that, either,” said Francona, who missed extended time in 2020 and 2021 because of health complications.
“I didn’t get out of baseball because I hated it. I just didn’t think I was doing a very good job and it wasn’t as much fun as it can be because it was just hard,” he said.
Francona takes over a Reds team that has reached the postseason just once since 2013, in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
“I love watching baseball,” he said. “If I’m healthy, I feel like I can get in there and get dirty and, OK, how are we going to get better as a ballclub and be a part of that instead of just watching or relying on some coaches to do it.”
Francona has a 1,950-1,672 record in 23 seasons managing Philadelphia (1997-2000), Boston (2004-11) and Cleveland (2013-23). He won World Series titles with the Red Sox in 2004 and 2007 and took the Guardians to Game 7 of the 2016 World Series.
“He has the ability to welcome people, teach people. You’re going to learn a lot just by watching him and listening to him,” said Kansas City manager Matt Quatraro, who was on Francona’s staff in Cleveland from 2014 to ’17.
Quatraro learned “how to keep things light in the clubhouse, how to respect what the players go through every day, and how to include everybody, not be a micromanager. Let your people work,” he said.
Francona replaced David Bell, who was fired with a week remaining in his sixth season. He inherits a talented young core that includes Elly De La Cruz, Hunter Greene and Tyler Stephenson.
“There are always the same challenges. We want to see how good we can get,” Francona said. “And when we lose, it’ll kill me. When we win, I’ll be fine. I’ve never found a way to gain perspective. I think it’s too late for that.”
Francona didn’t try to think like a manager when he watched games on television last season. He remembered watching games with executives Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff at times in Cleveland when health forced him from the dugout.
“They would ask me, ‘Skip, hey, what do we do here?'” Francona said. “I would try to explain to them that, man, when you’re in the dugout, you get into this tunnel and you know everything. You have all the information. When you are sitting up there, you don’t. You don’t know who is not available. You don’t know whose arm’s sore.”
While he is excited to be back with a team, Francona won’t be throwing batting practice.
“I don’t want to have a heart attack,” he said. “I actually thought about that at one point this year. I think it was in — oh, it was Halloween and I was throwing a football with my grandson. And the next day I could barely move my arm, so I think BP is out.”