Raise a glass to John Henry

[EllisTheRimMan]

And the entire Red Sox Organization. Hell, raise a beer to the beer guy in Field Box Sections 50-60. I just sent this text to friends and family of all different levels of Red Sox fandom. I share it with you.

——————

No games for us until Tuesday! To quote John Henry (Red Sox Owner 2003-present): in 2004 after the dramatic reverse sweep of the Yankees: “There is going to be a World Series at Fenway Park”. His voice quivering and tears welling up in his eyes. This is the 4th World Series at Fenway Park since he bought the team. Good ownership, no good leadership is the essential ingredient of sports championships. There was no curse for 86 years without a Title for the Red Sox, except for the curse of bad leadership.

Thank you John Henry.

 

[Savin Hillbilly]

Hear, hear. JH has been the very model of a modern major sports franchise owner. He has presided over a golden age of success and forward-looking management such as few fanbases ever get to experience. We are spoiled, and it's all (well, mostly) his fault. Thank you John!

 

[dcmissle]

He is a good man. And a modest man. I will never forget the WEEI interview in which he confessed doubt whether he was up to the task of owning this team. In that instance, he could not have been more wrong.

Thank you John Henry.

 

[jaytftwofive]

Agree he has become one of the best in sports. We have been lucky that in Boston we have two of the greatest owners in sports in Walter Brown of the Celtics and Robert Kraft of the Pats. John Henry is certainly headed toward that group.

 

[Pandemonium67]

He keeps a low profile, does not let his ego dictate his actions, and doesn't seem like a piece of shit. This puts him in the elite among owners.

 

[twibnotes]

Amen - strongly agree with the sentiments in this thread.

Boston has three excellent sports owners, and it’s a huge reason we’ve experienced such incredible success over the last 17 years

 

[Hank Scorpio]

...and if you really want to appreciate John Henry - let me remind you of his competition to buy the team back in 2002...

Frank McCourt.

 

[Noseminer]

He keeps a low profile, does not let his ego dictate his actions, and doesn't seem like a piece of shit. This puts him in the elite among owners.

Exactly. And if I may add to this excellent point, he also trusts his people and their opinions. (If you included that as part of letting his ego dictate his actions, I apologize.) I just wanted to make sure that this point was made. Meddling is counter-productive almost always. He is the anti-George Steinbrenner.

 

[wade boggs chicken dinner]

He gets it. And if I do say, though I apparently still do not have a billion dollars after last night, from looking out over the sports landscape, "getting it" seems to be more difficult than I could imagine. So mad props to him.

 

[Pesky Pole]

As a Red Sox fan and a Liverpool fan, I can’t say enough how much I appreciate John Henry. He’s taken two great franchises in two completely different worlds of sport and restored them to greatness.

The transformation has been on all levels and he’s set both franchises up for enduring success with infrastructure investments that go beyond the team on the field. I know most understand what he’s done at Fenway but he’s done similar at Anfield, working in similar constraints to expand another iconic stadium. The latest investment to replace their training center at Melwood will set up LFC for future success. He’s spent smartly at both teams and not let either teams budget interfere with each other - even the giant capital investment at LFC.

He’s meddled at neither but kept his ear close to the fans heart and stepped in to address concerns (such as the ticket prices in Liverpool). We’re truly fortunate as Boston fans (and honorary Scouse fans) for John Henry and this whole ownership team.

 

[HowBoutDemSox]

I think part of it, and this goes for Bob Kraft too, is that Henry was a big fan of the sport before becoming rich. He grew up of a Cardinals fan and idolized Stan Musial, listening to the games on a radio. I'd imagine that some of that boyhood awe and the perspective of a fan who just wanted to be in the stands contributes to the humility needed not to meddle, to think that just because you made a bllion dollars in another industry that means you can tell your GM what to do.

There was a time when Henry’s only goals, he once said, were to land a job in St. Louis and make enough money to buy season tickets to see the Cardinals. In the corner of his office in Fenway Park is an old radio, not unlike the kind Henry grew up listening to Cardinals games on, during a childhood divided between Ford City, Ark., and Quincy, Ill.

"I used to have an old Zenith -- a shortwave, about that size," Henry told me in 2004, before the Sox swept his boyhood idols in the World Series.

"Growing up on a farm in Arkansas, my nearest neighbor was about a mile away. I really didn't have much in the way of playmates. I was a complete introvert. I had a great front yard. People would come to my front yard, friends would come over and play baseball, but I was too shy to ask if I could play.

“The Cardinals were really my world. I had a rich inner life."

His hero, of course, was Stan Musial.

"Stan the Man," Henry said. "He was our Ted Williams.’’

http://www.espn.com/blog/boston/red-sox/post/_/id/24449/henry-on-musial-baseball-lost-its-finest-man

 

[mBiferi]

Agree wholeheartedly with everything in this thread.

Besides, his tweets are gold:

 

[Dr. Winston O'Boogie]

I'm thankful that John Henry saw what some on this site were not willing to and fired Farrell. The fire Farrell jokes lasted a couple of weeks this season but it became painfully obvious that Farrell was holding this team back.

 

[Humphrey]

...and if you really want to appreciate John Henry - let me remind you of his competition to buy the team back in 2002...

Frank McCourt.

I remember a phone interview with McCourt where the interviewer insisted he bought the Dodgers so he and Henry could trade franchises.
Thank goodness the interviewer was completely bonkers. It was Ted Sarandis by the way.

 

[mauf]

...and if you really want to appreciate John Henry - let me remind you of his competition to buy the team back in 2002...

Frank McCourt.

James Dolan was in the mix too, and might have been even worse.

Edit: Thanks Mugsy. (James Dolan is the shithead Knicks owner).

 

[Mugsy's Jock]

Charles Dolan was in the mix too, and might have been even worse.

fwiw, Chuck Dolan >>>>> Jim Dolan. There's a huge difference.

Back to the topic at hand, one of the clearest places to see an owner's fingerprints is in his selection of, and decisions to move on from, his General Managers. Henry's record there is great -- Theo is obviously a transformational and Hall of Fame talent who was a non-obvious hire, Cherrington was a good hire and certainly deserves ample credit for 2013 before making a couple of bad mistakes that led to the timely decision to move on, and DD has been doing fantastic work since he's been on board. Who to hire and when to change GMs are owners' decisions.

 

[jacklamabe65]

From the original "Win it For" thread, October 27, 2004: “There was a point during this season that was very, very tough. But I came here, Shaun, and read your Bandwagon thread, and was uplifted by the depth and breadth of your faith. It was at the time the best thing we were reading anywhere. These guys – I’m so proud of them – they refused to lose for the faithful this week. I’m proud of everyone who refused to get off the bandwagon." - John Henry

All I know is that Tom and Jean Yawkey owned the team for nearly six decades, and the Red Sox won 0 World Series. John Henry has owned the team for 16 years, and the franchise has won 3, and is working on securing its 4th World Series championship. 'Nuff said.

 

[Humphrey]

And believe it or not, Nick dug up Frank McCourt in his column this week!

 

[Wake49]

I remember a phone interview with McCourt where the interviewer insisted he bought the Dodgers so he and Henry could trade franchises.
Thank goodness the interviewer was completely bonkers. It was Ted Sarandis by the way.

Whatever happened to Sarandis? Used to like listening to his Ted Nation show back when I was still living there.

 

[Humphrey]

All I know is he lives in Florida now. No idea what he does. Don't know the details behind his departure from the 6PM show; as loony as he was sometimes thought it was a better show than anything since.

Then he lost the BC hoop gig; Meter was under contract to the station at the time; he wasn't. Seemed as simple as that.

 

[soxin6]

It is clear that John Henry loves baseball and wanted to own a franchise because of that love and a desire to win. He could have viewed the Red Sox as a cash cow and sold tons of tickets without ever having a chance to win the World Series. He took a team that always found a way to lose and brought in great people to build an amazing organization.

 

[DisgruntledSoxFan77]

I remember a phone interview with McCourt where the interviewer insisted he bought the Dodgers so he and Henry could trade franchises.
Thank goodness the interviewer was completely bonkers. It was Ted Sarandis by the way.

I remember this clearly. I remember that same interview: he brought it up to McCourt, McCourt told him it wasn't anything he'd ever considered, and Ted then asked "now that I suggested it, would you?" I believe this was during the 04-05 offseason. What a worm.

Thank God for John Henry!

 

[MtPleasant Paul]

Dan Shaughnessy suggested at the time that it was all a setup job by major league baseball. Henry was an insider who had owned the Florida Marlins for three years. Major League Baseball regarded the Red Sox as a crown jewel and wanted the franchise in good hands. Henry's ownership of the Marlins - which is often ignored - was a time of hope for Marlins' fans. He laid the groundwork for the Marlins' World Series win a year after he left. He was frustrated, however, by the struggle for a new Marlins stadium and was ready to move on. Commissioner Bud Selig told someone at the time that MLB would have a pleasant surprise for the city of Boston.

To buy the Red Sox Henry sold the Marlins to Jeffrey Loria. Our good fortune was, of course, a disaster for Miami..For a Red Sox fan who had lived through the 50's and early 60's when the Sox were run in what appeared to be an alcoholic haze by Yawkey, Joe Cronin and Mike Higgins and later through the parsimonious Haywood Sullivan-Buddy Leroux era, the advent of a progressive, well-financed owner seemed a stroke of unimaginable luck.

And so it has been. And it is part of Bud Selig's legacy to the game.
. .

 

[epraz]

John Henry is very wise, for example, he had Lucchino be the face of everything the Sox did that people might have a problem with.

 

[MtPleasant Paul]

There's some truth in this. The way he outmaneuvered home town hero Nomar in 2004 shows his mastery of public relations skills. Also, John Henry was the first among equals in a triumvirate and shared power with Werner and Lucchino. We don't really know but it seemed that Lucchino was more involved in player personnel issues, notably in conflicts with Theo in the gorilla suit incident around 2006 ( and the Ramirez for Beckett/Lowell trade) and in foisting Bobby Valentine on Ben Cherington in 2012. And perhaps Werner was the one obsessed with NESN ratings which drove the unfortunate Crawford, Gonzalez, Sandoval, and Rusney Castillo signings.

Hey, nobody's perfect. He also removed the final taints of racism from the franchise.

 

[Humphrey]

Dan Shaughnessy suggested at the time that it was all a setup job by major league baseball. Henry was an insider who had owned the Florida Marlins for three years. Major League Baseball regarded the Red Sox as a crown jewel and wanted the franchise in good hands. Henry's ownership of the Marlins - which is often ignored - was a time of hope for Marlins' fans. He laid the groundwork for the Marlins' World Series win a year after he left. He was frustrated, however, by the struggle for a new Marlins stadium and was ready to move on. Commissioner Bud Selig told someone at the time that MLB would have a pleasant surprise for the city of Boston.

To buy the Red Sox Henry sold the Marlins to Jeffrey Loria. Our good fortune was, of course, a disaster for Miami..For a Red Sox fan who had lived through the 50's and early 60's when the Sox were run in what appeared to be an alcoholic haze by Yawkey, Joe Cronin and Mike Higgins and later through the parsimonious Haywood Sullivan-Buddy Leroux era, the advent of a progressive, well-financed owner seemed a stroke of unimaginable luck.

And so it has been. And it is part of Bud Selig's legacy to the game.
. .

Amazing that after all Loria did to make sure that baseball left Montreal he was given another franchise that had in many ways the same issues.

 

[mauidano]

14 years ago tonight he cemented his place in history as The Man who created this legacy I rest my case.

 

[barbed wire Bob]

When it comes time to immortalize him with a statue a Fenway. I’m really hoping it looks something like this.

 

[Byrdbrain]

I'm thankful that John Henry saw what some on this site were not willing to and fired Farrell. The fire Farrell jokes lasted a couple of weeks this season but it became painfully obvious that Farrell was holding this team back.

I don't think anyone wanted to keep Farrell, he needed to go.
Some people were way over the top with the Farrell hate and blamed literally everything on him, those people were mocked.

 

[Papelbon's Poutine]

I don't think anyone wanted to keep Farrell, he needed to go.
Some people were way over the top with the Farrell hate and blamed literally everything on him, those people were mocked.

I’m on mobile so I can’t go pull quotes, but there was certainly a contingent that wanted to keep him or defended him just as vehemently as some blamed him for anything/everything.

 

[Bob Montgomerys Helmet Hat]

John Henry did not fire Farrell, and cluttering up this thread by re-litigating the Farrell bullshit is both stupid and disrespectful to Henry.

 

[EllisTheRimMan]

John Henry did not fire Farrell, and cluttering up this thread by re-litigating the Farrell bullshit is both stupid and disrespectful to Henry.

Here, Here.