''Not much,'' he said. ''It's a bottom-line job. It's about winning.''
Only two American League teams - the Orioles and Angels - posted worse records than the Sox (17-26) after Aug. 16, when general manager Dan Duquette gambled that replacing Jimy Williams with a managerial novice would propel a hobbled club toward glory. The Sox were 21/2 games behind Oakland in the wild-card race at the time.
Remember Morgan Magic? Welcome to Kerrigan's Calamity.
Before it was over, the skipper was battling forces from within. Some players rebuffed their new boss's rally cries, others questioned his ability, a few quit on him, and a couple - Carl Everett and Pedro Martinez - openly challenged his authority. Manny Ramirez, who averaged more than $80,000 a game this year under his $13 million salary, missed the last nine with a sore hand and was nowhere to be seen when his teammates paid a final tribute Saturday night in Baltimore to Cal Ripken.
''It's not his fault,'' one veteran said of Kerrigan. ''How prepared was he for the job? It would be like someone hiring me to design a computer keyboard.''
As badly as the Kerrigan gambit blew up in Duquette's face, the GM defended the move. ''We made a managerial change when we felt the season was slipping away after we lost six out of seven,'' he said. ''We could have waited until the end of the season but we thought we would do everything we could to try and spark the team.''
It worked in 1988, when then-GM Lou Gorman replaced John McNamara with Joe Morgan, whose team won 19 of 20 and went on to win the AL East.
''Unfortunately, it didn't work out [with Kerrigan],'' Duquette said. ''But Joe Kerrigan is a good man. He has a lot of strengths, and I believe he is going to be a good big-league manager. Give him spring training and the offseason, and I believe we will see his strengths.''
As remarkably well as Williams kept the injury-ravaged Sox in contention before he got the guillotine, he may have suffered a fate similar to Kerrigan's because the desperately needed return of Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra, and Jason Varitek to full health never materialized. In fact, Ramirez, Martinez, and Garciaparra never appeared in a game together.
In addition, the players sensed Williams was a lame duck without front-office support, a recipe for rebellion.
Kerrigan, who appeared to take some consolation from winning the last five games of the season, vowed to soldier on amid speculation that new owners might want to change skippers. ''I don't worry about things that are out of my control,'' he said.
Kerrigan said he learned something every day in his seven weeks on the job about managing in the big leagues. He has laid out a busy work schedule around an offseason vacation in Hawaii. And he indicated he is eager to return next year with some new talent to complement the core of returning stars.
''I look forward to talking to those potential free agents and telling them about Boston,'' he said. ''If you love to play in front of packed houses every night, if you love to play in front of passionate people every night, if you love intensity day in and day out, Boston's the place for you.''
But he may also feel compelled to mention something he has learned many times over in the Hub. ''If you're soft-skinned or overly sensitive, it's probably not the place for you to come,'' he said. ''You have to enjoy that heat, that pressure.''
There will be plenty more to come.
By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff, 10/8/2001 This story ran on page
E3 of the Boston Globe
on 10/8/2001
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company