Come again? Grady Little and Terry Francona under the same roof? Stop the presses. How could we not have known this? How could there be no chronicle of this collision of worlds? Would we have known if Bill Parcells and Pete Carroll shared an apartment? Ted Williams and Yaz?
Grady and Tito? Carpooling and picking up groceries? Playing cards and watching ESPN late into the night? The ghost of Red Sox past and the man who won it all? This is a little like how we felt when we learned Don Zimmer rented an apartment from Bucky Dent several years after you-know-what. Tormented Zim had to look at a photo of Bucky's playoff homer every night before he went to sleep.
Francona can't tell you the last time he saw Little, but it might have been before the fifth and final game of the first round of the playoffs in 2003, when Francona was a coach with the Oakland A's and Little was managing the Red Sox. The Sox won that fifth game, went on to play the Yankees, and Little got himself fired when he failed to take Pedro Martínez out in the fateful eighth inning of Game 7 at Yankee Stadium. Grady's demise resurrected Francona's baseball career in a big way.
They'll finally see one another again today when the Red Sox East-Coast-of-Florida Reunion Tour moves north to Vero Beach. Grady Little has resurfaced as manager of the Dodgers and today the Sox are scheduled to face old friend Derek Lowe at Holman Stadium in Dodgertown. They also hope to see Nomar Garciaparra, Bill Mueller, coach Dave Jauss, and, of course, Grady. ''I hadn't thought about it," Francona said. ''But I look forward to saying hello to everybody. It'll be great."
Francona's memories of living with Grady are a little fuzzy. It's been 14 years and he'd only been retired as a player for two years. He'd managed the South Bend White Sox (Single A) in the summer of '92 before taking the job with Little in the Arizona Fall League.
Thinking back to the days with Little, Francona said, ''The thing I remember most is that you couldn't go by a Circle K without stopping and getting a lottery ticket. We had a lot of fun."
