A second chance for the Duke

November 07, 2011|By Tony Massarotti, Globe columnist, Globe Staff

By Tony Massarotti, Globe columnist

In the end, in the eyes of many, Dan Duquette came to symbolize most everything that was wrong with the old-guard Red Sox, from the perceived arrogance to the detachment to the spectacular failure. What we know now is that Duquette and Theo Epstein were not as far apart as many would like to believe, at least when it comes to matters of baseball.

Nine years later, Duquette is all but officially back, the announcement that he will be the next general manager of the Baltimore Orioles to come as soon as tomorrow. Duquette needs the Orioles as much (or more) as the Orioles need Duquette, both parties in need of rehabilitating their credibility and image in the wake of what has been a forgettable decade. And so maybe this is a match made for redemption, a team and its chief baseball executive both believing they have been given another chance.

Where Duquette most notably failed in Boston was in the area of public and media relations, blunders even he would acknowledge. He effectively did so, in fact, during the fall of 2007, shortly after the Red Sox won their second world title in four years under the watch of John Henry, Larry Lucchino, Tom Werner and, of course, Epstein.

"I'm confident I made mistakes with the Red Sox,” Duquette said at the time. “I made a personal inventory of what those mistakes were and how I could have made different choices. But you know, if you look at my body of work [in Boston], there were a couple of things we did. We turned them into playoff contenders and we rebuilt the farm system, and we made the Red Sox a more diverse international brand. Are there things I would have done differently? Sure. There's a bunch of 'em. But that's water under the bridge at this point."

Photos: Red Sox GMs through the years Water under the bridge, it seems, for even the Orioles, who are clearly desperate for a general manager and have perhaps the worst organizational reputation in all of baseball. Toronto Blue Jays executive Tony Lacava was offered the job as Baltimore GM and turned the O's down, which should tell you plenty. The Baltimore franchise of today is generally seen as a dysfunctional collection of bureaucratic buffoons, an image owner Peter Angelos has carefully carved for his franchise through continued meddling and ineptitude.