CINCINNATI — Terry Francona has been through a lot medically over the course of his baseball life. He’s also compiled a managerial resume that will land him in Cooperstown. The least he could ask for is a seat so he can do his job.
Francona was asked before Thursday’s series finale with the Twins why he stands at the top step of the home dugout at Great American Ball Park to watch every game instead of sitting down.
“I’d like to (sit). In fact, I’m trying to get them to help me get, like, one of those seats because the reason I stand is because I don’t feel like I can see the game well through the (railings). If you ever sat there and looked through that, it’s really confining,” Francona explained. “And I just don’t feel like I can see the game. And I hate that.
“Like when we go to Houston, I hate it, because I just don’t feel like I can see it. So, the best way to see is to stand over that. Every rail and every dugout is different. Like in Pittsburgh, we had to get a box, because right where it was, your heads right there, and I just don’t feel like … it just doesn’t feel right.”
Tim O’Connell is Senior Vice President of Facilities and Operations for Great American Ball Park and responsible for seeing if a seat can be conformed to Francona’s needs, as was the case in two previous stops.
“In Boston, they built me a little like a little bench,” Francona said. “And in Cleveland, I had that Bass fishing chair, which was perfect.”
Told he should just get a nice recliner, Francona insisted he doesn’t need a comfortable view, just a clear one.
“I don’t want to be that comfortable, but it would help to I just there’s not I don’t feel like I need to stand. I just that’s the way I can see, right? I’d actually like to sit a little bit.”
That leads to the next natural question, when he’s watching the game, what does Francona watch the most?
“I feel like you’re supposed to watch everything,” Francona told me. “Most of the time, I’m thinking about pitching. I’m always thinking, if something happens this next inning, what would I do? So if something does happen, we’re not just throwing (crap) against the wall. I try to watch everything. I think that’s our job.”
Slow and steady:
The Reds are not rushing left fielder Austin Hays back to action. As much as they would love to have his right-handed bat in the lineup, they want him healthy for the second half of the season as a key component of the middle part of their lineup. If Hays is healthy and productive, he could do wonders for a team looking to extend their lineup against the likes of the Dodgers, Mets, Cubs and Brewers.
Hays fouled a ball off his left foot in the final game at Kansas City on May 28. He and the Reds thought he was on track for a mid-June return and then the pain returned. This time around, he’s going to make sure he can do everything at full go, which was the point of his running the bases on Wednesday and Thursday.
“I was really hoping to get off the IL around when the 10 days was up,” Hays told me. “So, I was pushing it really hard. I was pushing through some pain and discomfort early on with running, and think I might have made things a little bit worse for myself. And then I got to the point where I was about to come back in Cleveland, and I did the base running, and I was at a point with a pain level where I can’t play with this.
“So, I felt like we made the right decision with where I was at and kind of how things had gone over the really about five days up to that point, I kept hoping I was going to wake up and turn the corner. Push it a little harder, see if we could just kind of get whatever was going on to work its way out. But just got a little bit worse the more I pushed it. So we shut it down for the four days I ran in the pool, and it felt really good the first day after that. So two days, two days ago, yeah, I was gonna say, and then (Wednesday) was my first day since we shut it down, running on ground, outside, and that’s the best I’ve felt running at that level.
“There’s no more soreness or no issues walking. I don’t feel like I made anything worse (Wednesday) by getting out on the field and running. So I’m hoping we’ve turned the corner with this thing. Finally, I just got to get my legs back underneath me now, because it’d been a while without running. I hadn’t been able to run for more than half of this time I’ve been on the IL.”
As for a protective brace on his left foot, Hays says that will become part of his uniform.
“Yeah, I’m going to go with the foot-and-ankle guard, the kind like Elly wears,” Hays said. “It covers the foot and covers the ankle. So, I smoked it I think pretty good. There’s damage in there so I need to make sure I don’t hit it again. If I hit it again, it might fall off.”
Hays has been watching from the dugout as his Reds teammates are starting to play their best baseball of the season.
“Everything’s better when you’re winning,” added Hays. “Everything’s more fun when you’re winning. It’s not fun being on the IL. But if I’m gonna be sitting in the dugout and watching our guys go out there every night when we’re winning, it’s a fun environment to be sitting in, and be in the clubhouse.
“We’re we’re playing great right now. We got a lot of guys that are just they’re battling every night, they’re going in there, and they’re having really good at bats. Our pitchers are doing their thing. We’re getting a great start every night, and the bullpen has been doing it all year. So this is that stretch that we kept talking about early in the year, right? You know it’s gonna come. Things are gonna click. We had moments where we were hitting and we had moments where we were pitching but we weren’t putting it together. We’re doing that over the last 10 games or so, two weeks. We’re really just playing all facets of the game.”
Francona pregame Thursday:
