Francona
The Red Sox Years
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Narrated by:
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Jeff Gurner
About this listen
From famed baseball manager Terry Francona, a lively, unvarnished narrative of his tenure with the storied Boston Red Sox
From 2004 to 2011, Terry "Tito" Francona managed the Boston Red Sox, the most talked about, scrutinized team in all of sports. In Francona the legendary manager opens up for the first time about his eight years there, as they went from cursed franchise to one of the most successful and profitable in baseball history. He takes readers inside the rarefied world of a 21st-century clubhouse, from 2004 when they won their first championship in 86 years, through another win in 2007, to the controversial September collapse just four years later. He recounts the tightrope walk of managing personalities like Pedro Martinez and Manny Ramirez, working with Theo Epstein and his statistics-driven executives, balancing their data with the emotions of a 25-man roster, and meeting the expectations of three owners with often wildly differing opinions. Along the way listeners are treated with back-slapping, never-before-told stories about their favorite players, moments, losses, and wins.
Those eight years were a wild, unforgettable ride, and now the fascinating full story can be told in an audiobook that examines like no other the art of managing in today's game.
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Critic reviews
“Narrator Jeff Gurner offers a steady hand throughout a collaboration that has no dull moments…Red Sox fans will enjoy the stories behind some of their team's greatest years. Cleveland Indians fans will love the wonderful insights into their first-year manager. And Gurner's narration will help draw in any person interested in what a manager endures – on and off the field.” —AudioFile Magazine
“Even baseball fans who loathe the Boston Red Sox will find it tough to root against former manager Francona… [Gurner's] reading keeps the narrative moving forward, and Francona's story is compelling. All in all, a solid effort that should generate strong demand from baseball fans.” —Booklist
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By: Molly Knight
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Bums
- An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers
- By: Peter Golenbock
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 19 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Before the team headed to Los Angeles in 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers were one of the most colorful and beloved teams in baseball. In Bums, best-selling author Peter Golenbock has compiled a fascinating oral history of the Ebbets Field heroes with recollections from former players, writers, front-office executives, and faithful fans.
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A MUST for the true Dodgers or Giants fan!!
- By Karen on 02-25-07
By: Peter Golenbock
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The Only Rule Is It Has to Work
- Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team
- By: Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, John Pruden
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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It's the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies - with real players, in a real ballpark, in a real playoff race. That's what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics.
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Narrarators have never watched baseball. Ever!
- By Anon on 06-02-16
By: Ben Lindbergh, and others
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A Band of Misfits
- Tales of the 2010 San Francisco Giants
- By: Andrew Baggarly
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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For 53 years, San Francisco waited. Waited for a team like the 2010 Giants to come along. Waited for a team that could end a title drought that started in New York and carried on for more than five decades after a move to the West Coast. Waited for that one magical postseason run that could unleash more than a half-century of pent-up frustration. At long last, the 2010 Giants hopped on that magic carpet and made it happen. San Jose Mercury News beat reporter Andrew Baggarly captured the 2010 Giants' incredible run through the regular season, playoffs and World Series in his new book.
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Relived that season!
- By jeff olson on 12-20-18
By: Andrew Baggarly
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Where Nobody Knows Your Name
- Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball
- By: John Feinstein
- Narrated by: John Feinstein
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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John Feinstein is one of the most influential sportswriters of the last three decades. In his masterful new audiobook, Where Nobody Knows Your Name, Feinstein delivers a fascinating account of the mysterious proving ground of America’s national pastime, pulling back the veil on the minor leagues of baseball.
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Living on the Cusp of a Dream
- By W Perry Hall on 04-09-14
By: John Feinstein
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The Last Innocents
- The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers
- By: Michael Leahy
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Legendary Dodgers Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Wes Parker, Jeff Torborg, Dick Tracewski, and Tommy Davis encapsulated 1960s America: white and black, Jewish and Christian, wealthy and working class, pro-Vietnam and anti-war, golden boy and seasoned veteran. The Last Innocents is a thoughtful, technicolor portrait of these seven players - friends, mentors, confidants, rivals, and allies - and their storied team that offers an intriguing look at a sport and a nation in transition.
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Reliving my youth
- By PJ on 05-24-17
By: Michael Leahy
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The Chicago Cubs
- Story of a Curse
- By: Rich Cohen
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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For Rich Cohen and millions of other fans, the Chicago Cubs have always been more than a team: they've been the protagonists of a King Arthur epic, in search of the Holy Grail that is winning the World Series. A chronicle of the last few miraculous seasons as experienced through the prism of Cubs history, The Chicago Cubs tracks the famous curse, which was placed on the team in 1945 by the infamous owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, who was ejected from Wrigley Field when he tried to bring his goat into the grandstand for the fifth game of the World Series.
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just listen and it all happens again
- By Z. Kuhn on 10-28-17
By: Rich Cohen
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Pete Rose
- An American Dilemma
- By: Kostya Kennedy
- Narrated by: Ben Bartolone
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Pete Rose played baseball with a singular and headfirst abandon that endeared him to fans and peers, even as it riled others--a figure at once magnetic, beloved and polarizing. Rose has more base hits than anyone in history, yet he is not in the Hall of Fame. Twenty-five years ago he was banished from baseball for gambling, then ruled ineligible for Cooperstown; today, the question "Does Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame?" has evolved into perhaps the most provocative in sports, a layered, slippery and ever-relevant moral conundrum.
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Good book, not so good production.
- By david d. on 05-01-14
By: Kostya Kennedy
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Summer of '68
- The Season That Changed Baseball - and America - Forever
- By: Tim Wendel
- Narrated by: Mark Ashby
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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From the beginning, ’68 was a season rocked by national tragedy and sweeping change. Opening Day was postponed and later played in the shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral. That summer, as the pennant races were heating up, the assassination of Robert Kennedy was later followed by rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But even as tensions boiled over and violence spilled into the streets, something remarkable was happening in major league ballparks across the country. Pitchers were dominating like never before, and with records falling and shut-outs mounting, many began hailing ’68 as “The Year of the Pitcher".
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Detroit Upsets St. Louis in 1968 World Series.
- By Matthew Tsien on 05-01-18
By: Tim Wendel
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The Year of the Pitcher
- Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age
- By: Sridhar Pappu
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The Year of the Pitcher is the story of the remarkable 1968 baseball season, which culminated in one of the greatest World Series contests ever, with the Detroit Tigers coming back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Cardinals in Game Seven of the World Series. In 1968, two remarkable pitchers would dominate the game as well as the broadsheets. One was black, the other white. Bob Gibson, together with the St. Louis Cardinals, embodied an entire generation's hope for integration at a heated moment in American history. Denny McLain, his adversary, was a crass self-promoter.
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Misleading Title
- By Paul on 01-25-19
By: Sridhar Pappu
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The Grandest Stage
- A History of the World Series
- By: Tyler Kepner
- Narrated by: Tyler Kepner
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The World Series is the most enduring showcase in American team sports. It’s the place where legends are made, where celebration and devastation can hinge on a fly ball off a foul pole or a grounder beneath a first baseman’s glove. And there’s no one better to bring this rich history to life than New York Times national baseball columnist Tyler Kepner, whose bestselling book about pitching, K, was lauded as “Michelangelo explaining the brush strokes on the Sistine Chapel” by Newsday.
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Excellent!
- By DavidF on 09-09-24
By: Tyler Kepner
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The Journey Home
- My Life in Pinstripes
- By: Jorge Posada, Gary Brozek
- Narrated by: Lorenzo Irizarry
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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For 17 seasons the name Jorge Posada was synonymous with New York Yankees baseball. A fixture behind home plate throughout the Yankees biggest successes, Jorge became the Yankees' star catcher almost immediately upon his arrival, and in the years that followed, his accomplishments, work ethic, and leadership established him as one of the greatest Yankees ever to put on the uniform.
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Jorge who?!!
- By Jacques on 11-30-22
By: Jorge Posada, and others
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1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever
- By: Bill Madden
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Jackie Robinson heroically broke the color barrier in 1947. But how—and, in practice, when—did the integration of the sport actually occur? Bill Madden shows that baseball’s famous black experiment” did not truly succeed until the coming of age of Willie Mays and the emergence of some star players—Larry Doby, Hank Aaron, and Ernie Banks—in 1954. And as a relevant backdrop off the field, it was in May of that year that the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, that segregation be outlawed in America’s public schools.
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Acumen bugaboo
- By steve finkelstein on 04-25-21
By: Bill Madden
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The Bad Guys Won
- A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, the Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform - and Maybe the Best
- By: Jeff Pearlman
- Narrated by: Jeff Pearlman
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake-hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.
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Maybe 3.5
- By Lifeisshort on 02-15-22
By: Jeff Pearlman
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As They See 'Em
- A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires
- By: Bruce Weber
- Narrated by: Charley Steiner
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Millions of American baseball fans know, with absolute certainty, that umpires are simply overpaid galoots who are doing an easy job badly. Millions of American baseball fans are wrong. As They See 'Em is an insider's look at the largely unknown world of professional umpires, the small group of men (and the very occasional woman) who make sure America's favorite pastime is conducted in a manner that is clean, crisp, and true.
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Judging Umpires
- By Bruce on 11-28-09
By: Bruce Weber
What listeners say about Francona
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- James
- 04-27-15
Love Tito
Good book! I enjoyed hearing all the stories and inter workings of the Boston Red Sox! LETS GO RED SOX!!
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Overall
- gregory s.
- 12-26-16
Must for Sox fan
This is a great read. It offers a ton of insight into the the inner medlings of the Sox by management. Thanks Tito and Theo for what yo you've done for us!
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- Pnic
- 11-01-18
Amazing Book.....A Must Read For Red Sox Fans
I loved this book. Terry Francona gives you an insight into the Red Sox like no other book before. Amazing what goes on behind the scenes. Absolutely Perfect
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1 person found this helpful
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- Tony DiBiasio
- 03-18-13
A Great Baseball Story
What made the experience of listening to Francona the most enjoyable?
Francona is a family story, about the Francona family, and his baseball family the Boston Red Sox.
What did you like best about this story?
The warmth, honesty and intensity expressed by Terry Francona.
Have you listened to any of Jeff Gurner’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
A Bronx Tale in Fenway Park.
Like the DeNiro Film, Francona is a baseball purist who has to function in a world run by CEO's, GM's and statistical gurus who try to compromise his belief in the players and the sport.
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- Rich
- 04-23-15
Tito Tells All!
Any additional comments?
Every ballplayer has a story. And ballplayers are a tight knit family. It's just that Tito's story and family connections are especially interesting.
SPOILERS BELOW
How does one person get to manage the short-lived baseball career of Michael Jordan -and- end the Curse of the Bambino? And mentor a young Jon Lester through his early career and cancer treatments? And gets to return to his father's baseball roots in Cleveland? Fascinating.
Tito definitely gets his last word in against Sox ownership as he and the organization parted ways in 2011, and most everything he says seems (incredibly!) plausible and justified.
From the details of growing up as the son of a pro ballplayer through his career through the locker room dirt of the 2004 Idiots and beyond, this book is great for any MLB fan and a must-read for a Boston fan like myself.
Gurner's narration was just fine. Sure he botches a name or two, but he nails every F-bomb.
Go Sox, go Tito--thanks for sharing your terrific, salty stories with the fans of this game.
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- Bill
- 03-13-13
Good Sports Book
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
If you are a Red Sox or just a baseball fan then it will be very entertaining
Which character – as performed by Jeff Gurner – was your favorite?
Tito was the character best performed
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I wish I had the time to listen to this in all one sitting. It would be worth the time.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Terence
- 04-23-13
A Fun, Incestuous, Listen
Any additional comments?
Very well written and narrated. The audio book moves quickly and is gossipy and fun. But in the end, it's basically a love story between Franconer and Theo. The two of them essentially do no wrong, but we fans realize it's a little more complicated than that. They did have a great run together though, and this book is essentially a celebration of that. Obviously, it will be of most interest to Sox fans like myself, but I recommend it to other fans of the game as well.
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- Heather
- 03-02-13
TAKE OUT THE BREATHS!
What made the experience of listening to Francona the most enjoyable?
Wish I could talk about the book itself but I need to get the message out. Breaths every 5 seconds in this book. It's beyond irritating. Please fix this for future listeners!
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- Dennis
- 02-28-13
In the dugout & clubhouse.
As a Sox fan & season ticket holder for many years, I experienced the lows, then highs, and lows again with the team.
Francona's frank, and insider information was very interesting. The "untold story" and behind the scenes tales are eye-opening and shocking at points. His battles with ownership and others (MLB officials) in addition to his kinship with players & coaches has been documented but getting his side of the story was refreshing & made for a great book.
Shaughnessy made the perfect co-writer because of his closeness to, and coverage of the team.
Any Red Sox or baseball fan should find this book extremely entertaining & informative.
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- Sean
- 03-25-13
I enjoyed it a lot,
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes, I thought it was interesting. I liked the details of working for such a high profile team.
Who was your favorite character and why?
My favorite character was Terry Francona.
Have you listened to any of Jeff Gurner’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No, I haven't.
Any additional comments?
Even for a more casual baseball fan, this is really good.
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