Joe Morgan, the greatest interim manager in baseball history, knows what Chad Tracy is dealing with, and other thoughts
Picked-up pieces while waiting for the Super Bowl rematch when the Patriots visit Seattle Sept. 9 …
⋅ With the 2026 Red Sox wrapping their third week under “interim” manager Chad Tracy, it’s time to hear from the greatest interim manager in baseball history, Walpole’s Joe Morgan.
“What the hell happened to [Alex] Cora and all those coaches?” Morgan asked when I reached him at his home this past week. “Boston is tough, isn’t it?”
Not for Joe Morgan, it wasn’t.
Pull up a chair and listen, young’uns: Way back in 1988, the star-studded, underachieving Red Sox fired crusty skipper John McNamara July 14, and named Morgan — who’d been their Triple-A manager for nine seasons — interim manager.
Morgan’s Red Sox ripped off 12 straight wins, and 19 of 20, climbing from nine games out of first to one game back in three torrid weeks. Morgan shed “interim” six days into the surge and signed a contract extension through 1989 just three weeks after taking over.
“I guess I won’t have to cut my own cordwood this winter,” Morgan said when he got the security.
His team finished 46-31, winning the American League East with an 89-73 record. Morgan went on to win a second division title in 1990.
Going into this weekend, the boring Red Sox — lurching through their eighth consecutive season of abject mediocrity — are 8-8 under Tracy, and do not look like candidates for first place this season.
“That’s the way it usually is with interim managers,” Morgan said this past week. “Most of the time you’re taking over a lousy team. My team wasn’t lousy; they were just playing lousy.”
Morgan’s ’88 Sox had Roger Clemens, coming off back-to-back Cy Young seasons, on his way to 354 big-league wins. They had Hall of Famer Jim Rice, who had finished third in MVP voting two years earlier. They had Hall of Fame third baseman Wade Boggs, and Dwight Evans in right field. They had two-time All-Star catcher Rich Gedman, Ellis Burks (352 career homers), and young Mike Greenwell, who finished second in MVP voting in ’88. They had Hall of Fame closer Lee Smith, 18-game winner Bruce Hurst, former World Series champion/20-game winner Mike Boddicker, and Oil Can Boyd in the rotation.
It is painful to read these names compared with the No-Star, “Wild Cards R Us” Red Sox who take the field today.
“It’s hard to believe they weren’t doing better when I took over,” recalled Morgan. “I didn’t have to do much to shake things up with that group. I remember I played Jody Reed at short. I was lucky because we had an 11-game homestand. I figured if I won eight of those games I might be named manager for the rest of the year. Well, we won ’em all. ‘Interim’ didn’t last too long, did it?
“Managing didn’t bother me one iota, because I knew I could manage. I never considered that there was much difference from managing at Triple-A. The hardest part for me was when you had to make a tough decision with players that you like. But you have to do it.”
One of those hard decisions came in the middle of the winning streak at Fenway when Morgan needed a sacrifice bunt to move a runner over in the late innings and sent Spike Owen up to bat for Rice. An unhappy Rice acted out, but Morgan stood up to the slugger, insisting, “I’m the manager of this nine.” The Sox wound up winning in extras on a walkoff homer by Todd Benzinger.
“I wasn’t a bunting manager, but I thought we needed one more run in that one, and we did,” recalled Morgan.
Morgan turns 96 in November. He’s been battling issues with his lungs and his legs (“my wheels are not ready to steal second yet”), but he made it to Fenway to throw out a ceremonial first pitch at the home opener in April.
He thinks Tracy will be OK, but noted, “They need that big bat, don’t they?”
Today’s Red Sox interim skipper can’t possibly know much about the Boston baseball experience. Only 40, Tracy didn’t spend any time here until he started managing the WooSox. He can’t be expected to know that every fan in New England thinks he or she knows more about the Red Sox than the manager of the team.
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“Everybody played softball or baseball around here,” said Morgan. “And they’re all managers.”
⋅ Quiz: 1. Bob Cousy (1957), Bill Russell (1958, 1961-63, ’65), Dave Cowens (1973), and Larry Bird (1984-86) are the only Celtics to win the NBA’s MVP Award. Jaylen Brown is expected to finish among the top five when voting results are announced soon. Name the last four Celtics to finish in the top five in MVP voting; 2: Name Rice’s five Red Sox managers. Minimum one full season. (Answers below.)
⋅ Why Can’t We Get Fans Like This? When Liverpool soccer loyalists — protesting inflationary price hikes planned over the next three years — refused to buy food and drinks at Anfield Stadium, Fenway Sports Group changed its mind and rescinded the planned increases.
⋅ Xander Bogaerts is, was, and always will be a better player than Trevor Story. Red Sox broadcasters love Story more than free food, but he’s contributed little in four of his five seasons here. Now the race is on to see if he can strike out more times in a season than Johnny Pesky fanned in a 10-year career that included 5,516 plate appearances. Pesky compiled 218 Ks in a decade of big league hitting. Story went into this weekend with 57 strikeouts in 43 games, a 215-strikeout pace over a full 162.
⋅ It is mid-May, more than a quarter of the season is gone, and Roman Anthony is hitting .229 with one home run and five RBIs in 30 games.
⋅ Charlie McAvoy is a favorite Bruin, but we all know he deserved six games.
⋅ Always loved Giannis Antetokounmpo. Teased Danny Ainge for taking Kelly Olynyk (via trade) ahead of Giannis in the 2013 draft. But Brown for Giannis is not a good trade for Boston. Milwaukee would do that in an instant. Giannis turns 32 next season and is breaking down. Brown is in his athletic prime.
⋅ The Knicks are on fire as they prepare to start the Eastern Conference finals. They go into this round with seven straight wins by an average score of 125-99. They have not made it to the NBA Finals since 1999, and last won an NBA title in 1973. That’s almost 20,000 days ago.
⋅ A young man graduating from UMass this spring was advised to take a photo with the Dr. J statue on campus before leaving Amherst for good and responded with, “Who’s Dr. J?” How is this even possible? In my world, that’d be like graduating from Boston University and asking, “Who’s Martin Luther King?”
⋅ Baseball scribes voting for Hall of Fame candidates today are forced to reevaluate stats of starting pitchers in an era that has seen the end of complete games and 250-inning workhorses. No one is going to win 300 games again. Is 200 wins the new 300? The Globe’s Peter Abraham last weekend made a nice case for former Red Sox lefthander Jon Lester, who’ll be on this year’s ballot with 200 wins, two World Series championships, and a 2.51 ERA in 26 postseason games. Perhaps the ultimate HOF test will come when Jacob deGrom gets on the ballot. His career ERA (2.57) is second only to Clayton Kershaw for starters since 1948, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.41) is tops in baseball history. He won back-to-back Cy Youngs. Swell. Gotta love any pitcher who warms up to the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man.” Unfortunately, this is deGrom’s 13th season, he turns 38 next month, and his career record is 99-67. Any starting pitcher who has yet to win 100 big league games is a non-starter for my Hall of Fame consideration.
⋅ DeGrom’s former Mets teammate Noah Syndergaard spoke for Mets fans everywhere this past week in an OutKick interview when he stated, “ … at the end of the day, the Mets are gonna ‘Met,’ and it’s just, I think I’m allowed to say that because I’ve bled orange and blue for, I don’t know, eight years, made it to the World Series with them.”
⋅ Walker Allen, son of Basketball Hall of Famer Ray Allen, has committed to play at Emerson with his brother, Ray Allen III. A 5-foot-9-inch point guard from Miami, Walker Allen played a postgraduate year at The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. His coach at Emerson will be Bill Curley, of Lower Mills/Duxbury/Boston College/NBA fame.
⋅ Two former Braves managers, both legends (for different reasons), died within three days of each other this past week: Bobby Cox (3,860 regular-season games with the Braves) and Ted Turner (one).
⋅ If you see “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” watch for cameos by Karl-Anthony Towns (plays himself at a Miranda Priestly party in the Hamptons) and Rory McIlroy. The Masters champ was approached by the film’s producers after telling reporters he’d relaxed for the final day of the 2025 Players Championship by going back to his room and watching the first “Devil Wears Prada” film.
⋅ Tim Brown’s Nolan Ryan biography, “Nolan: The Singular Life of an American Original,” goes on sale Tuesday.
⋅ Anagram of the week: Boston batting avg = Stagnating boob TV.
⋅ It’s fun to tell grandchildren that the Sox once had a slugging outfielder with a name that included four body parts: Tony Armas.
⋅ Quiz answers: 1. Jayson Tatum (fourth, 2023), Isaiah Thomas (fifth, 2017), Kevin Garnett (third, 2008), Larry Bird (second, 1988); 2. Darrell Johnson (1974-76), Don Zimmer (1976-80), Ralph Houk (1981-84), John McNamara (1985-88), Morgan (1988-89).
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