Francona Institutes Controversial "English Only" Policy for Clubhouse
A deeply stressed Terry Francona told Call of the Green Monster yesterday that he has grown tired of the many different languages spoken by Red Sox players and believes it has impacted his ability to manage. “I just can’t keep up with all these languages,” he said with a deep sigh. “Dice-K and Oki speak two different dialects of Japanese, Beckett fires so many F-bombs I can never understand what he’s actually saying, you got all the guys speaking Spanish, and, when he was here,you got whatever the hell language Manny spoke—I thought it was Spanish but the Latin guys say they can’t understand him either. Not to mention, I can’t understand half the guys speaking English here. It's too much stress.”
An exasperated Francona finally called a team meeting saying that only English would be allowed in the clubhouse. “I’m tired of all these translators and one Latino guy trying to explain to me what another guy is saying…no more! It’s tough enough managing in Boston with the newspaper nitwits and talk-radio morons. I told the guys: Clearly spoken English with no slang or expressions that confuse me.”
Foreign players on the team were scrambling to bookstores to buy English-speaking tapes, while others looked for crash courses to take. Dice K, meanwhile, sat quietly by his locker, humming a Japanese folk tune. How did he feel about the new policy? "“That Francona guy, I can never understand a word he’s saying,"he said in struggling English. "Speak the language, man!”
bill@callofthegreenmonster.com
cotgm.com or callofthegreenmonster.com
