CLEVELAND — If Terry Francona’s joking about chicken and beer, you know that he’s back to being himself again.

And if Francona’s back to being himself, then that means he’s not only got his sense of humor back after enduring the darkest days of his professional career at the end of the 2011 season, but more importantly, in his first year at a new job, he’s once again brought his baseball team back to the playoffs.

That’s the Francona Red Sox fans should remember.

That’s the Francona the Indians have in a new partnership that obviously is working out really well — just like it did in Boston for almost all of his eight seasons there.

With his Indians poised for a Division Series against the Red Sox if the Tribe can get by the Rays in the AL wild card game tonight, Francona could still make wisecracks about how his team succeeded this September by avoiding the chicken-and-beer nonsense that sank the Red Sox in September 2011.

Actually, yesterday he clarified Monday’s comments.

“I lied about that — we have had some chicken,” said Francona.

No beer, though.

Still, the beerless-in-September Indians went out and won 21-of-27 games, including their last 10 straight.

Little wonder why Francona’s players want to toast him as much as roast him.

“It just goes to show you how bad-ass he is,” said the Indians’ Nick Swisher, whose mouth and energy level run at the same high-speed roar as Kevin Millar’s. “He’s just a happy guy. He’s not going to live in the past, he’s not going to live in a negative point in his life. He brings it every single day.”

Swisher said Francona “caught such a bad rap on” the chicken and beer story. “It had to fall on somebody, it just so happened to fall on him.”

That it did, but he didn’t get crushed by it. He lost his job over it, and it took him more than a year and a book to recover, but he’s back to managing a baseball team that is as friendly to players as it is in the standings, where this year the Indians somehow finished with just one fewer win than the Tigers in the AL Central.

Cleveland infielder Mike Aviles, who was in the Red Sox clubhouse two Septembers ago, calls Francona “the biggest clown” of the Indians clubhouse. So he thought chicken-and-beer humor was part of Francona’s winning shtick.

“When I heard about it, it was kind of funny,” said Aviles. “Anyone who knows Tito, whatever’s gone on, it’s over, he’s done with it. He can joke around about it, he can move forward, he’s an adult about everything. It’s always a good time when you have a manager who’s on the same plane as everyone else.”

Francona is a good example, said reliever Rich Hill, also around in September 2011, of someone who understands the extremely limited value of dwelling in the past.

“In this game of baseball you have to continuously be moving forward,” said Hill. “You can’t look back, and you can’t sit on what happened in the past, good or bad.”

And now Francona, who will manage the Indians in their first postseason game since they lost to his Red Sox in Game 7 of the 2007 ALCS, will entrust the start to 23-year-old Danny Salazar, making only his 11th big league start. Starting for the Rays will be 25-year-old Alex Cobb, as the teams go head-to-head to determine who can play against the Red Sox.

For Francona, he will draw from the past as much as he needs to. When he arrived with the Red Sox in 2004, he had never managed in the postseason, yet his team that year went all the way. There must be something to take from that and apply to a new team nine years later.

“I don’t know — this is a different team,” said Francona. “From Day 1, we kind of said we were going to grow together, this team. I didn’t know how to feel my first time. I was surprisingly kind of calm and I enjoyed it, and I plan on doing the same. Once I feel organized, I’m OK. I want our players to just go play and do the best they can. That’s what we’ve been doing all year and we’ll do it again (tonight).”

Francona at his best translates into his teams giving it their best.