There was no better place to play baseball than Boston five years ago. The Red Sox performed before sellout crowds at historic Fenway Park. Fans worshipped them. Terry Francona was a players' manager. They spent absurd amounts of money on payroll. Theo Epstein was considered the game's savviest general manager. Even ownership did everything it could to ingratiate itself to the players.

Rare is the organization where ivory tower and clubhouse mingle, and yet at least once a year, the entire organization, from ownership to management to players to manager, would hold a rap session in which nothing was off-limits. The gripes were almost always minor, but still. That sort of honesty, that sort of openness, simply didn't exist elsewhere.

The Red Sox built such harmony on a single principle: success. Winning is the salve for hard truths. It fosters trust. As long as the Red Sox baseball machine churned on like it had with a pair of championships in 2004 and 2007, the happy meetings would continue unabated, the billionaires in suits and millionaires in uniform obliging one another in mutually beneficial lovefests.

Today, of course, the entire system is broken. Red Sox players do not trust owner John Henry, chairman Tom Werner and president Larry Lucchino. They see the owners' box as a den of lies, leaks and resentment, the place where Lucchino hatched the idea to hire Bobby Valentine as manager, which has gone about as pleasantly as an enema.

In late July, a gang of players sent a text message to ownership calling for a meeting to discuss Valentine's foibles. Henry and Lucchino granted them an audience July 27 on an off-day in New York. Unlike previous roundtables, the manager was not present. Players grumbled, vented and aired their grievances. Sources present at the meeting said the complaints left Henry and Lucchino aghast. They were certain change would come.

It didn't.

It hasn't.

And, if Henry stands by his words, it won't. After visiting with Valentine for breakfast Monday morning in Seattle, Henry told the Boston Herald the Red Sox were "resolute" in standing by Valentine for at least the remainder of the season. Henry joined the Red Sox to take their pulse, intent on speaking with a number of players and trying to understand how his $173 million team devolved into one of the 10 worst in the game.

[Related: Is it a wrap for Bobby Valentine in Boston?]

Of the ownership group, Henry has long earned the most respect from players because he is a self-made billionaire who cavorts on yachts and carries himself with a charming air of nerd-made-good. Still, he is deluding himself if he believes a couple of conversations are going to provide clarity on what ails his baseball team.

As long as Bobby Valentine remains manager of the Boston Red Sox, the culture of honesty returning is about as likely as a winning season.









"Will there be differences? You bet there will be differences." – Larry Lucchino, Feb. 25









From the start, Bobby Valentine had no chance. This should've been obvious. Francona left beloved to the players, a scapegoat for a wretched September. Lucchino wanted Valentine to change the culture – to be different, like different meant right. He was different, yes, supposedly an authoritarian, certainly a meddler, master manipulator and provocateur. Throw that into a clubhouse of territorial alpha dogs, Francona loyalists and those wounded by last September, and it's a Molotov cocktail of a hire.

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