Room-service ice cream and other memories of Guardians manager Terry Francona: Paul Hoynes

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It has to start with the ice cream story.

The Guardians, then the Indians, were at Wrigley Field playing the Cubs in the 2016 World Series. In a private meeting with Cleveland reporters, manager Terry Francona talked about going out to dinner with family members the night before. He wasn’t hungry, so he didn’t eat.

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But when he got back to the team hotel in the wee hours, hunger hit. He called room service, but the kitchen was closed. . .except for the dessert menu.

Francona ordered $40 worth of ice cream in all shapes and sizes. He said he added a Diet Coke to watch his waistline and a fruit cup to balance his diet.

“When I woke up around 6 in the morning, it was not a pretty sight,” Francona told reporters.

During the same playoff run, Francona was chomping through his normal 80 to 90 pieces of in-game bubble gum, when he lost a tooth. He felt the crunch when he bit down on a piece of gum while trying to figure out how to beat Toronto in the ALCS. After the game, he somehow found a dentist in the middle of the night in Toronto to repair the tooth.

It’s still unclear how he found that dentist after midnight in another country. But those kind of things seemed to happen to Francona all the time. What’s more, he didn’t mind talking about them.

This is it for Francona, the winningest manager in Cleveland baseball history. Wednesday night will be his last home game. Then there will be three more games over the weekend against the Tigers at Comerica Park.

After that it’s over. Managers usually get asked to leave by their bosses. Sometimes with a shove in the back. Francona is leaving on his own terms.

At 64 he wants to unplug and see what the world outside of a 162-game schedule has to offer. Of course, there will be medical procedures before he can go. Francona and offseason surgeries have been as much a part of his stay in Cleveland as his team’s six postseason appearances, including an AL pennant and four AL Central titles.

After the Indians lost the World Series to the Cubs in seven games, Francona immediately had his hip replaced. In the recovery room he joked “Did I miss the parade?”

He had a way of relating to players, the good guys and the hard cases.

When Francona became Cleveland’s manager in 2013, he encountered Carlos Santana, a catcher, turned third baseman, turned first baseman/DH. Veterans in the clubhouse said he just didn’t get it and needed to be traded.

Francona, however, spent time talking to him. Santana was upset when they signed Mike Napoli before the 2016 season because he thought it would cost him time at first base. Napoli, Francona and Santana talked it over and settled things before it became an issue.

Santana hit 34 homers that year and caught the last out in Game 5 of the ALCS to put Cleveland in the World Series. Napoli, meanwhile, had his best season production-wise with 34 homers and 101 RBI. It was the kind of partnership that Francona was good at brokering.

After the 2017 season, Santana signed a three-year deal with the Phillies as a free agent. But he returned to Cleveland in 2019 as part of a trade. That’s when he started kissing Francona’s bald head before each game.

He did it to bench coach Brad Mills as well.

Now Santana has become a valued elder statesman of the game. When a playoff team needs a bat for the stretch run, he’s usually one of the first choices. This year when the Guardians played Santana’s Pirates, he came across the field before the game, and kissed Francona’s head.

Not only that, but the switch-hitting Santana proved to be one of the top power hitters in team history. He’s currently tied with José Ramírez and Hal Trosky for fifth on the team’s all-time list with 216 home runs.

Ask Francona about Santana today and he’ll tell you how proud he is of the leader he’s become.

There is a calmness about Francona when he goes about his job.

In September of 2016, starting pitchers Danny Salazar and Carlos Carrasco went down with what amounted to season-ending injuries. There was no doubt they’d win the AL Central, but losing two starters made any advancement in the postseason doubtful.

“We’ll figure it out,” said Francona.

Those four words not only calmed the team, but also the organization. It was needed because in the first round of the postseason, they lost Trevor Bauer, another starting pitcher, when a propeller from one of his drones gashed the little finger on his pitching hand.

That left them with two healthy starters in Corey Kluber and Josh Tomlin. So they found a skinny left-hander named Ryan Merritt to start the biggest game of the season to reach the World Series. While all that was going on, Francona revolutionized the way teams use their bullpens -- especially in the postseason.

With just two functioning starters, Francona started using his bullpen earlier and earlier in games. He was especially effective using left-hander Andrew Miller, who had closer stuff, whenever problems arose early in the game. He left the late innings to durable Bryan Shaw and Cody Allen.

When the postseason ended, Kluber led Cleveland pitchers with 24 1/3 innings in six starts. Miller was right second with 22 1/3 relief innings. Allen went 6 for 6 in saves and didn’t allow a run in the postseason.

It was a managerial success story. The only thing missing was a World Series title.

Of course, I didn’t buy it. The night Carrasco had his right hand broken by a line drive, I wrote that the Indians’ journey into October would end quickly. It did not go over well with the hometown team.

Someone on social media challenged me. They said they’d jump in Lake Erie if the Indians didn’t make the World Series, if I would do the same if they did make it. I accepted without hesitation and water wings.

Well, you can guess who ended up taking a plunge in Lake Erie before Game 1 of the World Series on Oct. 25. From then on when Francona said “we’ll figure it out,” I was a believer.

You had to be fast on your feet covering Francona.

After games there’s usually a 10-minute cooling off period before the locker room/interview room is open to the media. Rarely did that exist with Francona, which meant reporters had to file their story immediately after the last pitch or risk missing half of the manager’s interview session.

It used to be that the pre- and postgame interviews with the manager would take place in his office. It created an intimate atmosphere for the kind of conversation that is often missing in the bright lights of an interview room.

That never seemed to bother Francona. He was especially good in spring training. After the baseball questions would end, he’d talk about the University of Arizona basketball team, his latest prank on Mike Barnett, the team’s replay coordinator or. . .Michael Jordan.

Francona managed the NBA superstar at Class AA Birmingham when he was trying to make it to the big leagues as a baseball player. Jordan asked Francona how the team traveled. Francona said they traveled by bus.

The next day there were three luxury buses in the parking lot, courtesy of Jordan, and Francona was asked to pick the one he liked the best.

In 11 years of asking Francona questions, I asked him plenty of dumb ones. They would often elicit a roll of the eyes or a sarcastic response from Francona, but halfway through, he’d change course and give me the perfect answer. And it wasn’t just me, I saw him do it countless times with other reporters.

When his father, the original Tito Francona, died in February of 2018, he was asked about him upon returning to spring training. The questions went on for a while and Francona was starting to get emotional. Finally, a reporter asked a question about the team and Francona said, “Thank you.”

On a long road trip last year I had to go to the emergency room and missed a game. About 20 minutes before the first pitch, my cellphone rang while I was getting prepped for some tests.

“Where the hell are you?” said Francona, half-kidding, half-serious. “Are you OK?”

When I made it to the postgame inteverview session Francona asked me, “How are you feeling?”

I said I was OK and he immediately called my bluff.

“That’s a lie,” he said. “As many times as I’ve been in the hospital I know how bad you feel.”

When Francona was a junior at New Brighton (Pa.) High School. he shot the best round of golf in school history. He did it while wearing tennis shoes.

Francona asked the golf coach whose record he beat. The coach told him it was Ralph Oxenhurdt, a student who had died in a car accident. Francona told the coach not to put his name in the trophy case.

Compassion like that, combined with years of hard-earned baseball knowledge, go a long way in the dugout. There’s no doubt that’s a big reason why he’s had the success that he’s had.

When it ends, Francona will have managed 3,622 games, including 1,678 in Cleveland. That does not include another 78 postseason games.

He ranks 13th all-time in managerial wins, but that does not answer the last burning question before he disappears over the horizon and returns to Tucson: “Will his beloved scooter, aka The Hog, join him in the desert?”

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