It's not just the beer. It's the "players manager" style. There's less accountability in general assumed in that. Francona was/is considered a players manager. Not to mention that the anecdotal lax approach to conditioning taken by some of the Red Sox players this year was one of the many scapegoat excuses. Ultimately, the GM places that on the manager, whether right or wrong. I'm not taking a position for or against that idea, frankly, with a well assembled team, I'm pretty sure that most managerial candidates won't cost or gain many wins. Right. What I'm saying is that those kind of antics have been the scuttlebutt about the Red Sox for at least the entire time Francona was running the team, and they were even hyped up after they won the '04 WS. I can buy someone saying a lack of conditioning meant their pitching went flat at the end of the season, but that general climate/attitude/whatever was pervasive the entire time he was there and it didn't seem to be too much of a detriment. If this was Hendry, wouldn't we call this obvious reactionary BS, designed to imitate this years WS winner? I just call it damned if you do/damned if you don't. It's like Quade and his nicknames; if the team is good that's the kind of crap meatballs gobble up. If the team sucks or falls apart, all of a sudden it becomes the type of thing the meatballs zero in on to hate.