Hall of Famer Peter Gammons of the MLB Network and NESN joined the Dennis & Callahan Show on Tuesday morning to discuss Mark McGwire’s admission that he used steroids for most of his career. Gammons looked at how the issue of performance-enhancing drugs will affect the legacies of McGwire, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds and others. He also concluded by offering his assessment of the shape of the 2010 Red Sox, whom he believes will be better than the 2009 team.

A transcript is below. To listen to the interview, click here.

How many steps forward versus backwards did Mark McGwire take?

They eliminated doubt, which is I guess a good thing. I found it – I don’t know how you found it – but I found it sad in a lot of ways. I watch some of these guys, and I think about Clemens and some of these other people, there’s a delusion there. I couldn’t believe that McGwire kept saying that he has the God-given ability to hit home runs. Now, when he was at USC, I can remember the late, great Red Sox scout Joe Stevenson calling me up and saying, ‘Mark McGwire is going to be one of the greatest home run hitters of all time.’ Yes, he hit 49 home runs as a rookie. Yes, he had all those injuries with the plantar fasciitis and all that. But to say it’s only health reasons – the fact is, a lot of people took steroids so that they could work out eight hours a day and get bigger. I think it really hurt him in the eyes, not of people who vote for the Hall of Fame, but in public opionion. For him to say that his home run numbers, the fact that he has the greatest home runs per at-bat ratio of anyone in baseball history, had nothing to do with steroids, I think it hurt him terribly. I think a lot of us were just going, ‘Please, don’t say that.’

It was like he was trying to accomplish forgiveness and legitimacy for his career. Those two things seem mutually exclusive.

I agree. I know from talking to guys like Mike Holliday, the Duncan brothers, Skip Schumaker, McGwire would take them into the house in the winter and work with them and coach. He loves that. I really believe that first and foremost he wants to come back and teach and share. He was a very intelligent hitter by the end of his career. I know he wants to share that. Matt Holliday,the stories that he tells about McGwire are tremendous. I think he kind of realizes in the deeper recesses of his mind that his chances of making the Hall of Fame are probably slight. He probably felt, ‘Well, if I confess, maybe.’ But I think he dug himself a bigger whole with this – the whole denial thing. I remember, was it two years ago that Clemens was in front of Congress? I said to Mark Shapiro, I was watching a game in Winter Haven, we were talking about Clemens. I said, ‘Actually, watching him, I think he believes that he never did anything, that he’s completely innocent.’ Mark said, ‘Well, Psychology 7 will tell you: people who are self-absorbed often become self-delusional.’ I think that’s happened to a lot of these baseball players, because steroids seem to be so important.

He said he did it for his health, but when he started doing steroids, he started getting hurt every year, and he had no answer for that contradiction.

Absolutely. And he didn’t tie, from 1993-94 to 1998, he didn’t tie that. He left strings unattached there that lead a lot of us to say, ‘Ah.’ I’ve spent a lot of time with him over his career. I must say, I really like him. In ’98, I was with him for about five days in St. Louis. They had just lost five games in a row. Todd Stottlemyre went out, knocked down the first two hitters and threw a shutout. McGwire hit a home run in the eighth inning to make it 6-0 from 5-0. Afterwards, everyone wanted to talk to McGwire and he said, ‘My home run is meaningless. Todd Stottlemyre just saved the team.’ There were other things like that. For instance, when he broke Maris’ record, he was up there, they had that stage after the game at Busch Stadium. Up there, it was McGwire, his son, his ex-wife, and his ex-wife’s husband up on the podium with him. I remember saying to Dan Patrick, we were doing something in the studio at ESPN, I said, ‘The great thing about that is that Mark McGwire sent a message to everybody in this country who’s divorced that, in the end, it’s all about the kids.’ He still had that very good relationship with the ex-wife’s husband, just because he wanted his son to have the sense of normalcy. There were a lot of things like that. I remember one time in ’96, doing a long interview with him, all of a sudden he started trashing himself for the way his first marriage ended. He was on camera just ripping himself. I was thinking, ‘You know, this guy is really a decent human being.’ But now, when he gets up on this stage, ‘Okay, I want to be forgiven,’ he lost that humanity that he showed so many times in his life. It made me very sad. It really did.

We know what we think we know – there’s the statistical evidence of the frequency of his home runs, and the anecdotal evidence of the distance of those home runs. Was there anecdotal evidence that he was hitting the ball further than anyone else in history?

I don’t always trust those trackers of where home runs go, but yes, there was enough evidence to say he hit the ball further than anybody, with the possible exception of Canseco around ’89 or ’92. … It really does bother me that a Bonds or a Clemens, who were clearly Hall of Fame players, that we’re so insecure and so frail we have to go somewhere else. That’ss human nature. Trying to sit through and spend an hour trying to interview Alex Rodriguez last February taught me something for the rest of my life, that the bigger they are, the frailer they are. I actually like him much more because of that. I’ve talked to him a lot about how he basically addressed himself, was hyperventilating and everything else. It’s odd to me that so many athletes are so insecure. I remember guys on the Orioles telling me that the most insecure guy they ever met was Cal Ripken. Maybe that is all part of greatness. As we sit down and read Game Change in the next week, maybe we’ll find the same thing about Bill Clinton.

TJ Quinn listed all the steroids that McGwire used. He talked to players who said that McGwire was one of the big proponents of steroids, how to use them and how to stack them. Did you ever hear anything along those lines?

No, but I wouldn’t be surprised. We do know that when he got to the major leagues, that Jason Giambi hooked onto Mark McGwire as his mentor, as his best friend and all the rest. TJ had done the work for the Daily News, where they linked the drug dealer in Michigan down to Southern California. We were talking about this on MLB the other night. … He was never suspended. He was never in the Mitchell Report. There was the Daily News link, but McGwire had kind of stayed away from it. All we had was what our eyes told us, and that can be deceiving. There are examples of people who either got smaller, like Jeff Bagwell because he had the arthritic shoulder and couldn’t lift a weight in five years, or some other guys who maybe just naturally got bigger. But the whole McGwire thing has seemed so much larger than life. That one piece that TJ did, I thought, pretty much convinced us that he was guilty. Now, of course he’s admitted it. I believe his timeframe. That’s probably true. I think some of the testimony he gave about how much he did in ’89, ’90, I’m not sure how accurate that is.

The whole Hall of Fame question is an interesting one. I know that some of my sabermetric friends believe that this is all irrelevant, that it doesn’t matter who took steroids and who didn’t. I don’t agree with that. I do very strongly believe that once baseball finally had drug testing in 2004, that anyone who violates the drug policy and is caught is automatically disqualified from the Hall of Fame. …

The Hall of Fame is not a right. It’s an honor. Should we honor people that essentially cheated? Somebody said to me, ‘It wasn’t illegal.’ Yeah, but it was in federal law.

So to your mind, Manny is out for the Hall of Fame?

I think Manny and Palmeiro. A-Rod was before testing, before 2004. That was the 2003 random testing that was supposed to be anonymous. But I think that Palmeiro and Manny, I don’t think they have a chance of ever making the Hall of Fame.

Does your viewpoint change if they haven’t tested positive in Major League Baseball? We know what we think about Bonds and Clemens. Will our views soften over the decades based on who they are and what they meant to the game?

I think they may. We do have those issues. Last spring, Mike Piazza walked up to me and said, ‘Can you believe that because of the acne on my back, that I did steroids?’ There are so many players that we think may have done [steroids] but we don’t know, whether it’s Pudge Rodriguez or whoever. It’s a hard thing to live down. I think it would be nice if we had more tests, proof, if we had more ways to judge players. I go back to Bagwell. If you take Bagwell’s home runs, RBIs, runs, extra-base hits, OPS, OPS+, slugging, Gold Gloves, Jim Rice is close to Jeff Bagwell in one statistical category. Yet that question will be raised for him when he goes up in front of the Hall of Fame next year. I’ve talked a lot to his best friend, Brad Ausmus, about it. Brad has sworn up and down, there’s no way that Bagwell did it. But just the notion of it. If Jeff Bagwell is completely innocent but he’s punished because other people flew under the radar, that’s kind of a sad story.

Could Clemens ever do what McGwire did in offering a confession?

No. I thought McGwire was stilted. It wasn’t the personality that I knew on the field or in the clubhouse. But I think Roger is too programmed and too stubborn. I think it would be very difficult. I think he’ll have to do it at some point in his life, but I shudder to think what would happen. I think it could turn into a disaster.

Last time he attempted to tell his side of the story, it was laughable.

It was. That whole question, I actually had a friend who was finishing her PhD in psychology at Boston College, and we used to talk about it in the gym all the time. She used to say, that business of going from self-absorbed to self-delusional is really the essence of most psychology courses. Maybe a lot of these guys will never come out of it. It may be, if – I was going to say Pudge Rodriguez, but he might pull the Sammy Sosa stance and say, ‘I don’t speak English any more; I only speak English when I sign my contracts’ – we’re still a long way. We were looking at the list of guys coming up in the next few years. Juan Gonzalez is on the list next year. Sooner or later, Pudge is going to come up. Sosa is going to come up. This debate is not going away. I think it’s great that McGwire tipped his hat to Bud Selig and the testing policy, that he laid down behind it. That’s a good thing. But still, the question remains, if indeed the Hall of Fame is the highest honor a player can get, and since it’s not a right but an honor, should these guys be put in the Hall of Fame. I think it’s an issue, it’s not a statistical right. Ken Rosenthal the other night pulled out the ballot and read the lines about character. It is something we have to think about.

If he hadn’t done steroids, would McGwire be anything close to a Hall of Fame player? Without steroids, he had no chance. What would vote for Bonds and Clemens?

Right now, given the evidence, probably no in both cases. And I believe very strongly that Bonds was a Hall of Famer before 1999. What it does to the game – and I think Jayson Stark wrote about it very well, what McGwire ignores is what the disillusionment about 1998 means to the sport. I think that’s important. I know the other day, when Tom [Verducci] and Kenny [Rosenthal] and I were talking about the question, Bonds and A-Rod and Clemens all would have been Hall of Famers without steroids. McGwire would go to the Hall of Fame based on power numbers. But I’m not sure it’s that simple.

Why would you want to reward players for greed?

The insecurities of these guys, the frailties. I joke about it all the time, I wish that William Shakespeare were around right now to cover this era. That’s what he was writing about. The insecurity that these guys have is just remarkable to me, that need to somehow be perfect. And I really found that in Alex [Rodriguez] – his need to make people believe that he was perfect on the field and off. Now, people knowing he wasn’t, he was a totally different guy this [past] year. He seemed so much more relaxed, so much happier [after admitting steroid use in an interview with Gammons before the season]. He understood, you know what? It’s about team.

What was interesting last night, when we were doing MLB, Costas was asked, what was McGwire like after the interview? Bob said nothing basically changed. He wasn’t any different. But after I finished the Rodriguez interview last spring, he came back before I left, and chatted. He said, ‘I hope this frees me. I hope that now I can just go on and be a human being and stop pretending.’ I think he got it. He got what he went through. You understood that he was wrong, and I think he understood and I know he understands now, there’s no need to be perfect. Just be a baseball player. Derek Jeter’s not perfect, but people love Derek Jeter. I think Alex learned something from that. I’m not sure these other guys have learned anything from it.

Did you predict that Adrian Beltre would hit more homers than Jason Bay?

Yes, playing in Fenway Park with that lineup, as opposed to Jason Bay in the Mets lineup, yeah, I did.

What do you think for Beltre? Forty homers?

Thirty, 32.

Bay won’t hit 30?

Not in that ballpark.

What about Cameron?

.270, 25 homers, and the best thing about him is the way he absolutely killed – what was it, a .954 OPS against left-handers the last five years? He does absolutely kill left-handed pitchers. In this league right now, in the division where you’re going to see Pettitte, Sabathia, Price, and Matusz probably three, four times apiece, that lineup against left-handed pitching is going to be really important.

Are the Red Sox the second best team in the American League?

Probably the second-best team in baseball.

Are the Red Sox we’ll see in Fort Myers better than in October?

I think they’re better this year. I’ll tell you why. The whole run-scoring thing, I’m not that worried about. I think that the depth of the lineup will be very good. I think the depth of the roster is much better. It’s amazing to me they finished second, they had the second-best record, the second-best run differential, and they had 55 games started by [Brad] Penny, [John] Smoltz, [Paul] Bird, a bad [Daisuke] Matsuzaka, [Michael] Bowden and [Junichi] Tazawa. In 55 games, more than one-third of their games, their starting pitchers had a 6.28 earned run average, and they still had the second-best run differential and record in the league. They could change that a lot.”

By the way, in talking to our old friend Mike Roberts, who used to be a college coach but he runs the baseball program at Athletes Performance in Scottsdale, he said that Matsuzaka is in unbelievable shape. He’s been there for about five weeks so far. He said the transformation from last year is astounding.

Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, who managed Mark McGwire for most of the slugger’s career and remained adamant over the years that the former single-season record holder for homers had not used steroids, spoke with ESPN’s Baseball Tonight on Monday about his former player’s admission that he had used steroids throughout his career. Courtesy of ESPN, here are some excerpts of the interview.

LaRussa, on his reaction to today’s news:

“I didn’t know anything except that I knew we ran a legit program and that Mark was a good example of working his butt off and getting his strength gains as a product of hard work. I did, and still speak to his character and integrity.”

LaRussa, on his current perspective regarding McGwire as a hitting instructor and his integrity:

“I think, as the entire circumstances come out of his usage – why, when, where – I think he’ll come off and regain a lot of stature that he had with fans and with his peers about being a solid pro…he admits he made mistakes and he’s sorry for it. We all make mistakes and at least he owns up to it.

“He got so much criticism about his performance in (front of) Congress. One thing he did not do is lie, and I don’t think he ever would.”

Retired pitcher Curt Schilling checked in with The Big Show to discuss Mark McGwire’s admission that he used steroids starting in 1989, including during the 1998 season in which he set the home run record. To listen to the complete interview, click here. A transcript is below.

What’s your take on McGwire and how he handled this?

I think he’s the first guy to come real clean – legitimately clean. No more, ‘Well, I did it once and I never did it again.’ I think everyone knew to some degree. But until you had your word, like everything else, it was speculation. I’m glad. I’m glad he did it.

Do you think this plays well with fans? He went into detail.

It seems like everybody else lies about it, then they lie about the lies. I always feel like any time you hear guys talk about stuff like this, there’s 10 times the stuff that you don’t know. He said he used it on and off throughout the ‘90s. I’m probably pretty sure, based on playing against him, looking at him, the way he was the entire decade, he probably used the entire decade. Why wouldn’t you if you got the results he did from them?

Players probably chuckled when he said he wasn’t using steroids.

The ones that weren’t doing it with him, I’m sure.

Jose Canseco was another player who came completely clean.

Yeah, but he’s disgusting.

At the Congressional hearing, McGwire said that because lawyers told him to say that he should say what he did about not addressing the past. You said it’s a lot different under oath. Were you advised by attorneys?

The quotes that got me subpoenaed were locker-room chatter, grab-ass stuff that you do on a daily basis. In front of Congress, you’re under oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If you’re going to put a name out there, you’re going to end someone’s career and ruin someone’s life. Having not seen anyone inject themselves, anything I would have done, anyone I would have named would have been speculation. I certainly wasn’t going to get myself in trouble or get anyone else in trouble without a 100 percent guarantee of the fact that it’s true.

You’re guarded in the way you say things if you’re trying to hide or cover up. I didn’t know. I never knew. Everyone railed on me about clamming up. There was nothing for me to say. The comments that I’d been quoted on were the comments you made on a daily basis in the clubhouse when you were shooting the bull.

Half of it is crap. You speculate. You talk. Over the course of a nine-month season, a lot of people say a lot of things that are hyperbole and blown out of proportion. It was a common topic for a long period of time. I spent 10 years defending Roger Clemens – the only guy in the clubhouse defending Roger Clemens.

Does this put pressure on other guys to come forward (aside from Clemens and Bonds, given their perjury cases)?

He told the story we’re expecting to hear from everyone else who got caught. That’s the story. That really is the only defense, unless you were a guy who went to a legitimate doctor and got a legitimate prescription for extreme cases where steroids are prescribed. If you don’t’ come out and do what he did, then everybody is going, ‘Well, what else don’t we know?’

How do you think it plays out in the public and with Hall of Fame voters?

Knowing what I know about Mark McGwire, I don’t think he cares about either one. I think he wants to come back and coach and be on the baseball field, be in the clubhouse, be in the environment again. I don’t think he gives two wits about what guys say and write. I really don’t. He never was a guy who was motivated by that stuff.

I always looked at him kind of like I looked at Barry. You were one of the best ever, and you had to cheat to be better? I don’t get that.

Will this change the minds of voters? Will there be forgiveness in the public eye?

I love Mark and I think the world of Mark. I’ve known him for quite a long time. I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’m not sure he’s a Hall of Famer anyway. He hit a lot of homers for a lot of years and that’s all he did. I’m not belittling that, but the Hall of Fame is for the best of the best. He was never a guy, I don’t know. I think it will change, and he will end up getting a pass.

But there’s a line that, once it’s crossed, you can never go back. When that first player – that Palmeiro or Bonds goes in – then no one can ever use the steroid defense again, I don’t think.

Now that he’s admitted to use from the late-‘80s on, his greatness was based on his power. We now know he got the power from PEDs.

I think he was a naturally huge guy anyway. I think he always had a lot of power. But I’ve always argued, and football players can probably give me a better response than other people, I’ve never looked at steroids as the motivation for guys to use them to get huge biceps.

In baseball, I always looked at steroids, the motivation being to recover faster and to be fresher. Everyone that talks about them talks about the downtime being smaller and less, and you feel fresh for the entire season. I would argue that gives you an enormous advantage over me on Sept. 1, when I’m pitching against you and I’m dragging ass and it’s six months into the season, and you’re showing up like it’s the first day of spring training.

To me, it wasn’t the biceps and triceps. It was the bat speed. To me, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds were game-fresh, April-fresh on Sept. 1, that gave them a huge advantage in my mind.

We all talked about this – all the freak injuries. It wasn’t a pulled hammy or a strained quad. It’s that everybody talks about the fact that steroids overstretch your body. You break joints. You tear ligaments in unusual or odd places. You look at all the guys over the last 10 years who we said, ‘Hmmm, that’s kind of weird.’ You do freakish things to yourself from an injury standpoint. And people go, ‘Wow – that’s odd. That’s weird. How do you do something like that?’

How’d you get your body without steroids?

I always tell people this is not a real athletic body – it’s a cruel family joke.

If McGwire’s motivation is to be back on the field, he was only going to be able to do this with a confession. We were trying to figure out how he’d do this. Now, he’s answered all the questions.

He did it perfectly. Other than admitting it five years ago, he did it perfectly. If I’m him, I sit there in spring training on that first day, and I say, ‘You’ve got 60 minutes. I’ll answer every non-baseball question you want to ask me, and I won’t answer another one the entire season.’ He’s already answered everything you could want to ask him anyway. What else are you going to ask him? Who else do you know? He’s not going to answer that. He’s not going to throw other people under the bus.

It just reeks of honesty. He came clean, because I think he realized, I’m going to be in that environment, 24/7, for nine months of the year. I’m not going to give anyone an angle. I think he made the admission that we all wish everybody had made when they got caught, instead of the, ‘Well, you know, I was trying to come back from injury and I only did it one time and it was my dad’s.’

If he gets positive treatment – after being a pariah – might more guys decide to confess?

The guys that don’t stand to get prison time, yes.

Giambi was accepted even though he never went into detail.

Another piece to this – don’t discount this – a lot of it has to deal with the people you’re dealing with. Everything I knew and have heard since about Barry, he was someone who was absolutely just a bad person.

To me, I always judge teammates on how they acted and interacted with non-uniform personnel, clubhouse kids, trainers and stuff. I’ve heard in the last couple years that Bonds was the worst ever at it and Clemens was not really cool about it. To me, that says more about you than anything else – how you treat the quote-unquote little guy.

Jason Giambi is the world’s nicest guy. McGwire, really nice guy, those guys are going to get, I think, different treatment because they’re different people. They’re kind people.

I’ve heard things that [Bonds] has said and done. I knew Barry. I was friends with Barry. We had the same agent coming up, when I was coming up. I saw him say things and do things to people that I sat back and said, ‘Wow.’

A lot of people cited race in how Bonds was treated by the media, yet Clemens got the same treatment.

[Bonds] treated people like crap, and half the time the race card was the card he played.

Clemens is in this until the end. What’s he thinking? If he’s clean, he’s a Hall of Famer.

I don’t think anybody on this planet thinks he’s clean. I don’t. And he was a guy who was instrumental in turning my career around. The lecture and speech I got from him was about hard work and dedication, passion, integrity, ethics, and all this other stuff. Then I come to find that it’s a lot of crap.

You can take steroids and still have a good work ethic.

Absolutely. That’s the thing about those guys. A-Rod and Bonds, those guys had unbelievable workout regimens that took it to another level. At the end of the day, it’s disappointing. It’s frustrating.

In a sense, I’m kind of like Pedro. I look back on what I did and the era I did it in, and I’m probably a little bit prouder of the fact that I did it the way I did it when all was said and done, and to think that I was competing against guys who were cheating, and probably a lot more than I knew.

At the end of the day, I got three rings. I don’t think steroids changed the amount of rings I got in my career, which is all I really care about.

Why did the Cardinals pay as much as they did for a guy (Matt Holliday) that nobody else was bidding for?

That was the question that people around baseball were asking last night, because we know that the Yankees weren’t involved. The Mets weren’t involved because they signed Jason Bay. The Red Sox weren’t involved because they offered Holliday that five-year deal at the beginning of the off-season then they moved off to John Lackey. The Angels weren’t involved, the Dodgers weren’t involved, the Phillies weren’t involved. So who pushed the number to that point?

I really think it probably comes down to this. The Cardinals had a fear that Holliday might decide, look, I’m just going to sign a one-year deal, go back out on the market next fall. If I’m the Cardinals, then I go with that rather than now putting themselves in a position with Albert Pujols set to become a free agent in two years, in order to re-sign him.

As one GM said last night, [Pujols] probably would be justified to ask for $30 million a year. The Cardinals have set themselves up for either A, not re-sign Albert Pujols because he’s going to become so expensive, or B, become committed to two players, ages 32-37, somewhere in the range of 42-48 million dollars a year. Those are the type of decisions that you see less and less of in baseball where there’s greater concern for flexibility, but the Cardinals obviously decided to go in a different direction.

Before I ask you about the Red Sox, I want to follow up on Holliday. Who do you think had the most influence there? Do you think that was Tony LaRussa, or was that a management call?

I think Tony certainly has a voice, it’s an important one in that organization. My guess is they felt some pressure with their fan base to try to put a winning team on the field. I don’t know, it surprised me that they would up giving in in a way that even the New York Mets didn’t in their negotiations with Jason Bay. Because if you really look at it, if they stood on an $85 million offer or a $90 million offer to [Holliday], who was going to challenge that? Why would they feel compelled to go to $120 million?

I don’t know if you saw the quote, I’m sure you did, from Joe Maddon, where he said Adrian Beltre is the best third baseman he’s ever seen with his own eyes. How do you see Beltre as a player defensively and what you think he’ll do for the Red Sox? Read the rest of this entry »

Red Sox manager Terry Francona went on Dale & Holley on Wednesday to take calls and questions about his job and the shape of the Red Sox going forward. He discussed the 2010 coaching staff, free agents such as Jason Bay, Alex Gonzalez and Angels pitcher John Lackey, the role for Jason Varitek, and more.

The interview will be available to hear on demand on the Dale & Holley Audio on Demand page. A transcript of highlights is below.

Where are you in the offseason?

We did some [coaching staff] interviews. We had some good interviews last week.

We obviously need to get our staff in order. That will take care of itself probably itself pretty soon. Then we have the free-agent process, which is obviously very important, and will be a long, slow, winding road. We’ve got a lot to do, and a lot of time to do it.

What is the status of the coaching staff?

We interviewed last week Ron Johnson, our Triple-A manager, who was very deserving of the interview, and Tom Goodwin who has been coordinating our outfield and baserunning in our minor leagues, who was very, very impressive. Not very experienced, but very impressive. Gary DiSarcina is certainly in the mix. Rob Leary is a guy whose name came up and needs to be in the mix.

Some of that is going to depend on – we have DeMarlo [Hale], we have [Tim Bogar] – we’re just trying to have the best staff we can, and one decision might affect the next.

Does the familiarity of a Ron Johnson help his candidacy?

He mentioned in his interview, out of the 40 guys on our 40-man roster, he’s had 22 of them the last couple years. Sure it’s helpful.

We really wanted to hire from within. I’ve been here long enough now. We need to promote from within when we can. There are a lot of good candidates outside of the organization. Their names came up. I think it’s important for us to promote from within, and we’re certainly going to do that.

Do you believe the Gold Glove reflects the most deserving defensive players or is it a popularity contest and/or something driven by offensive performance? Specifically, how did you view Derek Jeter winning the Gold Glove versus Elvis Andrus.

I actually think that’s a pretty good point you make. I’m probably of the mindset that Jeter had a very good year defensively. I really do think he did. Elvis Andrus had a spectacular year.

I think we tried as a staff to give it some time. We didn’t just want to have the ballots show up and write in some names. There have been some things that happened from time to time. I remember one year Rafael Palmeiro got the Gold Glove, and I think he only played first base for 28 games. That’s not good.

The thing you have to remember, sometimes you see guys on SportsCenter make spectacular plays. That doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re a Gold Glove candidate. The other thing you alluded to, and I think you’re right, is that reputation comes into play. Sometimes, in this league, staffs, coaches, managers are a little bit wary of voting a guy in in his first, second year. They want to see him earn it and see it over time. It’s kind of like making the All-Star team.

Would Jason Varitek make a good coach?

I don’t think yet. I wouldn’t approach him with that. I don’t think he would like that one.

I saw Tek the other day. I think he’s in a good place. I think he’s going to do a good job. I’ve said this a lot of times: he has that ‘C’ on his chest for a reason.
Victor is going to catch the majority of games. How much, we don’t know.

I think Tek can be an unbelievable backup catcher. Because his body can’t handle catching 140 games anymore, that doesn’t mean, if you run him out there less than that, especially from the right side – by the time July rolled around this year, he had 13, 14 home runs. You’re not going to find backup catchers who have that ability, that game-calling experience. He kind of gets run into the ground physically. He’s caught a lot of games. Some of that is my responsibility, too. But I think that in the situation we have, hopefully, upcoming, he can really excel in that.

Do you think his clubhouse role changes with decreased playing time?

I don’t think so, and I think a lot of that is because of Jason. If he didn’t accept that, then it could have been a problem. I don’t see that happening. I saw him the other day. He was about as fired up as I’ve seen him. Last year, that’s a tough thing to not play. I don’t care who you are, whether you’re good enough or not, to have someone come and tell you that somebody is taking your playing time is hard to take. I never saw Jason put himself ahead of the team. I didn’t expect him to walk to the clubhouse and lead the cheers for not playing. At the same time, he never let that get in the way of his caring for the team of helping Victor. Again, that’s part of the reason he has the C on his chest. He’s lived up to that. I know he will continue to.

Do you see Jason Bay re-signing?

I know I’m not in the minority when I say I hope so. I don’t want to make Theo’s job harder than it is. If I’m out there politicking for a guy, that doesn’t help Theo do his job.

You have to be patient. As fans, as the manager, you want things to happen now. We want to have our team in place now. It’s not going to happen. It’s going to take time.

He has earned the right to be a free agent. This is his first time, and he wants to see it through. You know we’re going to be a major player. We always are.

Do I hope it gets done? Yeah. I bet you Jason Bay hopes it gets done. But he’s going to have other options, too.

Are you open to going on free-agent recruiting trips?

We’ve actually done some of those things in the past, just a little more under the radar. John Farrell and some guys went down to see Smoltz. During the Teixeira thing…We’ve done a lot more of that than people realize. We just don’t publicize it.

Is adding a starting pitcher more valuable than a middle-of-the-order hitter?

Every time Theo talks to me, I always say get a pitcher. I know we need to score runs. When you don’t pitch, you certainly make life a lot more difficult for the whole team. When you have a well-pitched game, even when you go into the seventh or eighth inning, you have a chance. When you don’t pitch, the game looks sloppy. A lot of balls in the gap, more cutoffs and relays, you have more errors. There’s more plays to be made.

When you have solid pitching, and sometimes past solid into spectacular, that’s when your team really has a chance, not only in the regular season, but it carries over into the postseason.

The organization has met with John Lackey’s agent. Can you comment on him?

John Lackey is one of the best. Every year, there’s a couple guys that seem like they can sway the fortunes of an organization. He’s that type of pitcher. Now, to get that type of pitcher, you’re going to have to make quite a commitment. That’s something that makes our organization a little bit uneasy. It doesn’t mean a guy can’t come in and help you win. If there’s an injury along the way, that can set your organization back quite a bit. There’s a lot to think about besides just the year 2010. You’re possibly talking about 2015. That’s a lot of years.

Do you consider him an ace?

Yeah, probably. I probably do. He’s missed a little bit of time, but when he’s out there, I think their team feels it’s going to win. He can match up against Beckett, Lester. He can go head-to-head with the better guys in the league and hold his own.

Would you like to have Alex Gonzalez back?

At a time of the year when we had a lot of moving parts at shortstop, he was really a stabilizing force. When the ball was hit, you’re out. Nobody more than myself, I appreciated I a lot, because we had a lot of moving parts. Going forward, to have him back, from our front office’s side, if we could get him back at the right price, yeah. We would enjoy that.

The thing to remember with Gonzy, what he did the last six weeks of the season was really helpful. When you look at that .310 on-base percentage, for a full year, if that’s what you’re going to go with, you’ve got to recoup that somewhere else. That’s something to think about.

How do you improve on the home/road splits?

That seems to be the $64 million question. The obvious things are that we’re very comfortable at home. We have great fans. We’ve got guys like Mikey Lowell that know they can hit that left-field wall. David Ortiz knows that he can reach out and hit the Wall.

It’s not just on the road, but especially against the better pitching in the league, we have not done well. We got into Anaheim in the playoffs, the same thing happened. The first two road games, we did nothing. It’s not a lack of trying on our players. I don’t feel like we need to have team meetings. We just get into the bigger ballparks and we don’t score as much. Some of our guys don’t reach the fences as much as they do at home.

It’s been a problem for about the last three years. The flip side of that is that we’ve played so well at home that it’s outweighed how we’ve played on the road.

What do you expect from David Ortiz?

What David’s going through is what a lot of guys go through. He’s getting older, he’s a big guy, and he’s been injured.

When that happens, your work ethic or your workload has to increase over the offseason or time starts catching up a little bit. That’s just the way it is. It’s not fair. Wake and I have had this conversation every year since I’ve been here. If you want to keep playing or pitching, you’ve got to work harder because you’re getting older. That’s just the way it is – especially with big-body guys who have been injured.

To David’s credit, he’s been in the ballpark everyday since the season’s been over. He looks terrific. He’s going to have to, because he’s got big shoes to wear. If he can’t, if you have a DH who’s not whacking the ball all over the ballpark, it kind of puts you in a tough spot. We’re so used to David hitting 40, 45, 50 home runs. We got used to that. If he’s hitting 18, it makes us a different team.

How do you value RBIs?

I think there are some things that can be skewed. I grew up in an era where, if you hit .300, you were a good player. Well, you know what? That’s not the tell-tale. I was the perfect example. I could hit .300. I never helped our team. I hit all singles, I never walked, I wasn’t fast enough to score any runs. It was kind of cosmetic. Getting on base is a very important stat. It doesn’t mean we have nine guys up there trying to walk. But it means if they’re seeing pitches and working counts, they’re going to become more dangerous hitters. If they’re on base, we talk all the time about keep the line moving, You have to have a good enough team to do that. If you have four or five guys who are taking their walks, and four or five guys that can’t hit, that’s not going to work. If you have a balanced team, which we try to do, and you have that approach, it’s going to work.

You seem to bring both both sides — statistical analysis and scouting — together.

I think there is both sides. You have to kind of wed those and come up with the best way of putting a team together. I don’t think you can do just one or the other. I think you can make mistakes. Sometimes the game can deceive you if you just look at it with your eyes. That’s why we look at statistics all the time. At the same time, there are people playing this game and you try not to forget that. You try to look at both and make good decisions.

Can you wait on Bay’s decision until mid-January? And, do the Sox have enough resources to trade for both a top pitcher and hitter?

I don’t think you’re going to see Jason out there on Jan. 15. I’ve got a feeling that won’t happen. That’s something Theo has to balance. You play poker a little bit. Fortunately, he’s a good poker player. I guarantee you he and his guys don’t have Plan A or Plan B – they’re probably down to the middle of the alphabet. One move affects the other. That’s just the way it is.

Do I think we have enough to make trades? Yeah. Do we want to? I don’t know. When you’re talking about acquiring big-name, good players, you’re going to have to give up big-name, young good players. In today’s game, not a lot of teams want to do that. That’s a tough balance. If you get productive players who aren’t making a lot of money yet, that’s really, really valuable.

How difficult is it to maintain relationships with players and balance those with the business side of the game?

That’s actually a good question.

We had to release George Kottaras. I love George. He never played. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a good kid.

[Relationships with players] never get in the way of what we’re doing on the field, but at the same time, I do want to enjoy these players. It makes the bad news a little bit harder but doesn’t change the message. I don’t want to go through this and not get close to some of these players. … When you get around these guys for a while, you can’t help but get close to them. But it doesn’t change the message. We’ve given a lot of guys difficult messages. It’s not fun, but we do what we think is right.

How are you doing physically? How much longer do you want to manage?

Physically, this is probably the best I’ve done after a year. That’s probably because we got done prematurely, which is bad, but I’m actually doing it pretty well.

As far as doing it, I don’t know. It takes a lot out of me. It’s not just managing. Managing here, although I love it and I’m kind of addicted to it, it’s difficult. I can’t see myself doing this for 30 years. Saying that, I haven’t lost my excitement or my wanting to do it. When there comes a day when I don’t have that, regardless of what my contract says, I won’t do it.

How do you view Jed Lowrie going forward?

That’s an interesting question. I just spoke to Jed yesterday. He’s up in Canada.

He’s doing some therapy on that wrist. The wrist is troublesome. He already had a surgery. We love him as a player. We would love to be able to plug him in at shortstop everyday. He’s a switch-hitter. He could probably hit a ton of doubles and an occasional home run. He’s pretty reliable. The one thing that hasn’t been reliable is his health. It puts us in a little bit of a tricky spot. Quite honestly, it’s difficult. We don’t know quite what to do. We can’t put all of the shortstop position in his hands because we don’t know if he’s healthy enough to do it. But if he is healthy enough, he’s good enough to do it. We’re in a little bit of a predicament.

Is the ability to get on base born or bred? Can you develop patience and teach people to wear out pitchers?

I don’t think you can do it at the major-league level, or if you can, it’s few and far between. That’s why we take so much time in player development talking about that. When they get to the big leagues, the game is going a lot faster. They’re facing better competition, better pitching, and if you expect guys to all of a sudden start swinging at strikes, I think you’re kidding yourself.

So we spend a lot of time on that in the minor leagues. Guys don’t move up as much if they can’t swing at strikes.

Johnny Damon is a great example. Sometimes he walked. Sometimes he fouled off 12 pitches, I don’t know if it was by design, he was fouling off balls all over the ballpark. It was a talent of his. You put him in the leadoff spot and he helped wear down pitchers. I think if you get into teams’ bullpens before they want you to, you’re going to have success.

Mark McGwire is back in the news after the Cardinals hired him as a hitting coach — should he be in the Hall of Fame?

I’m just here to talk about the future, not the past. [Laughter] To be honest with you, it’s a subject that is really difficult to talk about. In our game, I think you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think people are guilty, but you’re also having people be guilty who haven’t been proven guilty. So, in my job, where I’m stand, I’m better off not saying something. It’s not fair. It’s unfair to some people on the good side. It’s probably also unfair to some of the other people. our game is what’s been guilty. we’ve taken steps to fix it. We were just a little bit late, and we’re paying the price for it.

What was the impact of the stories this summer surrounding David Ortiz?

It doesn’t help, ever. I think if you let it hurt, it’s our fault and shame on us. We have a responsibility to play the game regardless of what’s going on. We just, at the time, we were beat up and we weren’t playing very good. That didn’t have anything to do with us losing. I don’t think it was helping David hit. I think he was worn out from all that. But I think when those things get in the way, it’s an excuse.

What is Jacoby Ellsbury’s potential as a power hitter?

He’s already stolen about 70 bases, which is one of the gest in the league. I think with health, that will probably get a little bit better, because if he maintains his speed, he’s certainly going to learn the league a little better. His hitting, his offense, I think he’s going to grow into some power. What we’re a little bit wary of is trying to get him to pull the ball in the air. Good young players who play everyday get stronger and get better by experience. He’s going to hit some balls out of the ballpark. The most important thing I see with Jake is his ability to get on base. If he gets on base, because of his legs, because of our offense, he’s going to score runs. When he scores runs, we win games.

Were you surprised that the Yankees succeeded with an older club, with guys like Mariano Rivera being around 40 years old?

[Rivera] is a freak of nature. He’s got that pitch, that cutter, it attacks lefties, it fools righties. He’s been doing it for a long time. They have – it’s probably not real popular to sit here and talk about how good the Yankees are – they had a phenomenal team. They had ways to beat you. We’re a good example. We caught them early, before they were ready to go.

Did they change mid-year?

They weren’t playing tremendously well when we caught them early. They were hovering around .500. we played some good baseball. We had a great comeback against Mariano when Jason hit the home run. Some things fell our way. Then they got rolling.

A couple things. They got Alex back in the lineup. I don’t know if it’s coincidence or not, but when he comes back, Teixeira goes crazy, so now all of a sudden you have a three and four hitter, or four and five hitter, going off. Their baserunning was really, really good. They had the ability to steal a lot of bases. And their bullpen came together. They had one of the best bullpens in the league. That’s why they won so many games late. They’d bring in their bullpen, they wouldn’t give up runs, and with that lineup, they’d get into other people’s bullpens and they’d win.

Some defensive metrics say that Ellsbury is a bad outfielder. How is that possible?

First of all, it didn’t say he’s a bad outfielder. It said he didn’t measure up to league average as a centerfielder. That’s two different things. Pretty much every team has their best defensive outfielder in centerfield. As you go through the American League and you look at the centerfielders, to be an average centerfielder defensively you’ve got to be pretty damn good.

I actually think he is. The defensive equation is the hardest, in my opinion, to evaluate. They’re trying to make it better every year. They keep making adjustments to it. There’s a lot of things that come into play. You play here and then you go to Texas, that’s like going to a roller rink. The ground they cover is going to be less. There’s a lot of things out there that aren’t perfect. They’re trying to find ways to measure it. I do think Jacoby is getting better. I think he will continue to get better as he understands the strength of guys in the league, positioning, how important it is, I do think he will get better. I think he goes left to right very well. I think he is still learning how to go back on a ball, get back to the wall and show that athleticism.

[Defensive metrics are] more of a tool for signing guys and for the front office. It’s not something we look at going into a game because it doesn’t really help us prepare for a team.

If pitchers fall into bad patterns on the mound, why aren’t they forced back into the gameplan?

That’s not answerable in 30 seconds.

They’re human. … When you’re out there on the mound, there’s a very fine line between success and failure. Sometimes you’re talking about a ball that Beckett throws at 94 miles per hour fastball that an umpire views as an inch off the plate that, other nights, he gets it called. If he gets it called for strike one, now he loosens up, he throws a breaking ball for a strike; if it’s called a ball…

When things aren’t working, we don’t force guys to do it. If he goes out there without a breaking ball, for us to continually tell him to throw it probably isn’t going to win that game. It’s a fine line. We tell catchers all the time about, early in games, stay with pitches so we don’t turn a guy into a two-pithc pitcher. At the same time, if he’s given up six runs, he’s not going to be out there later in the game. So we try to balance that line and do what we think is right. It’s easy to say use all three or four pitches, change speeds and locate. But unless they do that, they’re not going to be in the game.

Is Jon Lester or Josh Beckett the ace?

Part of what makes us good is that we have two. I don’t think it’s important. I know you give the ball to somebody on Opening Day. Once Opening Day comes and goes, it doesn’t really matter. I think we have the ability to send two guys out there that can match up with anyone in the game. That’s part of the reason that makes us good.

The way we were set up this year, we were going to use both of them twice anyway.

If you have to make a decision and one guy pitches once, then it’s a big decision. If you have the ability to pitch both guys twice, which we were going to do, then it doesn’t really matter.