When the Boston Red Sox abruptly fired Dave Dombrowski while the team hosted the Yankees at Fenway on a brisk evening in mid-September 2019, it was safe to assume things hadn’t ended well.
Firing a top executive during the season is always uncomfortable, at best. But in this case, it was less than eleven months after Dombrowski had led the Sox to the Promised Land. The 2018 Sox won a franchise-record 108 games and steamrolled their way to their fourth championship in fifteen years. No other MLB team has more than three in this millennium.
But aside from occasionally saying he doesn’t think the sullied reputation he left Boston with is fair (it’s not), Dombrowski hasn’t spoken much about how things ended. He quietly got to work endeavoring to bring an MLB team to Nashville. When that stalled, he took the job with the Philadelphia Phillies in December 2020. Less than two years later, the Phillies – a team without postseason play since 2011 – are in the World Series for the first time since 2009, and Dombrowski is the first GM-type (titles change) to lead four different teams to the World Series. Meanwhile, the Red Sox just finished their second last-place season in the three years since they fired Dombrowski.
Of course, with the Phillies vying for the ultimate prize, Dombrowski’s time in Boston – specifically how it ended – came up again. While he says he doesn’t want Boston ‘to be the story’ during his new team’s October run, he dropped a small, but notable piece of information when praising his former colleagues:
"“We won three divisions, then had 84 wins. I’m proud of what we did in Boston.You cannot believe the number of texts and emails I get from people in the Boston front office and within the Boston organization congratulating us. I’ve still got a lot of friends there, so it’s great.”"
That part is nice. What’s notable is that when asked if principal owner John Henry is one of those ‘lifelong friends,’ the answer was a resounding “No.”
According to Dombrowski, he hasn’t spoken with Henry since the night he was fired.
Dave Dombrowski says he and Red Sox owner John Henry haven’t spoken since 2019 firing
Can you blame him? They go back decades, to when Henry purchased the team then known as the Florida Marlins in 1999. Dombrowski had been their GM since 1992 and built them their first championship team in 1997. After turning the Detroit Tigers into a solid contender for much of the 2000s and early 2010s, the Sox brought him to Boston in August 2015. At the time, Henry showered him with praise:
"“I have known Dave very well for a long time. Tom and I have no doubts that Dave is the right person to strengthen our baseball operations group going forward. He is one of the most highly regarded executives in all of baseball, and had options to go with other clubs. We feel very fortunate that he wanted to come to Boston, and wanted to further his career — now with the Red Sox — as one of the great architects of winning baseball clubs.”"
Dombrowski doesn’t owe the Sox anything, certainly not Henry. He had other suitors at the time and chose Boston. He orchestrated three division titles and added another gleaming trophy to the overflowing case. The Sox are still benefitting from some of his stellar drafting and international signings. It was far from perfect, but it would be disingenuous to pretend anything ever is.
He shouldn’t feel too bad, though. He’s clearly in a much better setting now. Besides, Henry never talks to the Boston media anymore, either.
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