By Alex Costello
either accept an internship at New York City-based Sterling and Ross publishing company, with the opportunity to contribute a few chapters to a book, or take a contract the publisher offered to write his own book about Theo Epstein, who at the age of 27 became the youngest general manager in baseball history. The challenge: no one had yet written a book on Epstein, who didn’t want to be interviewed.
It wasn't too difficult for Frascella to decide to write the book. Frascella's book, "Theology: How a Boy Wonder Led the Boston Red Sox to the Promised Land," was released on April 1, after the publisher spent two years searching for someone to write the book about Epstein, who has been the general manager of the Boston Red Sox for the past eight years.
"Even before [the Red Sox] had really solidified their place in Major League Baseball history, we had always wanted to profile Theo Epstein because he's such an interesting character," said Rachel Trusheim, an executive editor at Sterling and Ross publishers who was in charge of the project. "Some people think [Epstein is] an absolute genius and others think he's an idiot savant. Which one is it?"
Epstein is notorious for being very private, which Frascella said made it difficult for him to write the book.
"I spoke to a bunch of people on the inside, even though I received a call from the Red Sox early on in the process saying that they weren't going to be cooperating, that people in their front office weren't going to be helping me," Frascella said. "So they just let me know I was on my own."
Compounding the difficulty was the fact that Frascella only received the contract in the beginning of the summer of 2008, and the publishers wanted the book finished in case the Red Sox won the World Series that year.
"So I got the book contract in the summer and finished it in the summer," said Frascella of the 208-page book. "It literally took me less than two months to complete the entire thing. It was tough." Luckily for Frascella — an avid sports fan who grew up rooting for New York's hometown baseball teams — during his studies at the University of Connecticut, he didn't have access to televised Mets or Yankees games and began following the Red Sox, whose games were aired in the area. After he graduated in the spring with a degree in journalism, he had to cancel all of his usual summer plans to work on the book.
"Normally in the summer, I work with the kids," he said. Typically Frascella teaches at East Coast Sports in Oceanside during the summer and umpires at games throughout Nassau County. " I had to clean my entire schedule out so I could work on the book every day." Frascella began working right away, making calls, researching and doing interviews all day, every day.
"He basically took it like he was going to work every day," said his mother, Pauline Frascella. "He worked on the book and researched and did everything during the day while the house was quiet and everyone was out of the house. So when we came home, he was pretty much done for the day because he wanted to work
in quiet."
Frascella didn't speak to Epstein — who refused to be interviewed — but he spoke to people in the business who know Epstein best. Frascella interviewed Kevin Powers, the general manager of the San Diego Padres. Epstein had worked with the Padres in baseball operations for five years before he took the job with the Red Sox. During the interview process Frascella also spoke to a former assistant general manager of the Red Sox, Bill LaJoie.
"Now he's 74 years old," Frascella said. "But when he worked with Theo, he was Theo's assistant general manager when Theo took over [the Red Sox]. So he was really working closely with him.
"So these people I was able to get," he added, "they knew about as much as anyone could know about Theo."
Frascella being the one to receive the contract for the book was really serendipity. He was interviewing with Sterling and Ross not for a book deal, but for an internship opportunity. During the interview, the talk shifted to sports, which is where Frascella shines.
"The kid's got this encyclopedic memory for sports," said Timothy Kenny, associate professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut and Frascella's former academic advisor. "It's unbelievable. And he doesn't flaunt it."
Impressed with Frascella's deep knowledge and understanding of sports, his interviewers took an unheard of step and offered Frascella the book deal. "We said, 'You know what? This kid is possibly what we're looking for for this book,'" Trusheim said. "And we had done numerous interview sessions for a potential writer.
"I warned him. I said, 'Do you know what you’re getting into? This could be really rough for you,'" said Trusheim. "And he said,'I'm prepared to do it.' And I just looked him in the eye, and I knew he was."
On April 17, Frascella plans to have a book signing at Chapter One Books, on Long Beach Road in Oceanside. And while a book about the general manager of the Red Sox may be a tough sell in Yankees territory, many baseball fans are interested in Epstein.
"Theo's one of those guys that, if you follow baseball, you know about him," Kenny said. "He's got the wunderkind thing still. Certainly it's going to be aimed at Red Sox fans, but other fans could probably like it, too."
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