CLEVELAND -- Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona walked into his workout day media session on Thursday a few minutes behind schedule, prompting MLB senior vice president Phyllis Merhige to ask what took him so long.
"I was doing my hair,'' he deadpanned.
That's a classic response from Francona, who doesn't let a day go by without joking about his baldness, his prominent nose, his lack of a sophisticated vocabulary or his middling talent on a baseball field. You would never know Francona won a Golden Spikes Award as college baseball's best player at the University of Arizona in 1980 or that he hit .274 over parts of 10 big league seasons (albeit with 16 home runs in 1,731 at-bats).
Given his penchant for self-deprecation, Francona might blanch at the suggestion that he's on track to be a Hall of Fame manager. But as he oversees another deep run into October, the depth of his résumé and testimonials of his players and peers help make the case on his behalf.
"I think a lot of guys in here would tell you he's going to be in [Cooperstown] one day or he's well on his way,'' said Cleveland second baseman Jason Kipnis. "For us, it's more about how well he handles players and how much he respects everyone in the clubhouse. He's such a good guy. You don't get in the Hall of Fame for being a good guy. But you get in on what he's done and the career he's had.''
Nineteen years after he made his managerial debut with a 68-win team in Philadelphia, Francona is mingling with more elite company. He has two titles in his portfolio -- the first of which broke an 86-year-old curse in Boston. He ranks 30th on MLB's career list with 1,381 career victories, and he looks like a sure bet to pass Hall of Famers Earl Weaver, Dick Williams and Tommy Lasorda by the end of his current deal with the Indians. He is under contract through 2018, and the Indians hold club options for 2019 and 2020.
Francona's .533 career winning percentage is a tick below Tony La Russa's .536, and Francona takes his managerial game to a different level in October. In 49 playoff and World Series games with Boston and Cleveland, he has amassed a .633 winning percentage (31-18). Among managers with at least 25 postseason games on their résumés, that ranks third behind Ned Yost's .710 (22-9) and Joe McCarthy's .698 (30-13).
While Baltimore's Buck Showalter and San Francisco's Bruce Bochy were tormented by bullpen nonperformance or ill-fated bullpen decisions in the early stages of the playoffs, Francona was on a roll. He massaged a depleted Cleveland staff to a sweep of Boston with aggressive bullpen use, and he kept each player on the 25-man roster engaged.
When Francona summoned right fielder Lonnie Chisenhall to make a rare start against a left-handed pitcher, Chisenhall responded with a three-run homer off Boston's David Price to lead Cleveland to a 6-0 victory. And when he called upon Coco Crisp and Brandon Guyer to start, they responded with big games.
Francona has long been hailed as a "player's manager,'' which can have both positive and negative connotations. In his case, the absence of walls provides a better insight into player psyches that gives him an edge when it matters most.
Francona has mastered the art of communicating with players and letting them know he is in their corner, while simultaneously cultivating a harmonious relationship with the Cleveland front office. As many managers have discovered in an age of greater front-office intervention, relations can get strained when either side becomes territorial.
"He has the ability to blend the front-office message to the old-school message and get everybody on board,'' said Indians reliever Andrew Miller, who previously played for Francona at Boston in 2011. "There's a big skill in translating that down to the players. We have all these guys in the front office now who are so smart at crunching all the numbers.
"But if players aren't hitting in a spot in the lineup they're used to or they're being asked to do something nontraditional, getting them to buy in isn't always easy.''
Francona played for 16 managers in his professional career and collected enough insights to develop a style that worked for him. One of the biggest lessons he has learned is that honesty makes it easier for a manager to walk the line between friend and authority figure.
"It seems kind of silly to be around a bunch of guys you really like and not enjoy them,'' Francona said. "They know and I know there are a lot of times I have to deliver a message that's not what they want to hear, and I don't particularly enjoy it.
"But they also know I'm never going to do something in a game besides try to win and do what I think is right. And they all respect that. I think that's why it works so well.''
The mood could have gone south in Cleveland this year, when Michael Brantley suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in May or when Danny Salazar and Carlos Carrasco went down with arm injuries in the span of a week in September. But Francona kept the spirits high, and the players made his job easy by bonding deeply as a group. Francona took a mental inventory on Thursday and couldn't recall a single time this season when he pinch hit for a player or lifted him from a game and that player complained.
"That's pretty rare,'' he said.
Each day brings a new moment to savor at this time of year. During the American League Division Series, Francona got to sit back and enjoy the sight of his 82-year-old father, Tito, who had a long MLB career, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch before Game 1. And he showed genuine emotion at a news conference to announce the establishment of The Larry Doby Youth Fund, which has raised $1 million to help disadvantaged children and address the problem of youth violence in Cleveland. Francona called it the "proudest moment'' in his baseball life.
Now it's back to baseball -- and the inevitable self-deprecating wisecracks that make Francona so much fun to be around.
When informed that former Indians executive-turned-Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins refers to him as "inclusive'' in his approach, Francona jokingly asked, "What's inclusive mean?'' After the laughter subsided, Francona did his best to explain why his approach works for him.
"I had the good fortune of playing for 16 major league managers, and part of that was because I wasn't very good,'' Francona said. "But that's a lot of ideas and a lot of personalities, and you learn a lot.
"I was with Dallas Green where he'd walk in and he could command that room just by staring at you. I can't do that, so we do it a lot of times with humor. Players may not all be Ivy League guys, but if you're not true to yourself, they can see through it and you might as well go home.
A lot of teams with more star power and higher payrolls have gone home for the offseason, but the Indians and their manager keep on springing surprises. If Cleveland can overcome the skeptics and win a World Series, it will make for a heck of a line on Terry Francona's Hall of Fame plaque.