Red Sox team president Larry Lucchino, doing his best Gen. Douglas MacArthur impression, said about reclaiming a spot among the AL’s top tier, “We shall return.” (
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BOSTON — From the recent ruins of Red Sox Nation, valuable lessons have been learned.
Club president and CEO Larry Lucchino told the Post the Red Sox are far from dead in the AL East and will challenge the Yankees again.
“We will return,” Lucchino said with confidence recently in his office at Fenway Park. He then thought about those three words, smiled and said: “I feel like [Gen. Douglas] MacArthur. ‘We shall return.’
“When we step back on that beach is another question, but we will get back there.
“There’s a kind of new culture emerging around here with this notion that we have something to prove, and it permeates the organization,” Lucchino added. “It’s on the business side. It’s on the baseball side. It’s on the finance side. In the first decade we were here, we won a couple of world championships. We got into the postseason with great regularity. We preserved Fenway Park. We set a new record for sellouts. We did a lot, but now we have a lot to prove.”
On Lucchino’s desk is a plaque with his mother Rose’s image and these three words: “Love, loyalty and devotion.” Rose Lucchino, who lived in Pittsburgh, died two years ago at the age of 94.
“She kept score every game she went to or watched on television.” Lucchino said proudly.
His love, loyalty and devotion to the Red Sox will not waver, and Lucchino said the Red Sox are changing the way they do business. Their view of success became too short term after winning World Series titles in 2004 and 2007. There was too much of a quick-fix mentality instead of creating a fix-it organization.
It fell apart last season under Bobby Valentine, but this was a disaster in the making.
“I have enormous respect for Bobby despite the confluence of events that resulted in the catastrophe of 2012,” Lucchino said.
Ben Cherington is in his second season as GM. Former pitching coach John Farrell has returned from Toronto as manager, and the Red Sox have added a lineup of coaches, many of them with ties to the Yankees. They signed free agents Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino to identical three-year, $39 million deals and Jonny Gomes (two years, $10 million) as they try to upgrade on talent and character.
“I think we’ve recognized that there was a lot of restructuring that was to be required this offseason, and not just of the team, but elements of the front office, elements of the medical staff, and we have work to do and we have something to prove,” Lucchino said.
One of those front office moves was to give stats guru Bill James a bigger role.
“He’s been here as a kind of consultant, but we thought there was even more he could do,” Lucchino said. “John Henry has a good relationship with Bill and talked to him about devoting himself to this task at hand, and we’ve been lucky to have him. He helps us in player evaluations to be sure. He also helps in economic analysis of the value of the talent and just general [research and development].
“We’ve got to get the Red Sox back where they belong,” Lucchino said. “It’s a great privilege to work here, and now we have got to earn the privilege by showing we can regain the status and the success that we had. For the first 10 years we averaged over 92 wins a year, and we fell to over 90 losses. We have to prove that was the aberration and that we can bounce back, but there is no timetable we will put on it.”
Lucchino is the Johnny Appleseed of ballparks. He was with the Orioles for the construction of Camden Yards, the Padres for Petco Park and has breathed new life into ancient Fenway Park. He thinks about what his wife Stacey said about the difference between San Diego and Boston: “San Diego is a great dessert, but Boston is the main course.”
After losing 93 games last season, the Red Sox must win to be the main course again. Amazingly, they have not won a playoff game since Oct. 18, 2008, as the Yankees have moved ahead in that race.
“We never lose sight of the rivalry with the Yankees,” Lucchino said. “But things are different now. There are other teams that are in the financial neighborhood that we live in. There’s greater competition.
“It’s going to be about hard work and good judgment and skillful evaluations as I suppose it should be.”
These new hungry to win Red Sox insist they have learned their lesson.
kevin.kernan@nypost.com