John Farrell sat in the visitors' dugout at Fenway Park as talk intensified that he might be working in the other dugout next year.
The Toronto manager looked up at two dozen reporters a month ago and told them that as Boston's pitching coach for four years under Terry Fran-cona he learned an important lesson: think of the players first in making managerial decisions.
If you do that, he said, "you probably are guided in the right direction to do the right thing."
Since that session before the opener of the Blue Jays' three-game sweep of the Red Sox, Bobby Valentine has been fired as Boston's manager and Farrell has emerged as the leading candidate to take over. But he has a year left on his contract and the Red Sox would have to discuss compensation with the Blue Jays.
Valentine didn't always make the players his top priority before he was fired on Thursday after going 69-93 in his only season, Boston's worst record in nearly 50 years.
He said in April that Kevin Youkilis wasn't as physically or emotionally into the game as he had been, and he kept Jon Lester in a game long enough to allow 11 runs and said as the miserable season kept getting worse that the Red Sox had "the weakest roster we've ever had in September in the history of baseball."
The Red Sox likely will look for a person with different attributes this time than they did during last year's search, especially with a younger roster after the team traded high-priced, underperforming veterans.
