You name it. If you manage in Boston, there's more of it.

Terry Francona's ability to manage successfully in The World of More is well established. He has better jewelry than most of his peers to prove it. To survive here for long you need patience in all things, a word Francona used numerous times in different contexts during a chat before Thursday night's Boston Baseball Writers Dinner.

You also need perspective, which he's shown when moments of critical mass flared up in his clubhouse - whether with superstars like Pedro Martinez and Manny Ramirez or with some lesser issue most of the world never knew existed.

Yet perhaps what is needed most in Boston is what fewer and fewer people seem to possess. You need a sense of humor.

``Near the end of last season someone asked me what I thought the Yankees were going to do in the offseason and I said they'd go out and spend a billion dollars,'' Francona joked when asked what he thought of his chief rival's offseason spending spree. ``I was half right.''

A lot of people in these parts are fretting right now because the Yankees spent $423.5 million on free agents including CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira, not to mention carrying the four biggest contracts in Baseball and a luxury tax bill of $26.9 million that the family Steinbrenner willingly paid.

If Francona were the worrying type, he would be chewing his finger nails down to his knuckles by now because it seems his team has done little by comparison. Yet if you ask him about it, he reminds you of the most important word in team building - patience.

``I understand a fan wants the team put together right now,'' Francona said, ``but sometimes you have to be patient. You have to be realistic. The more good players other teams sign doesn't make you do cartwheels but there are reasons we do things the way we do.''

That was a deft way of reminding you his Red Sox have won an average of 94 games a year, two World Series and lost in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series to Tampa Bay a few months ago. In other words, not to worry.

Yet that is what we do best around here. At the moment we worry about whether Jason Varitek will be back and, if not, who will catch. We worry about the condition of Mike Lowell's hip and psyche and if John Smoltz will arrive and how Rocco Baldelli and David Ortiz are feeling.

Certainly Francona may worry too at times because he gets paid to worry. The rest of us do it for entertainment. Yet he doesn't fret, which is a significant difference between him and Red Sox Nation.

Last week, Francona deftly avoided any discussion of Smoltz and Brad Penny because they had not yet signed. Instead, he took a position on Baldelli's fight against a mitochondrial disorder (later re-diagnosed as channelopathy), which left Baldelli too tired to play back-to-back games last year, and turned it into a blessing.

``It's not easy to put your bench together,'' Francona explained. ``Finding guys who want to be bench players hasn't always worked, so we're a little fortunate with Rocco. He's talented enough to play every day for anybody, but he can't right now so he's accepting of that role.''

What would be considered a disappointment to many, because Baldelli won't be available every day, is to Francona an opportunity to strengthen his bench. Attitude is everything here.

Asked how Lowell is doing both physically and with the psychological burden of seeing his team pursue Teixeira, Francona first suggests you might want to ask the player, but then adds, ``Mikey is doing real well. I'm sure it (the talk of being replaced) affected him. He's a human being. That's why I kept calling. I was texting just to keep the lines of communication open, even when maybe he wished I wasn't.''

That is the kind of manager Francona is. Someone who cares about his players regardless of their situation or their availability and who is proactive about it. It is also why, with Varitek, he has taken the opposite course.

``When you have a high-profile free agent you have to be patient,'' Francona said. ``If you try and rush it you can make a mistake. It's not going to get done overnight. 'Tek has earned the right to go through free agency. I don't think I'm a patient person but you can make some really bad mistakes if you aren't.''

Terry Francona, it seems, avoids such mistakes by adhering to the philosophy of the old outfielder Mickey Rivers, who once famously said, ``I don't get upset over things I can control, because if I can control them, ain't no sense in getting upset. And I don't get upset over things I can't control, because if I can't control them, there's no sense in getting upset.''

That's not all there is to managing the Boston Red Sox , but it's a start.

``Because of who we are we're expected to win,'' Francona said. ``Enjoyable is probably not the right word to describe my job, but I love it. There are days I hate it because you can't have this much passion and not have those days, but I couldn't imagine being someplace where you don't have it. I love my job, but it's probably not for everybody.''

Not for everybody, but certainly for him.

- rborges@bostonherald.com