Is there a tougher job in sports around here than being the manager of the Red Sox?

Hard to think of one.

Not when you have 162 games to be examined under some microscope, as if every game is a referendum on whether you’re a moron or not.

Not when you have to deal every day with a collection of high-priced players who, almost by definition, operate in their own little solar systems.

Not when you manage a team that often seems like it’s become a family heirloom.

So let us stop to praise Terry Francona, who has very quietly become a very good manager for the Red Sox.

He is not the kind of charismatic, larger-than-life manager we have come to love. You know the type. Be tough. Get in players’ faces. Take no nonsense. My way or the highway. These are the coaches of legend, the ones we tell stories about, the ones who become almost mythic, the archetypal old coach who spit glass, and when he talked everyone wrote down what he said and went home and memorized it. Call them the spiritual sons of Vince Lombardi.

Bill Parcells is one, no doubt. Red Auerbach surely was one. Dick Williams was one, back there in 1967 when he took a young Red Sox team and taught it how to win. Bill Belichick has become one, if in a different way.

Terry Francona is not one.

Which might just be his biggest strength.

For this is a different time now, a different place, and those old-time coaches of legend have all but become dinosaurs. Now it’s about managing people, not being some kind of autocratic ruler. Now it’s about knowing how to motivate individuals, not using a collective broad brush. Now it’s about being smaller than life, not larger.

And Francona is very good at it.

How long would he last if he were some fiery, confrontational type who loved to get in players’ faces at the tiniest of indiscretions? About two weeks, that’s how long. In the daily white-hot glare that’s the Red Sox, the last thing we need is a volatile manager, someone larger than life, someone whose personality is always part of the show.

This is Francona’s strength, and it has little to do with how he manages the actual game, or at what point he calls on his bullpen, the kind of baseball esoterica that so often gets over-analyzed on talk shows. That has become so little of a big-league manager’s job description these days, even if it’s what most fans fixate on.

The most important thing Francona does is try to keep his team on an even keel through the long emotional journey that’s a season. This is no small thing. So you will never see him criticize his players in public, never see him say anything disparaging about any of them. He knows that there’s no future in that, that that style is as gone as flannel uniforms. He knows that it’s pointless to fight with Manny Ramirez, knows that it’s pointless to fight with anyone.

Instead, he’s become the voice of reason, a dose of quiet in the frenzy that’s become the Red Sox media circus.

Manny’s off to the worst start of his career?

No problem. We know he’ll hit.

Coco Crisp is off to a slow start?

We know he’s going to turn it around.

Jonathan Papelbon gave up two runs Tuesday night?

He’s not going to win them all.

On and on it goes, the world according to Tito, a world where all the imperfections have been air-brushed away, all the potential problems glossed over, so that the Red Sox really are one for all and all for one, one big, happy family, and any other other cliché you want to use. And if we know that it’s undoubtedly more complicated than that, then there are simply too many large egos colliding in one small locker room for it not to be complicated, it is to Francona’s credit that we rarely hear about it.

Which is not to say we have to like every baseball decision he makes. Second-guessing the manager is as much a part of being a baseball fan as hits, runs and errors.

There’s also little doubt that winning in 2004 changed the perception of Francona, gave him his slice of immortality around here, regardless of what happens in the future. If nothing else, it gives him a longer leash around here than Grady Little was ever going to get, more of a margin of error. Maybe it’s this simple: We give him the benefit of the doubt now in ways we probably wouldn’t if the Sox hadn’t won in 2004.

And we should give him the benefit of the doubt.

Francona is never going to be the larger-than-life figure, one of those coaches of legend, one of those coaches we’ve come to love, even if we know they’re essentially obsolete now, as gone as disco.

But he has come to know what managing in Boston is all about, is able to navigate his way through the potential minefield that is being the manager of the Red Sox.

And that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

breynold@projo.com