FORT MYERS, Fla. — In Red Sox camp, the official harbinger of spring is the sound of the migrating Goose.
Goose Gregson traverses Fenway South with a mayoral carriage perfectly attuned to the unhurried rhythms of spring training. The always-beaming 73-year-old circumnavigates the facility, fungo bat in hand, on a seemingly endless quest for baseball conversation and connection.
Players and coaches typically become aware of his presence — from his booming “Oye!, Dimelo!, How are you?, Qué pasó?” — well before he sidles up to them. In minutes, English- and Spanish-speaking strangers become confidants who talk with Gregson about the game, life, and everything in between. Chats are littered with lessons gleaned from Sandy Koufax and Steve Carlton, Pedro and Ramon Martinez, Jon Lester, and thousands of pitchers who never made the big leagues.
“Ganso is legendary,” said Pedro Martinez, who refers to Gregson by the Spanish translation of his nickname. “You take him to Licey, everybody remembers him: ‘Gan-so! Gan-so!’ You go to the Dominican Academy: ‘Gan-so! Gan-so!’ ”
The silver-haired, lanky, 6-foot-3-inch Gregson perches behind big league and minor league pitchers as they throw bullpen sessions and live batting practice; stops to sign autographs and enjoy brief conversations with fans; seeks out front-office members for good-natured barbs along with exchanges of notes on players; and crosses the outfield during batting practice to engage anyone, everyone in conversation.
“It’s the same positive energy with everyone he interacts with from 4 a.m., when he gets to the ballpark, until he leaves in the evening,” marveled Red Sox director of big league operations Mike Regan. “You see him and your day gets better right away.”
In his 52nd year in professional baseball, Gregson is a baseball lifer. He had a pair of big league stints (“sips of coffee,” Gregson says) as Dodgers pitching coach for three months in 1998 and pitching coach for the Sox for six weeks in 2003. But his career is defined by the largely unseen impact he’s made on the back fields.
Gregson pitched for seven years in the minors from 1972-78, the last six in the Phillies system. His foremost attribute was a rubber arm (“That’s how I got my name: loose as a goose”) but coaches also appreciated his ability to serve as a mentor.
In 1974, he was pitching in short-season ball when the Phillies made a splash by signing Jorge Lebron, a 14-year-old out of Puerto Rico. The manager of the team asked Gregson to help Lebron adjust to the environment. The request proved transformative.
“He wasn’t even in high school,” said Gregson, whose given name (Glenn) is unknown to most with whom he works. “I started thinking, ‘I can help this kid. I want to learn his language, too.’ ”
Gregson committed to learning Spanish. The undertaking was not merely academic. He pitched in the Dominican Winter League in 1976, an eye-opening experience offering insight into the lives of players from Latin America coming to the States facing the challenges of being dropped into another culture.
That awareness remained prominent when Gregson’s playing career stalled out in Double A. The Phillies invited him to start coaching in 1979. Across jobs with the Phillies, Cubs, and Dodgers, he spent winters coaching in the Dominican and Venezuela. He related to players in their language, and took the time to understand the culture and circumstances of their upbringings.
The Dodgers — a team at the forefront of developing talent from the Dominican — recognized Gregson’s gift and asked him to nurture players transitioning to the States.
“I said, ‘I’m all in,’ ” said Gregson.
Impact on young players
His first year with the Dodgers in 1988 was also the professional entry point for 16-year-old Pedro Martinez. Martinez cites Gregson and Guy Conti as the two most critical coaching influences of his early career and lovingly describes Gregson as “a Dominican from Montana.”
Gregson moved up through the Dodgers system, eventually getting appointed pitching coach in 1998. But that year was a chaotic one that featured a team sale and a midyear managerial firing and coaching staff shakeup, marking the end of Gregson’s tenure with the organization.
After three years coaching again in the Phillies system, Gregson came to the Red Sox as a minor league pitching coordinator in 2002. While his 22 seasons with the club included a stint in the big leagues in 2003, his work has mostly been in the development of young pitchers, making a lasting impact on everyone from Lester to Brayan Bello.
“Since my first year here, I’ve always had a very good relationship with him,” Bello said through translator Carlos Villoria-Benitez. “He’s always communicating, always with a really good sense of humor.”
Gregson’s impact is not just on players. Coaches and front office members rave about how his selflessness and investment in the well-being of players and people in the organization have shaped their own approaches.
So, too, has his willingness to keep evolving and learning after more than a half-century in the game. Gregson openly acknowledges that there are aspects of current data- and technology-driven pitching development that were initially difficult for him to embrace.
“I was a naysayer,” he said.
But his wife of 43 years, Jan, helped Gregson reframe his thinking. She is a home-builder, armed with a tool belt that features plenty of implements Gregson cannot identify.
“She said, ‘If you’re going to build a beautiful home, you can’t do it just with a hammer.’ That makes a lot of sense,” said Gregson. “Everything that has been introduced into our game now is a tool. Put all those tools in your tool belt.”
Gregson’s hope is to offer a tool or two of his own — the expertise of experience, the ability to connect with people — to help the organization develop players to be the best versions of themselves. Still, the shifting tools of the game have come with an alteration to his role.
Permanent invitation
After the 2021 season, Red Sox farm director Brian Abraham informed Gregson that the team no longer needed him as a year-round coach. But that came with a caveat: They wanted him back as a “player development pitching adviser,” spending spring training in Fort Myers and the other 10 months at home in Montana.
The message arrived, said Gregson, as a “punch in the gut.” But as it sank in, he thought of long-ago advice from Koufax that players are signed to be released and coaches are hired to be fired. With that in mind, Gregson recognized that there was good fortune in not being cast aside, in being asked to keep contributing in some way.
“This organization means everything to me,” he said. “As long as they ask me to come back, my bags are packed. To me, spring training and being here at my age is the best part of the game. It means the world to me.”
This spring, Abraham told Gregson that his invitation to come back each spring is a permanent one. As long as he wants to keep coming to Fort Myers, the Red Sox want him to do so.
“There are just so many things he provides through his lens, through his experiences,” said Abraham. “I can’t imagine coming down here to Fort Myers without him being here.”
And so Gregson once again presides as the unmissable Mayor of the Back Fields, a familiar presence who immediately conjures a sense of familiarity and renewal with the Red Sox.
“He’s just a soul that loves this game, loves being around the fields, being in the green grass,” said Martinez. “He just loves what he does. I hope he continues to be around just like Johnny Pesky. I can’t imagine being around without Ganso being around.”
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.