Phil Garner had a ready-made answer to the question if he chose to use it. Why, I asked the former manager last Friday, did the Houston Astros plummet from their World Series appearance in 2005 to the worst season (56-106) in their 50-year history last year?

“Because they fired me in 2007,” Garner could have said. But he didn’t. The manager of the 2005 National League champions did not use the Astros’ dismissal of him to explain their demise and in every reference he made to the Astros Garner said “we.”

“Most teams, when you lose your driving force, when you have dominant players retire, you have a void,” Garner said in a telephone interview last Friday. “I saw a void in leadership. We lost our leaders in the clubhouse. They were also star players.”

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The Boston Red Sox endured a miserable season last year, but this is a new year and the e-mail suggested that they might be ready to take flight.

“Media alert,” the news release said three times. “JetBlue Airways to reveal new element in Red Sox partnership.”

This new element was to be revealed at what would not be a routine news conference. The news release said it was scheduled for Friday at 7:45 a.m. – yes, that’s 15 minutes before 8 o’clock in the morning; if reporters are up at that hour, they probably have yet to go to sleep.

The site of the news conference was just as unusual – the north gate at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

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Ken Williams would have preferred being in Indianapolis this weekend, but he lost his reason for being there. “Unfortunately I’m not there,” Williams said Friday. “I would like to have been, but I’m in Greenwich, Conn., with my girlfriend.”

Williams, general manager of the Chicago White Sox, wanted to be in Indianapolis Sunday watching his son Kyle play in the Super Bowl for the San Francisco 49ers against the New England Patriots. But Kyle spoiled those plans, committing a fumble that led to a field goal in overtime that gave the New York Giants a 20-17 victory in the National Conference championship game two weeks ago.

“It gives you aches and pains to see your children go through that,” Williams said in a telephone conversation Friday. “But as a father I couldn’t be more proud than to see how he handled it. I would expect nothing else from the Williams boys.”

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