Breaking up is hard to do - The Boston GlobeTHIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING Breaking up is hard to do But it shouldn't shock when protege and mentor part ways By Joseph P. Kahn, Globe Staff | November 5, 2005 It's an old and timeless story, as old as the ancient Greeks and yet as timely as ''The Apprentice." A smart, talented young protege studies at the side of his wise and resourceful mentor. United in battle against the Evil Empire, they set out to conquer the universe until the shocking moment arrives when the pupil, his ego bruised and his once-bright future suddenly uncertain, declares his independence and exits stage right. Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino? No, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi in ''Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" -- a movie coincidentally, if not prophetically, released on home video this week. Of course, that Jedi-in-training relationship is purely fictional. (Science fiction, more precisely.) Red Sox fans wondering if Manny Ramirez will play left field next year may dismiss the parallel as far-fetched, frivolous, or worse. All in all they'd prefer a healthy closer in the bullpen, if not closure on the $64,000 question (''Why, Theo?") that never fully got answered at Wednesday's press conference with Epstein and Sox principal owner John Henry. Yet the history and texture of such relationships -- and it is a long history, stretching all the way from Socrates-Plato to Parcells-Belichick -- suggests we seldom know completely why these bonds form and dissolve. According to Epstein, one of baseball's youngest and most successful general managers, leaving his ''dream job" was not about salary or power struggles or job description. He even voiced kind words for Lucchino, the Red Sox president/CEO and putative villain in this melodrama. So what happened here? At least a few observers who've pondered such relationships from one side or the other (and who have no inside knowledge of the Theo-Larry dynamic) say the biggest surprise may be that we are surprised. Growing up and moving on is a natural and healthy process, they maintain, if not always a pretty or purely rational one. Take John Roberts, for instance, who clerked for US Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist as a young lawyer, then took his seat on the court following Rehnquist's death. In the coming years, if not decades, Americans will see how much of an influence that mentoring has on Roberts. And while the jury's out on that one, football fans continue to debate how much influence former Patriots coach Bill Parcells had on current coach Bill Belichick -- and vice-versa. One thing is certain, though. When Parcells left his head coaching job with the New York Jets, he was confident Belichick would succeed him; Belichick and the Kraft family made other plans, leaving Jets fans as stunned as Sox fans are today. A darker example of the mentoring dynamic gone awry: reclusive author J.D. Salinger's live-in relationship with Joyce Maynard, which began when she was 18 and managed to combine sexual, paternal, tutorial, and pathological elements, all of which became fodder for a tell-all memoir that Maynard published years after the relationship blew up. What lies beneath the Theo-Red Sox split may not be fully visible. But as Epstein himself hinted Wednesday, it may not just be one thing (leaks to the press) or another (who's to blame for a botched trade with the Colorado Rockies). ''Red Sox fans may be saddened by this, but to me this sounds like the ultimate success of a mentoring relationship," says Rey Carr, CEO of Peer Resources, a Canadian-based company that helps corporations and schools develop mentoring programs. ''At least that's one way of looking at it." Carr, who played some baseball himself -- he was a first baseman for UCLA in the early 1960s -- describes how in the classic mentoring relationship the younger partner gains the confidence and experience to make his own decisions, re-forming the relationship. ''It can be thorny, or it can be warm," says Carr, whose website (www.mentors.ca) includes scores of examples of mentor-protege pairings from politics, the arts, and other fields. ''You hope in the end it's, 'I'm glad we knew each other, but now it's time to fly off on my own.' But when you're doing a good job as mentor, you're actually helping the person become independent of the organization and true to his own internal motivation. At which point he may feel no need to stay on." For Epstein and his generation, adds Carr, finding more meaning in life may be a bigger priority than making a lot more money. ''We probably won't see him resurface in Guatemala, working with refugees," Carr says. But his decision to leave ''may reflect his sense of wanting to make more of a contribution to society," says Carr. ''It's a search for meaning we don't quite understand, least of all as baseball fans. Ironically, though, that's what a mentor can bring out. 'What do you really want to do in life? Where do you see yourself in five or 10 years?' Those are mentor-like questions." Michela Larson takes pains to ask those questions after 20 years as a restaurateur, during which she's hired and nurtured culinary stars such as Todd English, Barbara Lynch, and Jody Adams. Uneasy with the term ''protege," Larson nevertheless acknowledges that her business thrives on attracting young talent that will one day walk away -- and may even become a direct competitor of hers. ''It was painful at the time, but I was young, too," says Larson of her break with English, a rift that has since healed. ''Todd obviously needed far more than my arena offered him. I didn't know that then. I do now. And I never assume it'll go on forever." Instead, says Larson, she poses ''state of the union" questions like, 'Are you thinking of staying or going? Where do you want to be in two or three years?' Questions, it seems, that Henry and Lucchino failed to ask Epstein until it was too late to keep him. ''You can never be sure when they're ready to move on," says Larson. ''Only that they will be some day." Alec Wilkinson is a New Yorker staff writer and author of ''My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship With William Maxwell," a memoir of his close relationship with the novelist and longtime fiction editor at the magazine. Maxwell died in 2000, at age 91. Wilkinson compares the mentor-protege relationship he and Maxwell enjoyed to passing through the crimp of an hourglass. ''Either you make it through together or you don't," says Wilkinson. ''In my case, Bill was considerably older than I am, so ours was more of a father-son dynamic." Usually with the younger person, he says, the intentions are more straightforward: to advance himself or learn the ropes of a profession. The mentor's motives are more complicated, Wilkinson suggests, for it's clear that at some point the younger person will walk away, if not literally then psychologically. The closer they are in age, the more awkward things can become, he says. ''All these issues came up with me [and Maxwell]," Wilkinson acknowledges, ''but I mostly side-stepped them. Still, in any relationship, including marriage, issues arise when the balance changes drastically or great success is achieved suddenly. It's only natural. You're both moving toward the same point, and some accommodation must be made. In my case, I grew out of being Bill's son to being something like a friend and colleague." In Epstein's case, he seems to have outgrown Lucchino and the Red Sox. Where he lands in five years, or five days, is unclear. But there's little doubt he's flying on his own now. Joseph P. Kahn can be reached by email at jkahn@globe.com. © Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company