by the Boston Red Sox on the very same day, John Farrell, was introduced as the
new Red Sox manager. Instead of talking about the breath of fresh air that is blowing
through Red Sox nation today, the entire region will now be consumed with the guy
who was blowing hot air to Bob Costas on the NBC Sports Network on Tuesday night.
Self-centered and self-absorbed, Valentine made sure all the talk today would be
all about him. He's not just trying to rain on Farrell's and the Red Sox parade, Valentine
is hoping to flood it with a tsunami. In his interview with Costas, Valentine said David
Ortiz had all but gone to U.S. Post Office, licked a stamp, and mailed his season in
after the Sox traded its heavy baggage (Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, and Carl
Crawford) to the the Los Angeles Dodgers. Valentine learned nothing after trashing
fan favorite, Kevin Youkilis during the season, so it's hardly surprising that the mouth
without a filter fired a scud missile at Big Papi after it.
I'm sure Curt Schilling is just chomping at the bit to rail against Valentine on "Baseball
Tonight", and just might morph into "Curt from the car" again and blast Bobby V for
making one of the greatest players in franchise history the scapegoat for one of their
worst seasons in the history of it. That won't play well with Schilling and it most certainly
won't go over well in Red Sox nation. Any road that Valentines rides his bike on in
Boston is now bound to be littered with spikes and nails.
As Valentine was shooting darts at Ortiz with his forced, disingenuous smile, it became
easy for everyone to see why nobody likes playing for Valentine. He grates on you like
sandpaper and is the gum on the bottom of your shoe that you can't get off. Instead of
trying to clean it because it's peppered with pebbles and glass, you just rid of the shoe,
even if it's Kenneth Cole's top of the line.
Valentine also revealed a conversation he had with former Dallas Cowboys legendary
coach, Tom Landry. When he was a 35-year old rookie manager with the Texas Rangers,
Valentine was told by Landry to get coaches who "speak your language", meaning ones
that he could trust, which Valentine said he didn't have on his staff in Boston. Bobby V
said he wished he had taken Landry's advice, but it's apparent that he's never taken anyone's
advice because Bobby V thinks he's the smartest man in the room.
It continues to amaze me how baseball experts and analysts label Valentine a baseball
"genius" as if the game is akin to drawing up the blueprint and constructing the atom bomb.
It's baseball. As the manager in "Bull Durham" said, "You throw the ball, hit the ball, and catch
the ball." It's not rocket science. Nobody has ever called Terry Francona a baseball
intellect, but he has two World Series titles to Valentine's none. The difference is, Francona
gets it. He knows that success doesn't come with the greatest baseball knowledge, but
rather in how you "manage" players and personalities.
It's clear that Valentine doesn't get it, and the man who often tells people that he invented
the sandwich wrap, just wrapped up one of the biggest nightmares in franchise history with
that interview with Bob Costas on Tuesday night.
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