Awright, folks, I got my HazMat suit on and I'm goin' in. Somebody be ready with the Decon Shower . . . . .
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/10/21/former-manager-bobby-valentine-rooting-for-red-sox-doesn-quite-understand-all-criticism/MCANhR0rbllVFs33PrYi7L/story.html?event=event12
My mother used to take the braided rug she made by hand to the clothesline once a week and beat the living daylights out of it with a broom to shake out the dirt.
Bobby Valentine often feels like that rug.
The anger directed toward Valentine seems to escalate with every Red Sox win, which accentuates the job done by manager John Farrell this season and the failure of Valentine with the 2012 Red Sox.
Valentine, now the athletic director at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, owner of Bobby V’s Sports Bar in Stamford, Conn., operator of a film company, and part-time guy on NBC radio, doesn’t quite get that. All he has to understand, really, is that Grady Little still gets hammered for keeping Pedro Martinez in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS and Bill Buckner still hears it for the ball that went between his legs in the 1986 World Series. (ME: NO, HE DOESN'T)
Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino and yours truly still hear it for recommending Valentine after Terry Francona presided over the awful September 2011 collapse, when it was clear the Red Sox needed more of a disciplinarian in the manager’s office so the boys wouldn’t get away with chicken and beer during the game.
There was all kinds of resentment, a dysfunctional coaching staff, and Valentine never helped himself with the things he said. Nowadays saying what comes immediately to your mind has to be filtered and re-filtered before the words appear in public.
Only if you're unfiltered words are shit-laden.
“I picked them to win the division, the ALDS, the ALCS, and now the World Series,” Valentine said. “I’m rooting them on. The [12] guys left on that team that I managed were all good guys. I enjoyed all of them, so why wouldn’t I root for them?”
I wonder what he means by "picked."
Most managers get more than one year to turn around a bad ship, which tells you how bad Red Sox ownership thought Valentine’s tenure was. (ME: Did ANYONE disagree with that assesment?)
If Farrell hadn’t been traded to the Red Sox, he would have had another year to turn around a 73-win team in Toronto. It’s a good thing, in more ways than one, that Farrell got the chance to come to the Red Sox, who revamped their team and spent the money they saved in the Dodgers deal almost perfectly. Farrell was able to establish himself, because up until now there were many questions about his ability to do the job.
“I’d like to think that if I came back for my second year that, given the changes and improvements, I would have been able to do the same thing,” Valentine said.
I'm sure you would "like to think" that. which is different than actually "thinking it."
Cherington deserves a lot of credit for the 2013 edition of the team, and he personally took blame for the 2012 season. Give him credit for not only firing the manager, but firing the players, too. That’s doesn’t happen very often. It was Valentine who took the fall on the management side. Nobody else lost their job.
Nobody? Really? Except for the entire coaching staff, the training staff, the medcial staff and the catching guy. Yeah, other than that, it's all the same.
Although Valentine has not returned to Fenway Park for a game since he was fired, he has kept in touch with players and front-office people.
Pedroia said he tried calling Valentine during the season to check on him.
Which is it? "Kept in touch" or "tried."
Ortiz was a Valentine backer until Valentine said at the end of last season that Ortiz decided to shut it down (because of an Achilles’ heel injury) after he knew the season was over.
Ortiz has hammered Valentine ever since.
As he should, because that, in a microcosm, was Valentine's problem. Even when he might have been "right," in some techincal sense (like about Youkilis being coooked, Aviles not going out far enough for cutoffs from noodle-arm in CF, or Ortiz (maybe, who the fuck really knows), YOU JUST DONT SAY THAT SHIT IN PUBLIC WHEN YOU ARE NEW ON THE JOB (Ortiz came later, but the point is the same). Only bad can come of it. And not seeing that is a major, major, major failing. And its not some new-age crap like Cafardo wants you to believe. Even older-than-dirt-school Jim Leyland blamed HIMSELF for Benoit giving up the granny to Ortiz. THAT's why Leyland could have managed til he was 70 if he wanted and Valentine was essentially done at 52.
Valentine recently lost a TBS gig because he said the Yankees didn’t do enough during the terror attacks of 9/11. He played a big role in helping with the healing process while managing the Mets.
So he’s using his words carefully now
. He knows just by being quoted he’ll get hammered again.
(ME: Only if he makes shit up.)
It's because what he said about the Yankees was shown to be absolutely FALSE, and given the context (9/11), the falsity was reprehensible.