Valentine knows how to create headlines, even when he's not being 100 percent serious.
Boston Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine talks to reporters at Major League Baseball's winter meetings in Dallas on Wednesday.Love him or hate him - middle ground seems impossible, judging from the initial reaction - Bobby Valentine knows how to Play The Game.
In this case, we're talking about Playing The Media.
In Dallas for baseball's annual winter meetings, the new manager of the Boston Red Sox manager summed up his feelings for the arch-rival New York Yankees on Wednesday. According to multiple sources, including Andrew Marchard of ESPNNewYork.com:
"I hate the Yankees," Valentine said while surrounded by a herd of media members. "I don't want to waste this valuable time talking about the Yankees. This is too valuable."
Valentine, realizing his comments, could cause a stir, then sat back in his chair and imagined the headline, "I hate the Yankees."
As a former manager of the New York Mets - losers to the Yankees in the 2000 World Series - Valentine has even more cause to dislike the Bronx Bombers than just being manager of their most heated rival. Of course, there's a big difference between true hatred and sports hatred.
Meeting with reporters immediately after Valentine, Yankees manager Joe Girardi played along with the Valentine storyline, refusing to drink from a water bottle that Valentine left behind and more seriously comparing him to his predecessor, Terry Francona. Girardi was quoted by Didier Morais of NESN:
"Bobby is probably going to be a little bit different type of manager than Terry was. Every manager is going to have a different philosophy than the last guy. A lot of your moves as a manager are dependent on what type of players that you have.
"If you have guys who hit the ball out of the ballpark and are slow to first base you are not going to become a base-stealing team. Time will tell how he is going to manage that club and it's our job to pay attention."
The New York Post added another Girardi quote:
"Bobby knows how to manage and I think he will add a lot. Bobby adds spunk to his clubs, no doubt about it.''
Perhaps catching the spirit of the moment the best was NBC's Hardball Talk:
Valentine is obviously just trying to have a little fun now that he’s at the center of baseball’s most talked about rivalry, but he was known for being a hot head during his time with the Mets and that part of his personality clearly hasn’t fully disappeared. It should be a fun new era of Yanks-Sawx.
The two teams meet for the first time on April 20 at Fenway Park. The April 22 game falls on a Sunday, which means it could be the Game of The Week for ESPN and its new baseball analyst, former Red Sox manager Terry Francona.
Stay tuned.