Athletics 1 - as it happened cheap softball jerseys
To say the baseball comnunity was skeptical when the Boston Red Sox hired Bobby Valentine as their manager in the 2011 off-season would be something of an understatement. cheap steelers jerseys One prominent analyst said that the whole thing would end "in a mushroom cloud". However, when the Bobby Valentine era mercifully came to a close, less than a year after it began, it ended slightly less dramatically, via a Tweet from the official Red Sox account.
To be fair, the Red Sox did followed that tweet up with an official statement about firing Valentine but it was still a surprisingly anticlimactic ending to his tumultuous career in Boston. The good news for the Boston Red Sox organization, cheap jerseys com notorious for (allegedly) starting smear campaigns through the media about high profile employees immediately following their exits, is that they will have to do very little to turn public perception against the unpopular now-former manager. Bobby Valentine is, in and of himself, his own smear campaign.
It's not entirely, or even mostly, Valentine's fault that this dysfunctional Boston Red Sox team failed to make the postseason this year. Not even the best manager in the world could have pulled that off. Heck, a genius manager may not have even prevented these Red Sox from clinching their first losing season since 1997, especially after the Red Sox traded Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and a finished-for-the-season Carl Crawford to the Los Angeles Dodgers in what was essentially a salary dump. Still, cheap jersey website sa different manager may have prevented the Red Sox from at least ending the season in last place in the American League East and most certainly would have gotten through the season with less needless drama than Bobby V.
• Slamming third baseman Kevin Youkilis early in the Red Sox season for, of all things, not having his heart in the game. It was a bizarre claim against the famously feisty-to-a-fault Youkilis that proved unpopular among New England baseball fans. steelers jerseys cheap In response, second baseman Dustin Pedroia, the de facto captain of the team, publicly called out Valentine by saying "that's not how we go about our stuff here". The conflict between Youkilis and his manager was so intense that it forced the Red Sox to trade him to the Chicago White Sox for a bag of magic beans, four Dunkin' Donuts coupons and a used copy of R.E.M.'s "Monster".
• Writing a lineup for a game against Minnesota Twins starting pitcher Liam Hendriks with the assumption that the young pitcher was left-handed rather than right-handed (Valentine blamed the mistake, cheap stitched nfl jerseys bizarrely, on his cell phone). Knowing a pitcher's handedness and adjusting the lineup accordingly, of course, is one of a baseball manager's absolute minimum responsibilities. Screwing it up is the baseball equivalent of getting points knocked off your grade for failing to write your name on a test.
• Jokingly threatening to punch WEEI host Glenn Ordway in the mouth during his weekly radio interview before going on bizarre, cheap nba jerseys from china long-winded and occasionally depressing tangents. As a follow-up, Valentine, probably already aware of his fate, would use his final interview of the year to claim that some of his coaches were undermining him throughout the course of the season. To Bobby Valentine's credit, these interviews were more entertaining than 90% of the games he managed.
• Inexplicably pinch-hitting for light-hitting shortstop Jose Iglesias in the middle of an at-bat, with a 2-2 count. Valentine's explanation: "It's not Kindergarten here". While this answer made no sense, it did provide fans with the amusing visual image of Iglesias coming to the plate swinging a whiffle bat with fingerpaint covered hands, half-drunk juice box in his back pocket.
Honestly these are only the most notable of the baffling decisions, tactical blunders and public controversies that came to define the Bobby Valentine era. Red Sox beat writer Alex Speier did the world a favor by constructing an in-depth timeline of Valentine's bizarre Boston career. Keep in mind that reporters have hinted for weeks that they have heard many stories about the 2012 Boston Red Sox around Major League Baseball that have yet to go public so this is a probably an incomplete catalog of his baseball sins.
To be fair, the Red Sox did followed that tweet up with an official statement about firing Valentine but it was still a surprisingly anticlimactic ending to his tumultuous career in Boston. The good news for the Boston Red Sox organization, cheap jerseys com notorious for (allegedly) starting smear campaigns through the media about high profile employees immediately following their exits, is that they will have to do very little to turn public perception against the unpopular now-former manager. Bobby Valentine is, in and of himself, his own smear campaign.
It's not entirely, or even mostly, Valentine's fault that this dysfunctional Boston Red Sox team failed to make the postseason this year. Not even the best manager in the world could have pulled that off. Heck, a genius manager may not have even prevented these Red Sox from clinching their first losing season since 1997, especially after the Red Sox traded Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and a finished-for-the-season Carl Crawford to the Los Angeles Dodgers in what was essentially a salary dump. Still, cheap jersey website sa different manager may have prevented the Red Sox from at least ending the season in last place in the American League East and most certainly would have gotten through the season with less needless drama than Bobby V.
• Slamming third baseman Kevin Youkilis early in the Red Sox season for, of all things, not having his heart in the game. It was a bizarre claim against the famously feisty-to-a-fault Youkilis that proved unpopular among New England baseball fans. steelers jerseys cheap In response, second baseman Dustin Pedroia, the de facto captain of the team, publicly called out Valentine by saying "that's not how we go about our stuff here". The conflict between Youkilis and his manager was so intense that it forced the Red Sox to trade him to the Chicago White Sox for a bag of magic beans, four Dunkin' Donuts coupons and a used copy of R.E.M.'s "Monster".
• Writing a lineup for a game against Minnesota Twins starting pitcher Liam Hendriks with the assumption that the young pitcher was left-handed rather than right-handed (Valentine blamed the mistake, cheap stitched nfl jerseys bizarrely, on his cell phone). Knowing a pitcher's handedness and adjusting the lineup accordingly, of course, is one of a baseball manager's absolute minimum responsibilities. Screwing it up is the baseball equivalent of getting points knocked off your grade for failing to write your name on a test.
• Jokingly threatening to punch WEEI host Glenn Ordway in the mouth during his weekly radio interview before going on bizarre, cheap nba jerseys from china long-winded and occasionally depressing tangents. As a follow-up, Valentine, probably already aware of his fate, would use his final interview of the year to claim that some of his coaches were undermining him throughout the course of the season. To Bobby Valentine's credit, these interviews were more entertaining than 90% of the games he managed.
• Inexplicably pinch-hitting for light-hitting shortstop Jose Iglesias in the middle of an at-bat, with a 2-2 count. Valentine's explanation: "It's not Kindergarten here". While this answer made no sense, it did provide fans with the amusing visual image of Iglesias coming to the plate swinging a whiffle bat with fingerpaint covered hands, half-drunk juice box in his back pocket.
Honestly these are only the most notable of the baffling decisions, tactical blunders and public controversies that came to define the Bobby Valentine era. Red Sox beat writer Alex Speier did the world a favor by constructing an in-depth timeline of Valentine's bizarre Boston career. Keep in mind that reporters have hinted for weeks that they have heard many stories about the 2012 Boston Red Sox around Major League Baseball that have yet to go public so this is a probably an incomplete catalog of his baseball sins.
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