Managing in an All-Star Game is supposed to be an honor. For Bobby Valentine, though, it has turned into yet another controversy-filled nightmare.
Valentine, Marlins outfielder Cliff Floyd and Floyd’s agent Seth Levinson exchanged insults yesterday over how the Met manager handled bypassing the Miami slugger for the NL team.
Tuesday, Floyd finished a telephone conversation with Valentine convinced he was an All-Star. He then purchased nearly $16,000 worth of plane tickets to Seattle for family and friends. Valentine contends Floyd never was told he had made the team.
“If he said I misunderstood, then he’s lying,” Floyd said last night in Montreal, where the Marlins were playing.
“Once again, Bobby Valentine has conclusively proven he is what everybody believes him to be,” Levinson said.
When asked what that was, Levinson said, “I don’t think that takes a lot of imagination.”
Valentine’s reply was, “No one said there was a problem, except for a very dishonest agent named Levinson.”
Levinson said the player told him Valentine said: “I’m not supposed to tell you today because it is against league rules. But congratulations, you’re on the team.”
“Cliff Floyd’s agent is a liar. I didn’t back out of anything. I talked to Cliff and Cliff knows exactly what I said . . .,” Valentine said.
“I told [Cliff] he’s on the bubble and I appreciate everything he does,” Valentine said. “I told him that I love him as a player, I’ve wanted to get him as a player, I scouted him as a player, and we’ll see how the chips fall.”
Through intermediaries Valentine had been trying to set up a phone call with Floyd. Earlier this season, during a Met-Marlin series, Floyd got upset about Valentine’s behavior and said he “never would play for a team that Valentine managed” and that “Valentine was the stupidest manager in baseball.”
Valentine said he wanted to talk to Floyd to make sure that if the outfielder were selected, he would accept and not continue to disparage Valentine.
“Cliff, relying on Bobby Valentine’s promise that he had made the All-Star team, purchased $16,000 in plane tickets for family and friends,” said Levinson, who also is the agent for Todd Zeile, Steve Trachsel and Todd Hundley, who once had a newsworthy blow-up with Valentine.
“It would be foolish and unreasonable of anyone to think we would buy $16,000 worth of tickets if he only had a chance to make the team. The tickets are a smoking gun.”
Credit card receipts for seven round-trip tickets worth $15,988.13, which were obtained by The Post, showed they were bought Tuesday at 4:29 p.m., the day of the Floyd-Valentine phone conversation and the day before it was revealed that Floyd had not made the team.
Valentine says he tried to reach Floyd on several occasions and that Levinson was wrong for not getting the player to respond.
“If he is out $16,000, then Seth should give him that money for being negligent at his job,” Valentine said. “Seth Levinson was told over a week ago that I needed to talk to him to find out whether or not [Floyd] was going to present an embarrassing situation if, in fact, he was going to take himself off the team.
“Seth Levinson decided not to do that. At the last moment, I called Cliff to find out if he wanted to go, at which point he supposedly got all excited.”
Floyd told TSN Radio that, “The truth is that when I talked to him on the phone, he said that I was on the team barring anything crazy. Now I’m gonna ask you, what crazy thing could happen in one day?”
Associated Press contributed to this report
