“I don’t know about vindication. I know what I can do. I give my best every day. Some days that’s not good enough. Most of the time in my life the best has been very good.”BOBBY VALENTINE
BALLPLAYER gets on the wrong side of Bobby Valentine and the manager begins to needle him in subtle fashion. Ballplayer initially reacts by rolling his eyes. Then he begins to privately talk about what it is about the manager that so irritates him.
Then he goes public. Then he is shipped out of town, determined to make Valentine look bad for giving up on him. Ballplayer ends up making Valentine look good by sliding further down the hill.
Pete Harnisch is best example of an exception to that pattern, but he is outnumbered greatly.
Lance Johnson, Mark Clark, Bernard Gilkey, Todd Hundley. Valentine’s means of going about things is open to question, but his end usually justifies those means. The guy knows talent.
Valentine didn’t want to give up on Hideo Nomo and stewed for days after the Mets released him. Asked a few springs ago about the possiblity of the Mets bringing Bobby Bonilla back into the organization, Valentine responded by saying, “Tell me why he’s better than Butch Huskey.”
Ownership, for its willingness to take on the enormous conract demands, deserves most of the credit for brining Mike Piazza into the organization. And it was Steve Phillips who put together the trade for Piazza.
But without Valentine’s campaigning for Piazza, the idea never could have been sold to ownership. And without Valentine’s strong ties to Piazza, father Vince Piazza, and close family friend Tommy Lasorda, Piazza never would have been brought to town.
If you want to hear a dirty little secret you must pull your chair a great deal closer and promise never to reveal your source. Ready? The hiring of Valentine was a key move toward bringing the Mets to the level of playoff contenders.
Don’t you dare tell anyone where you read those words or everyone in baseball will stop returning my calls. For a variety of reasons, Valentine is the most unpopular manager in baseball in the ranks of players, front office types and fellow managers.
The tall smile, the bench jockeying, the intellectual side and willingness to show it, the penchant toward managing from the top step, the negative vibes. Whatever the reason, Valentine has a knack for rubbing people the wrong way.
Should the Mets reach expectations and qualify for the postseason for the first time since 1988, there will be only thing Valentine will enjoy more than removing the “He’s never won anything” tag.
More than removing that tag he will enjoy being able to say, whenever criticized about anything, “Well, I guess they have to find something new to blast me for now that they can’t say I’ve never won anything. That’s OK. I really don’t have a problem with it.”
The ’99 Mets are the best team Valentine ever has managed. He’s never been cockier about a team.
He was asked about the “V” word and that ever-present monkey on his back a couple of hours before yesterday’s game against the Cubs at Wrigley Field and about 10 hours before the trading deadline.
“I don’t care about that stuff. I don’t care about vindication or monkeys or monkeys who write about vindication,” Valentine said. “I don’t know about vindication. I know what I can do. I give my best every day. Some days that’s not good enough. Most of the time in my life the best has been very good.”
Valentine manages nine innings better than most big league managers. Players find him more annoying than most big league managers. He has his pros and he has his flaws. In the end, he’s like most managers in that if you stock his team with talent he has a good shot at winning and the Mets finally are stocked.
The role the manager has played in helping the Mets obtain winning personnel sometimes is overlooked. That’s hardly surprising. After all, who of sound mind is going to out of his way to say anything nice about Bobby Valentine? Where is the upside to doing something like that? Most take the patient approach, waiting for him to say it himself.
