Column: Famous last words from Bobby Valentine

Last week, new Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine had this to say about superstar third baseman Kevin Youkilis: “I don’t think he’s as physically or emotionally into the game as he has been in the past for some reason.” It’s curious that he would say this, if for no other reason than that Youklis could bludgeon him into oblivion with just one twitch of his tremendous bald head.

But beyond that, it seems odd that a brand new manager would mouth off to the press about one of his players, which is the type of thing that gets players angry, owners agitated and, eventually, managers fired. (Remember how Billy Martin would just walk into a room and George Steinbrenner would fire him? Now that was baseball!)

That’s until you consider maybe that’s exactly what Valentine wants. After all, quitting just two weeks into the season wouldn’t look good for anybody, but given the way things are going, it’s reasonable to assume he’d rather be anywhere else: Texas, New York, Japan, seating patrons at his restaurant in Connecticut, etc.

Take this past weekend, when the Red Sox were up 9-0 over the Yankees. FOX left the contest briefly to broadcast the end of Phil Humber’s perfect game, and when they came back, the Red Sox were strewn across the burning, bloody field like a squadron of slaughtered orcs. And Valentine had that look on his face that he seems to be perfecting, halfway between “What just happened?” and the one Mel Gibson had when they eviscerated him at the end of “Braveheart.”

In fact, one can only assume that in the wake of the Youkilis comment, Valentine is spending most of his free time coming up with other things he can say over the course of the season to get the ownership to put him out of his misery. Things like:

April 28: “What’s up with that David Ortiz? I never understand a word he’s saying.”

May 5: “Dustin Pedroia — meh. And he’s kind of short for a ballplayer, don’t you think? Yep, short and bald.”

May 19: “These players are OK, but I don’t see anyone who could hold a candle to an Aaron Boone.”

June 2: “That Carlton Fisk home run? I still say it was foul.”

 
June 14: “Yastrzemski … What’s that ‘z’ doing in there? Suspicious if you ask me. I’m just saying.”

June 28: “It’s just a wall, people. A big stupid green wall.”

July 14: “You know what I like to do for fun? I watch the end of Game 6 against the Mets over and over again, and just laugh and laugh and laugh.”

 
July 28: “I’d like to introduce my new pitching coach, Grady Little! Oh, you’ve met?”

Aug. 4: “I was thinking of growing a mustache like Dwight Evans, but then I thought, why would I want to look like an oversized Maltese?”

Aug. 11: Bloody sock my [bleep].

Aug. 15: “I don’t think Johnny Pesky’s been as physically or emotionally into the game as he has been in the past for some reason. Ow!” [gets hit by beer bottle]

Aug. 27: “Release me from my contract or you’ll never see Ted Williams’ head again.”

Of course, if Valentine makes it through to September he might as well stick it out until the end of the season — management probably won’t ask him back, but he can always parlay his year in Boston into something more satisfying and less likely to get him booed. And when he does, I have a feeling I know what he might wind up saying to Red Sox fans.

“Would you like a table for two?”

AT LARGE Fake News Monday: Red Sox Plagued By Injuries, Voodoo Curse

BOSTON (CAP) - As the Red Sox September slide continues, it's hard not to lay at least some of the blame for the team's troubles on a debilitating spate of injuries and the ancient curse placed upon them by an elderly voodoo priestess.

"It's a hard thing to plan for," admitted manager Terry Francona, citing Kevin Youklis' bouts with bursitis, David Ortiz's back spasms and the curse incanted over a duck's liver and the blood of three dead chickens.

Some, like Boston Globe columnist Peter Abraham, have questioned whether the team's injuries could be the result of poor conditioning practices, while noting that the curse likely wouldn't be an issue if certain players were more careful about their behavior around people steeped in the dark arts of voodoo sorcery.

"I can tell you this from being around the team: There are certain guys who bust their asses every day, and there are certain guys who don't," wrote Abraham in his blog on Boston.com. "And there are certain guys who don't think it through before they piss off priestesses."

Abraham was oblique in his references, but it's widely assumed he's referring to veteran players like Youklis and Ortiz, who aren't known for engaging in rigorous conditioning routines, and pitcher Jonathan Papelbon, who tried to make a Haitian voodoo priestess Irish step dance with him to Shipping Up To Boston while on an off-season team excursion to Ortiz's childhood home in the Dominican Republic.

Ortiz, for his part, says that he does in fact engage in daily workouts with Red Sox strength and conditioning coach David Page, that he's in as good a shape as he's ever been, and that the curse is likely hoodoo in origin, rather than voodoo.

"A lot of people make that mistake," he noted, adding that he expected to remain in the lineup as long as his regular strength training keeps his back in good shape, and no one is poking needles into a crude doll fashioned in his likeness.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: A Yankee Doodle, do or die?

As a native New Yorker living in the Boston area, I’ll admit to having a complicated relationship with the Yankees. Not as complicated as the relationship between A-Rod, his wife and Madonna, but still …

See? Even I can’t resist the easy A-Rod joke, even though by all accounts I should hold each and every Yankee in the highest regard. After all, both my parents were born in the Bronx and my New York family is still full of diehards — I have a new nephew who at 6 months old has never, to my knowledge, been out of pinstripes.

But even as a child I tended to buck the family trend. I went through a period during elementary school when I rooted for the Mets, for a very logical reason: They had a mascot whose head was a giant baseball. While other mascots had at best a tangential relationship to baseball (c’mon, a chicken?), Mr. Met literally was a baseball. If somebody walked up and hit him in the head with a bat, I imagine no jury in the land could convict.

But beyond that, I always seemed to have an innate need to root for the underdog, which the Mets of the mid-’70s most definitely were; like my Little League team, and unlike the Yankees, they were terrible — meaning I could relate. Sometimes too much.

So it wasn’t until the ’80s, when the Yankees started losing on a consistent basis, that my baseball interests turned in their direction; now, this was a team I could get behind. My favorite Yankee of that period was, of course, Don Mattingly, who never got to a World Series but showed up every day and played his heart out anyway. He’d have fit right in on my Little League team, except for the moustache.

So by the time the Yankees finally got back to the World Series in 1996, even though I was living in Boston by then, I had no problem rooting for them unabashedly. When Jeter & Co. won that one, it felt like they were doing it for Donnie Baseball — it was a perfect victory, except for Wade Boggs riding that horse around Yankee Stadium, like he was just asking to be attacked by Apaches.

But before long the Yankees were no longer underdogs, being widely acknowledged as one of the best teams ever. Meanwhile, I had married a lifelong Sox fan (and former Fred Lynn stalker), and was starting to see what a Red Sox series win would mean. So much so that in 2003, I couldn’t help but feel bad when Aaron Boone’s home run finished off the Sox in the ALCS — and not just because as the token New Yorker there was a very good chance that when I got into the office the next day, I would be stapled to death.

Then a few things happened: The Sox did win, and I saw the joy that came with it for my wife and her family and friends. And my son Tim came of baseball appreciation age, and immediately took after his mother as a member of Red Sox Nation. Baseball is currently his favorite thing in the world, and watching it is our favorite thing to do together — which, since we’re in Boston, means watching the Red Sox.

So what that’s meant for this New Yorker is a sort of cognitive dissonance —– if the Yanks and the Sox are playing separately, I can root for either, and if they’re playing each other, there’s a danger of my head exploding like in a David Cronenberg movie. It doesn’t help the Yankees’ case that they’ve employed some truly unlikable characters (sorry, A-Rod), but on the other hand, how can you not like a Jeter, Matsui or CC Sabathia? Even my son can agree with that, as much as he may want them to lose in humiliating disgrace — he’s still a Sox fan, after all.

So if I’m going to root for the Yankees around my house this week — as I write this on Nov. 3, they’re ahead of the Phillies three games to two — I’ll do it quietly. I know when it’s over, no matter who wins, my son and I will be out in the backyard, pushing aside the leaves to try to get one more game in before the snow comes. That won’t be about the Red Sox or the Yankees — it will be about baseball, and how if the stars align properly, there are ways to love everything about it.

Well, except maybe for A-Rod. He just irks me.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”