Bobby Valentine might actually be trying to be gracious, but it comes off as smug.
The self-promoting former Mets manager endured a disastrous one-year dugout stint with the Red Sox last season, a 69-win campaign marked by ugliness and dissension at every turn. He was dismissed last October, then watched as replacement John Farrell guided a revamped Boston roster to 97 wins and a berth in the World Series, which begins at Fenway Park on Wednesday night.
Except, if Valentine had stayed on, he thinks he would have pulled off the same turnaround.
“I’d like to think that if I came back for my second year that, given the changes and improvements, I would have been able to do the same thing,” Valentine said in an interview with the Boston Globe.
Of course, one significant change — many would argue improvement — was the managerial switch.
Valentine managed to heap praise upon Farrell — “He’s obviously done a great job. I haven’t heard one negative thing. I haven’t seen anything weird” — and general manager Ben Cherington, with whom he had a contentious relationship.
“Ben did a great job this offseason rebuilding the team,” Valentine told the Globe. “When you’re signing seven or eight guys and they all work out and blend in together as well as they did, that’s amazing to me. The entire organization should be very proud of what they did. They should take a bow. It was amazing work.”
Professing to be content in his roles as Sacred Heart athletic director, Stamford restaurant proprietor, film producer and occasional pundit — though not on TBS, after his critical comments about the Yankees’ post-9/11 role in New York cost him a postseason assignment — Valentine says he can tune out the backlash over his Red Sox debacle and biting tongue.
“I’m aware what people are saying about me,” he said. “I guess I was the village idiot.”