BOSTON — The new low point arrived in the top of the eighth inning last night at Fenway Park, with another game turning into a visitors’ stroll.
When Bobby Valentine walked from the mound to the home dugout, having lifted lefty reliever Franklin Morales for right-hander Matt Albers, the Red Sox’s first-year manager received a shower of boos.
“I was booing myself,” Valentine, the Red Sox’s first-year manager, said after his team’s 6-3 loss to Texas, its third straight defeat. “Didn’t work out.”
These are your 4-8 Red Sox, with the Yankees on deck this weekend. This is your beleaguered skipper.
This is life with Bobby V.
Rarely does the former Mets and Rangers manager, getting his first Major League Baseball gig since the Mets fired him in 2002, experience “smooth sailing.” That’s how he described things before yesterday’s game, yet it might just be a relative view.
His club is trying to move past the historic collapse of last year that brought Valentine here in the first place. The team’s bullpen plans have blown up; former Yankees prospect Mark Melancon headed to Triple-A Pawtucket yesterday after getting pummeled by Texas in Tuesday’s game.
Kevin Youkilis, whom Valentine dropped to sixth in the Red Sox’s lineup — the third baseman’s first time hitting that low since 2008 — slammed a two-run homer in his first at-bat, making Valentine look like a seer. Youkilis went hitless in his next three at-bats, however, and Valentine is still cleaning up the mess he made with Youkilis earlier this week.
On Sunday, Valentine told an area television station that Youkilis was not “as physically or emotionally into the game” as he was in past seasons. It was just one sentence, and then Valentine pivoted to more positive comments. But it was an explosive sentence, one that drew criticism from Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia and prompted Valentine to quickly apologize to Youkilis.
“I think it was a mistake,” Valentine said earlier yesterday. “It was like a check swing. There was no intent, but the umpire called it a swing. What are you going to do? You can’t protest. You can’t argue checked swings.”
In this market, a reporter countered, every “check swing” will get rung up. “Probably. Probably,” Valentine said, smiling.
Given his identity, another reporter added, he surely could appreciate that all of his words would be fully scrutinized.
“Do I appreciate it? I understand it,” Valentine said. “Do I appreciate it? Absolutely not.”
He created earlier waves in spring training when he questioned whether Derek Jeter deserved immortality for his role in the 2001 “flip play,” and he noted that retiring catcher Jason Varitek “beat up” Alex Rodriguez in a 2004 brawl. Yesterday, Valentine called both comments “innocuous.”
We’ve witnessed similar Bobby V. sagas. We saw Valentine’s 1999 and 2000 Mets limp out of the gate, with Valentine’s job in jeopardy both years. We saw both clubs rebound to qualify for the playoffs and perform well once they got there.
This is a different time, though. Different media paradigm, with more time and effort required to put out quote-sparked fires. Different history. Pedroia held a particularly close relationship with Valentine’s predecessor Terry Francona.
“It is what it is,” Valentine said. “But it isn’t what it’s perceived to be.”
The one thing on which everyone can agree: It’s never boring. As Valentine wrapped up his pregame session, a reporter asked him about his new show on NESN, the cable station owned partly by the Red Sox. The show debuts tonight, and Valentine taped his interview yesterday.
“You won’t believe the [stuff]I said,” Valentine said, smiling and getting laughs around the room. If the Red Sox don’t improve this weekend against the Yankees, the stuff Valentine hears will be far worse.
kdavidoff@nypost.com