Bobby Valentine, 'Dysfunctional' Red Sox Featured On Cover Of Sports Illustrated
BOSTON (CBS) -- For the second straight week, a Boston sports figure stands on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Unlike last's Rob Gronkowski cover photo, this one is unlikely to end up hanging on any Boston sports fan's wall.
This week's cover features Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine looking rather exasperated as he holds his face in his hands with his eyes shut.
The story accompanying the picture is written by SI senior writer Tom Verducci and is titled, "How The Red Sox Lost Their Way."
The cover also features words which have been used often over the past 12 months when discussing the Red Sox, including "dysfunctional, fiasco, epic collapse, chicken and beer, broken, unprepared, done, Liverpool, feud, divided, circus, blown leads, split, disconnect, mediocrity, disarray, management, overpaid, lack of leaders and blame."
"Current manager Bobby Valentine has been blamed for many of this season's problems," the story says. "One baseball executive said, 'The problem when you have a manager like Bobby is that you're always refereeing if the players don't like the manager. That gets old. And when some people aren't happy, they go around and get other people to be unhappy."
Valentine was already at the center of an extensive story this week, written by Yahoo! Sports' Jeff Passan, which used either the same photo or a very similar photo to promote that story on the website.
Fortunately for Valentine and the Red Sox, it's just a regional cover, so he won't be popping up in mailboxes from coast to coast.
See the full cover on the SI Photo Blog.
