Bobby Valentine and Red Sox OK deal, source says
BOSTON - Bobby Valentine has agreed terms with the Boston Red Sox to become the team's new manager, a person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
A news conference to introduce Valentine is expected on Thursday, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal had not been signed.
The former New York Mets and Texas Rangers manager replaces Terry Francona, who left after eight years in which he guided the Red Sox to two World Series titles but also the biggest September collapse in baseball history.
Valentine was hired to revive a team that has missed the playoffs two straight years and reverse a culture in which players ate takeout fried chicken and drank beer in the clubhouse during games instead of sitting on the bench with their teammates.
Francona let his players police themselves and never said anything negative about them in public. When he was in New York, Valentine at times criticized his players and bickered with them, his boss and the media.
"You give loyalty, you'll get it back. You give love, you'll get it back," said Tommy Lasorda, Valentine's manager in the minor leagues and a mentor who encouraged him to try for the Red Sox job. "And that's the way it has to be."
The Red Sox let Francona go after missing out on the playoffs for the second straight season, one game behind AL wild-card winner Tampa Bay. Francona said the clubhouse needed a different voice.
And Valentine is certainly different. A restaurateur who claims to have invented the wrap sandwich; a high school star in football and baseball; a two-time minor-league MVP; the son-in-law of former major leaguer Ralph Branca; the manager of the NL pennant-winning New York Mets and Japanese champion Chiba Lotte Marines; the director of health and public safety in Stamford, Connecticut; purveyor of an athletic training facility; a successful TV analyst.
Valentine's resume is long but it has one major gap: He's never won a World Series.
CBSSports.com's Scott Miller says Fenway Park will never be boring with Valentine as skipper.
"Valentine is charismatic, energetic, whip-smart, passionate, arrogant, enthusiastic, old-school, new-school, inquisitive, condescending, confrontational, sharp-tongued and hard-edged in one blinding, kaleidoscope of a package," Miller writes. "How that mixes with the New York Yankees will be riveting. How that mixes with the rest of the American League -- especially with Baltimore manager Buck Showalter -- will be highly entertaining."