Sports World Nostalgia: Bobby Valentine

As bloggers--or writers (term used loosely) of any sort--it's sort of a minimal obligation that we do something hokey and festive on popular holidays. So to celebrate Valentine's Day, I thought I would pay tribute to a sports icon for whom the day is not named, but for whom it should be named: former MLB player and manager and Japanese League manager Bobby Valentine.

As a player, Valentine lasted eleven seasons in the bigs, appearing with five teams. After breaking in at the age of 19, "the Heartbreak Kid," as he should've been called, blossomed into a semi-regular player by the age of 22. As a member of the Dodgers in 1972, the versatile Valentine enjoyed his finest season, hitting .274 with 3 HR in 391 ABs while splitting time between 2B, 3B, SS, and OF.

Like most of us, Valentine had already seen his best days by the time he turned 23. By the mid-'70s, he'd been relegated to a sparingly-used utility man, a role he would continue to play until his retirement after the 1979 season.

During his playing career, Valentine garnered a reputation for being cagey, heady, and, above all, fond of watching games from the bench. So it was no surprise that baseballpeople quickly pegged the young Valentine as a future managerial candidate. By 1985, Valentine fulfilled this prophecy, becoming the interim manager of the Texas Rangers at the age of 35.

Valentine stuck with the Rangers, where he would oversee a string of 80ish-win seasons. His finest moment as Rangers manager came on June 11, 1990 when--just moments before the Rangers' game against the A's that evening--he told starting pitcher Nolan Ryan, "Hey, throw a good one tonight." Ryan obliged by pitching a no-hitter. It was undoubtedly Valentine's best single-game managerial perfomance of his young career. Never a one-trick pony, Valentine repeated the feat on May 1, 1991 when he told Ryan to no-hit the Blue Jays.

Valentine would remain with the Rangers until 1992 when he got his ass cahizzanned 86 games into the season.

By 1995, Valentine found himself itching to manage again, and, more principally, itching to earn a paycheck. That winter, Valentine accepted a job managing the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Japanese Pacific League. Despite the Marines' second-place finish that season, Valentine was fired due to personality conflicts and an admission that he picked his lineups from a hat when he gave up trying to learn his players' names.

The next season, Valentine was back in the majors as a coach with the Mets. He would find himself managing again before the 1996 finished when the Mets dumped manager Dallas Green with 31 games left. During his time with the Mets, Valentine's teams won back-to-back NL Wild Cards in 1999 and 2000, making the World Series the latter season and losing to the cross-town Yankees in front of lots of celebrities. What people will remember most about Valentine's Mets tenure, however, was his incognito appearance in the Mets' dugout after being ejected during a 1999 game (photo, top of page).

By 2002, the Mets had grown tired of not firing someone, and Valentine was released from his exile in Flushing Meadows. With nowhere else to turn, Valentine followed his heart back home to Japan, accepting his old job with Chiba Lotte for the 2003 season. He would win the Pacific League title with the Marines in 2005 and continues to manage there today.

Since going back to Japan, Valentine has crusaded for international competition among MLB teams and other countries' professional teams. Valentine was validated in his oft pooh-poohed assertions that Japanese League players could compete with MLB players when Japan won the inaugural World Baseball Classic last year on the strength of their calculated, stoic, Samurai-like, good-at-math, seaweed-digesting style, just as Valentine had predicted.

Whether or not Valentine ever makes it back to the majors, his legacy as a champion for the WBC and as a hilarious disguise artist is forever cemented in baseball lore. Also, his legacy as the inventor of the wrap is forever cemented in deli sandwich lore. But if you ask me, he's making that up. The filthy liar.

Anyway, we at YCS hope all of you had a wonderful Valentine's Day, and we hope when you curl up with that special someone tonight, you think of the man we honor on this day--former MLB manager Bobby Valentine. If not, we hope you think of Bobby the next time you're making love. And every time after that.