The abortive 2012 Red Sox season ended five months ago. The calendar year has turned to 2013. Boston has a new manager and close to half the 2013 big league roster will be different. There is, nor has there been, occasion to think or utter Bobby Valentine’s name for quite a long time.
But Bobby Valentine understands that many fans remain heartsick over his departure. He has two eyes and two ears. He has heard players respond to the various barbs he has thrown at players and management since being fired by the team last fall. He senses that fans feel a debt of gratitude toward him for providing the antidote to the poisonous culture that had infiltrated the locker room prior to his arrival after the 2011 debacle.
However, with Valentine now entrenched in a new journey as athletic director of a small private college in Connecticut , he believes it is fine time that fans move on and forget about him.
“I don’t know why everyone still insists on talking about my year in Boston. I’m sick of talking about the 2012 season. Let’s all move on from my time as Red Sox manager. OK? I’m not the Red Sox manager anymore. Bobby Valentine managed the Red Sox in 2012. Now Bobby Valentine doesn’t manage the Red Sox. Get it?”
To drive home his point that he is finished discussing his run in Boston, Valentine has purchased full-page advertisements in newspapers such as The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston Metro and Providence Journal which will run on a daily basis throughout the baseball season. The spots will ask fans to kindly forget about 2012.
“The point of this ad campaign is, I want everyone to know it’s over now. I am finished talking about it. Starting now. That’s what this is about. These newspaper ads will remind everybody on a daily basis that I don’t think about Boston anymore. Starting right now. I swear. I want fans to open the sports section every day and see my face staring at them and just know I have moved on. Today is a new day. Tomorrow is, too.”
The viral campaign won’t stop there.
“We’ve got some YouTube videos and things that I’m going to post to a Facebook page. I’ll also be appearing at various bookstores around New England to autograph copies of Dan Shaughnessy’s biography of my predecessor, Terry Francona. Oh yeah, also, television ads will run after the top halves of the first, third, fifth and eighth innings of each NESN telecast. That will be a series where I’ll talk about things that happened last year and why they don’t matter anymore. And yes, there is a breakfast cereal in the works too.”
An official press release will be blasted later today providing Valentine’s cell phone number in order to field any and all future inquiries about his time as Red Sox manager, which he is now finished discussing.
Starting right now. (Call his cell phone for more details.)
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