newjerseynewsroom.com

By hiring Bobby Valentine as their new manager, the Boston Red Sox just got:

A: More exciting

B: More hated

C: More interesting

D: All of the above.

Of course, the answer depends on your perspective. And for Red Sox fans, the real concern is whether or not the team is now better.

Boston certainly made a splash with the announcement and baseball columnists from all quarters have been weighing in on its decision. As Joel Sherman in the New York Post pointed out, “The greatest soap opera in baseball just got a hero — or a villain.”

Sherman noted that Valentine “makes lifelong friends and enduring enemies in near-equal numbers.” He also called him “a combustible manager as likely to throw the organization into further chaos as he is to bring championship glory.”

In his NY Baseball Digest, Mike Silva maintained that the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry had taken a staid, corporate turn in recent years. That changed, he wrote, the moment with the never-shy Valentine was put into the mix.

Silva wrote that Valentine “will respect the Yanks, but inevitably something will happen that will cause him to speak his mind. It will start a press war that will rankle (Yankee manager) Joe Girardi, (general manager) Brian Cashman, or maybe even (owner) Hal Steinbrenner.”

He added that Bobby V makes Boston “supremely better in the dugout” than New York.

Sean Hartnett of CBS New York wrote that Valentine’s “experience, personality and methods all appear to be what is required to take on the unique assignment of changing the culture associated with the demise of the 2011 Red Sox.”

Most are of the opinion that Boston — off a hugely disappointing season that included charges that players were drinking beer and eating fried chicken during games and ended with the banishment of popular manager Terry Francona and general manager Theo Epstein — would not tolerate an untested leader. In Valentine, all agree they have brought an outspoken, sometimes abrasive, and very bright field general, and a lightening rod, to boot.

Harnett points out that many Mets fans still long for Valentine, who led them to the playoffs in 1999 and World Series in 2000 with players like Timo Perez and Benny Agbayani in the starting lineup.

Valentine has more than 1,000 big league wins as manager and also was a successful and popular manager in Japan, where Hartnett noted “over 112,000 fans of Japan’s Chiba Lotte Marines signed a petition” to keep him after the team’s owner reneged on retaining him forever.

The fans let him know their feelings by bringing a 30-row high banner that stretched across half of the outfield seats at Chiba Marine Stadium that read “Bobby Forever.”

Between managerial assignments, Valentine has been adding his smarts and opinions to ESPN’s baseball coverage. Now Red Sox Nation hopes he’s a good a manager in Boston.

The Post’s Sherman noted that “Valentine is going to have strong, reason-backed opinions on everything” and that “the intensity of Yankees-Red Sox just went up a few degrees simply due to Valentine’s history, intensity and personality. The Yankees are at Fenway April 20-22, and I already can’t wait.”

He undoubtedly isn’t alone.

—JOE GREENE, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM