Bobby Valentine has been presented with some new challenges in his short time as Red Sox manager. (AP)
Few want to understand the reality of Bobby Valentine's situation. When you have a team that is 4-8, and immersed in a bout of early-season chaos, hearing that the manager's grasp of his world is a work in progress is tough for some to digest.
But that is undeniably the case.
It's easy to see what is Valentine's biggest challenge when it comes to getting grip on the on-field conundrums. The bullpen — figuring out whom to use, and not use, when and where — remains an unsettled proposition. Deciphering what's right and wrong in that respect, however, is something a baseball man like Valentine has managed before and will manage again.
No, there is another challenge that Valentine has been encountered which might be the most difficult to maneuver around.
"The thing I think surprised me, I haven't managed here in the States in 10 years and I think there's a difference in the deliverance of information," Valentine said.
According to the manager, this revelation was brought to the surface just a few days ago, thanks to the media tsunami that ensued after Valentine's comments regarding Kevin Youkilis. The sound bite was surfaced Sunday night, and by 9 a.m. the next morning he was clarifying not only the initial statement, but a flurry of reaction that had washed over the 24-hour news cycle in the hours leading up to the morning press conference.
"I probably realized it the whole time, but it jumped on me that this is the world we're living in," Valentine said. "It's cool."
But is it really?
"Sure," he explained. "It's another step. When we talk about the good players, they're the ones who adjust. Adjust during an at-bat. Adjust during a season. To be good at life you have to keep adjusting. When you start going into the grave is when you stop adjusting. So I'll have to adjust."
As Valentine points out, this isn't his first go-round when it comes being confronted with a new dynamic regarding the media landscape. In both his previous managerial stops in the United States — in Texas and New York — the beginnings of new news-gathering phenomenons were just taking root.
"I've managed during the infancy of talk radio and 24 hour sports with ESPN. In the mid-80′s when ESPN was now in the household and all of a sudden it was a round-the-clock sports thing, it was different for everybody," he said. "You didn't need to wait for the newspaper the next day to find out what happened. You go home, you turn on the TV and you see all the games. You didn't need the one local sports show.
"Then I got to New York in the infancy of talk radio, which became this other way amazing way of fans being part of the whole experience. Now it's this other media creation that is changing the landscape, and I'll adapt to it, but it is different."
The Sox' manager explained that while the coverage his teams in Japan was "intense," he never experienced the immediacy that has become prevalent today's world of covering big league baseball.
And when it comes to identifying the most powerful alteration, Valentine doesn't hesitate in pointing to the creation that has single-handedly turned the news cycle inside-out — Twitter.
"You're in a restaurant and you're overheard and the world just heard what you were saying," he said. "I have to be protective of that, especially since my voice carries. It's interesting.
"It's really different. How it manifests itself in our relationships [with the media] … I remember if somebody picked up on something I said it would be a follow-up to the story to try and get it right. Now you don't have time to get it right. So it's very important for me to get it right. If I say left, it better be left. My sense of that in my situation is important."
