VS

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Boston Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine apparently isn’t impressed with the astuteness of ESPN analyst Curt Schilling… “I just feel like this is not going to go the way people had hoped,” Schilling said in an interview on ESPN Radio’s “The Herd with Colin Cowherd.” “I thought there were different choices that could have been made here (to be manager), from a personality perspective, knowing some of the guys on this team. I’m not so sure that this isn’t going to be an oil and a water mix early on, especially if they don’t get out to a really good start.”… “I just consider the source when I read, hear stuff like that,” [Valentine] said. Schilling said a manager’s job has evolved from making calls on the field to managing personnel, and that Valentine is ill-suited for that duty. “I know it’s simplistic, but I think the day and age of managing 25 players as one unit are over,” Schilling said… “Bobby is a guy that is interested in trying to making you understand how much he knows about the game.”

A clash of egos between Schilling and Valentine was pretty much inevitable, wasn’t it?  I mean, Boston’s a big city but it’s not big enough for two Alpha Males like this.  Two guys who are the smartest men in the room, so deeply in love with the sound of their own voice, can’t peacefully co-exist in a market this size.  These two seem destined to meet up sooner or later, where they’ll face off against one another using only their own brain power to manipulate matter and gravity, tear heavy objects off the walls and fling them at each other. So we all had to see this little tiff coming.  Still, as much as I’ll always be grateful to Schilling for stepping up in the clutch when it mattered most and think he should never have to pay for a meal in New England again for as long as he lives, I’m going to have to take Bobby V’s side on this one.  Because whether or not I think Schilling has a point about the players eventually tuning Valentine out (and I do), there’s no way he’s hearing this from “some of the guys on the team.”  No way in Hell.  First of all, there are like 3 or 4 guys left on the entire roster that he ever played with, and I never got the feeling they could stand to talk to him when he was taking the ball for them every 5th day.  The idea that he’s getting inside locker room dirt from Youkilis or Ortiz that he can use on “The Herd” is absolutely friggin laughable.  So Round 1 of this epic battle goes to Valentine.  Now we wait for Schilling’s response in 5… 4…. 3… @JerryThornton1