Valentine’s Philosophy Is Good One : An Accident Ended His Playing Career, but He’s Managing Well With Rangers

OAKLAND —  The warm smile Bobby Valentine uses to make people feel as if they had grown up next door to him disappears. The dark eyes, capable of charming strangers with his good-natured wink, settle squarely on the questioner’s and penetrate.

Valentine is serious for a moment. He is trying to make a point, and he doesn’t want any doubt about his sincerity. He says that from the bottom of his 35-year-old heart he believes life has been good to him. He’s been blessed, he says.

Blessed?

Isn’t this the same Bobby Valentine who could have his own chapter in any collection of sad stories of big league baseball? The same guy who, at 23, got his leg caught in the outfield fence at Anaheim Stadium and never got to find out if he’d be the ballplayer nearly everyone was convinced he would be? The guy who decided to retire at 29 because nobody wanted a utility infielder with a disfigured leg?

Robert John Valentine should feel cheated. Deprived. Life gave him a bad break from which he never fully recovered. Why shouldn’t he be bitter?

Valentine doesn’t chose to look at it that way. The way he figures it, one bad night does not negate 35 years of an otherwise charmed existence. Maybe he’s right. Exclude that night and Valentine’s life has been mostly rosy.

He grew up happily in Stamford, Conn. He went to Rippowan High School, where he was a football, basketball and baseball star, student body president and lead in the senior play. He was the only football player in Connecticut history to be named all-state for three years. USC came calling with a scholarship offer.

He was also the Dodgers’ first choice in the 1968 free-agent draft. Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Bill Buckner and Davey Lopes all became Dodgers that year, but Valentine was selected before any of them.

Some players take several years to make it up baseball’s minor league ladder. Valentine skipped a couple of rungs and climbed quickly. He was in Class A in 1968, Triple-A the next year. In 1970, he hit .340 with 80 RBIs and led the Pacific Coast League in total bases with 324. By 1971, he had reached the majors.

When he reluctantly admitted that his playing days were over, he decided to open a restaurant in his home town. “Being that I knew nothing at all about the restaurant business, I thought it was a great idea,” he said. Today, Valentine is a successful restaurateur with eateries in Stamford, Milford and Norwalk, Conn.

Valentine never quite left baseball, though. The San Diego Padres hired him as roving minor league instructor after he ended his playing career with the Seattle Mariners, and he stayed active in one capacity or another.

And on May 16, one day before the 12th anniversary of the injury that changed his life, Valentine became the youngest manager in major league baseball. Although he was without a day of managerial experience, the Texas Rangers selected him to replace Doug Rader and try to turn around a team that was on its way to an early burial in the American League West.

When you weigh it all out, as Valentine has, you see how he has arrived at his positive outlook on things and has chosen to make the best of the cards as dealt.

“So I had some misfortune,” he said. “But I’m still way ahead on the good side of the things that have happened to me. I really believe that.

“And here I am today. I mean, what can be better than this? To be managing in the big leagues at 35 years old. What can be better?”

Bay Area reporter to Bobby Valentine: “I was there in Anaheim the night you hit the fence.”

Valentine: “I was there, too, unfortunately.”

The date was May 17, 1973, four days after Valentine’s 23rd birthday and not quite six months after the Dodgers had traded Valentine to the Angels. Those who were there left with the memory of one of baseball’s shining young stars being carried off the field in a stretcher, his right leg grotesquely rearranged.

Valentine recalls looking down and seeing the bottom of his shoe facing him, with his foot still in it. The promise of a bright career was broken.

It happened in the second inning of a game between the Angels and the Oakland A’s. Valentine was playing center field, where he had moved from shortstop five games earlier so that regular center fielder, Ken Berry, could rest an ailing back.

Oakland’s Dick Green drove a pitch off Rudy May deep to left-center field. Valentine took off in reckless pursuit. As he neared the fence, he leaped and extended his glove. The ball was just out of his reach, hitting the top of the fence before carrying over.

It wasn’t the landing that hurt Valentine, it was the fall. As he began his descent, his spikes ripped through the canvas covering the outfield fence. His leg caught, then snapped like a brittle tree branch.

X-rays showed a dislocation and two broken bones, both breaks about five inches above the ankle.

Vada Pinson, then the Angels’ left fielder, was the first to reach Valentine’s side, the first to view the mangled mess that Valentine’s leg had become.

“He was in a lot of pain, but the initial shock didn’t hit him at first,” Pinson told reporters. “But when they put him on the stretcher, he was screaming.”

Valentine still has films of the incident at home. He’s watched them several times, he said, and still doesn’t understand how he was hurt as severely as he was. “I’ve hit things a lot harder,” he said.

“I think it was just a combination of my aggressiveness, my belief in my ability and my, uh, stupidity.”

He can almost laugh about it now, but there was nothing funny about the effect it had on his playing career. From that point on, he ran with a noticeable limp. He had to pull his pants leg over a huge knot near the top of his shin that still serves as an ugly reminder of the accident.

“It still looks the same,” he said as the Rangers went through batting practice last Saturday at Oakland Alameda County Coliseum. “It still doesn’t bend very far. Luckily, it doesn’t keep me from getting out to argue with umpires or throw batting practice.”

He tried to prove otherwise, but it also prevented him from ever being the player he once was. Valentine hit .261 for the Angels in 1974, but was back in the minor leagues in 1975. The Angels traded him to the Padres, who traded him to the New York Mets, who released him in 1979. He was signed by the Mariners, played out the ’79 season, then retired.

“I was a free agent after that season,” he said. “I think there were two teams that drafted me on the free-agent market, and they hadn’t even called me by December. I finally decided to quit banging my head against the wall and face reality.”

Valentine had heard people tell him he wouldn’t recover from the injury. He didn’t believe them, until he heard it from a friend.

Tom Lasorda had been Valentine’s first manager in professional baseball. In the winter of 1974, they were reunited when Valentine went to the Dominican Republic to play winter ball for Lasorda.

“He had seen me play the best that I ever played,” Valentine said. “I wanted him to evaluate my talent--and to tell me that I’d be fine with just a little time. At the end of the winter, we sat down and had a very emotional talk at which time he told me I’d never be the same player.”

From that point on, Valentine began changing his career plans. He would spend the next five seasons bouncing from team to team, from Triple-A to the majors, from Hawaii in the Pacific Coast League to New York in the National League. It may not have been what he had in mind, but it was educational. And as it turned out, this education would get him a job managing.

Tom Grieve, vice president and general manager of the Texas Rangers, said there was no question in his mind that Bobby Valentine was the right man to become the team’s 11th manager. Others had their doubts.

The skeptics wondered what a 35-year-old third base coach with no managerial experience could offer a team that was 9-23 and fading faster every day. Grieve, who was a teammate of Valentine with the Mets in 1978, had the answers.

“A lot has been made over the fact that he’s never managed,” he said. “But that was insignificant in my mind. I think he’s managed every game he’s ever watched or played in. In an organized way, he was preparing himself for this.”

Valentine is well aware of the position he’s in. He knows that his decisions are going to be more closely scrutinized because of his youth. “Sure,” he said. “But it’s the only age I’ve got. And when you know that going in, it’s not that bad. And I know that going in.

“I’m gonna be me. I’m gonna do what I think is right. I understand that when things work, the players are going to look like they’re good players, and when things don’t work, I’m going to look like a dumb manager. It comes with the territory.”

It’s a little early to evaluate Valentine’s managerial skills, but the Rangers appear to be playing better since his arrival. Texas is 12-12 under Valentine and has won 10 of its last 17. Ask Ranger players how things have changed with their new boss and you get replies like, “He has us playing more aggressively,” or, “He lets us play.”

Valentine’s approach to managing is, well, a little less traditional than most. The same skeptics who point to his lack of experience might wonder if Valentine is managing a baseball team or running an encounter group. He speaks of making players feel good about themselves, of making the ballpark a place they’re happy to come to.

“If guys come to the park excited about coming to work--if they’re happy in the environment they work in--they’ll be productive, or as productive as they can possibly be,” he said.

Valentine gets downright giddy when he walks onto the field these days. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to turn out, but there are certainly worse alternatives.

“I know it’s been said before, but this is my life,” he said. “I am miserable in the wintertime when I have to wake up without a box score to read. There might be some people who love the game as much as I do, but nobody loves it more. I guarantee it.”

The smile has returned, brighter than ever, and the listener is convinced.

Each day is Valentine’s day.