In his whirlwind tour of speaking with every member of the Red Sox, Bobby Valentine encountered one Josh Beckett. As it turns out, Beckett was less than pleased with V’s comments in August criticizing Beckett for the time he takes between pitches. In Valentine’s introductory press conference, he tried to make light of it:
“I’m sure they’re looking forward to communicating with me,” Valentine said at that time. “To tell me it’s OK to have an open stance or it’s OK to take 20 seconds in between pitches.”
So, Bobby cleared the air with Beckett…sort of:
Although Beckett asked Valentine to keep the details private, the skipper offered a short –– yet revealing –– recap of the talk.
“He didn’t want me to say anything, so I’m not going to say anything other than after he got through telling me how pissed off he was, we had a really good conversation,” Valentine said. “I’m not going to say anything about it.”
Uh…you just did say plenty about it! This season is going to be interesting.
