In a move that should be surprising to no one, the Sox officially sent Bobby V on his way today, severing ties with the manager and ushering in a magical era of “if only we could get our hands on a guy like DeMarlo Hale” talk.

Look, I can’t sit here and defend a guy who led this team to the worst record of any Red Sox team in my lifetime. But the shitrific abomination that was 2012 can’t be hung around one person’s neck. The players who protested his hiring and gave up on him and the coaches who didn’t support him and the owners who knew what they were getting with Bobby yet kept him on a leash not unlike Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes all share part of the blame.

Still, it’s baseball, and we know how it goes. Like Papa Jack said, “somebody got to pay.” If removing Valentine gets all the players back on the bus, then I say let’s roll. That’s why God invented next year.

But no matter who comes in to run this circus, I’d recommend that he sit the team down in Fort Myers to watch the 2004 playoffs DVDs to remind them what it means to wear the uniform and act like a team and re-ignite that urge to prove something to the world.