Crawford, Beckett, Valentine and Foolishness!

Last winter, the Red Sox signed this man, Carl Crawford and agreed to pay him $142,000,000 if he would play baseball for them.

Everyone was very happy around Fenway Park.

The people who root for this team in Tampa, were not as happy.

That is until Carl started to make these kinds of faces,

As the season progressed Carl made more and more of these kinds of faces because things were not going so well.

In fact things went so poorly for Carl and his new team that his manager got fired.

Terry Francona’s Red Sox were 8-0 in two World Series.

This led to the hiring of this man, Bobby Valentine and he went to the same place in Fenway Park where Carl Crawford and everyone were smiling last year. And now he was smiling. That must be Fenway’s happy place.

This is where it gets a little dicey. You see when Bobby V was at his last job broadcasting for ESPN, he said some things about Carl’s struggles that did not endear him to Mr. Crawford. So he was not smiling to learn that Bobby V was his new boss.

While in that TV booth, Bobby V had a few things to say about this man too. He is Josh Beckett.

Bobby V suggested that Josh might want to pick up the pace a bit on the mound because he takes a week and a half between pitches. I made that up but he is veeeeeeeeeeeery, shall we say, deliberate. Well that made Josh make this face.

And then when he found out that Bobby V was his new boss, he did this!

Now it is up to Bobby V to make nice, nice with these two unhappy campers. He called them on the phone and Josh yelled at him for about 15 minutes and then, according to Bobby V, they did in fact make up. But Carl has not returned his phone call. But again, according to Bobby, he did “talk to Carl through his agent”, huh?

Enter these guys, a sports radio station in Boston. Now these people are zany, obnoxious, overbearing, amusing and can be entertaining. Last week I was in Boston. What was going on in Boston was: the Patriots were preparing for the last football game of the year in which a win would give them top seed for the playoffs, the Celtics opened their season and the Bruins are in the midst of defending their Stanley Cup. Yet everyday, EVERYDAY they were talking about Carl Crawford not returning Bobby V’s phone call! And now Bobby is flying, on a plane, to meet Carl, and Josh at their homes in Texas, I assume to make nice, nice.

Well a word of advice for Mr. Crawford, these people,

appear a bit annoyed with you right now, so I suggest that you make nice, nice with your new boss or in lieu of that, hit .350 in April. That is sure to keep them from turning into this,

And so it is on this day in Fenway Park history, January 4, 2012

About fenwaypark100

Hello and welcome, my name is Raymond Sinibaldi. An educator for more than two decades, a baseball fan for nearly 60 years, I have authored four books about baseball and her glorious history; with a fifth on the way in late spring of 2015; the first, The Babe in Red Stockings which was co-authored with Kerry Keene and David Hickey. It is a chronicle of Babe's days with the Red Sox. We also penned a screenplay about Babe's Red Sox days so if any of you are Hollywood inclined or would like to represent us in forwarding that effort feel free to contact me through my email. In 2012 we three amigos published Images of Fenway Park in honor of the 100th birthday of Fenway Park. That led to the creation of this blog. The following year, 2013 came my first solo venture, Spring Training in Bradenton and Sarasota. This is a pictorial history of spring training in those two Florida cities. The spring of 2014 brought forth the 1967 Red Sox, The Impossible Dream Season. The title speaks for itself and it also is a pictorial history. Many of the photos in this book were never published before. The spring of 2015 will bring 1975 Red Sox, American League Champions. Another pictorial effort, this will be about the Red Sox championship season of 1975 and the World Series that restored baseball in America. I was fortunate enough to consult with sculptor Franc Talarico on the “Jimmy Fund” statue of Ted Williams which stands outside both Fenway Park and Jet Blue Park Fenway South, in Fort Myers Florida. That story is contained in the near 300 posts which are contained herein. This blog has been dormant for awhile but 2015 will bring it back to life so jump on board, pass the word and feel free to contact me about anything you read or ideas you may have for a topic. Thanks for stopping by, poke around and enjoy. Autographed copies of all my books are available here, simply click on Raymond Sinibaldi and email me.

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