Comments on: Great reading on Bobby Valentine, by Robert Whiting http://daigo.org/2010/02/valentine-by-whiting/ Saving the world one blog entry at a time Tue, 15 May 2012 20:05:16 +0000 hourly 1 By: John Brooks http://daigo.org/2010/02/valentine-by-whiting/comment-page-1/#comment-51548 John Brooks Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:16:49 +0000 http://daigo.org/?p=858#comment-51548 Also, from what I heard they went all out after Valentine's support team, the people he brought in(Larry Rocca, etc), and everyone else to make his last year a living hell and to prevent him from actually being successful on the field, which would then corner Chiba Lotte into not being able to get rid of him. From what I read of Whiting's 4 piece set: is like Hirooka before, Setoyama came to resent Valentine for ignoring him. Chiba's head honcho, Akio Shigemitsu, also seemed to grow tired of Valentine. New manager, Norifumi Nishimura, seemed to take a swipe at Valentine's laid back approach with the players that made them so great. This is such an epic fall for someone Chiba was ready to nominate "manager for life" after the 2005 season and had his face on every Chiba product. Larry Rocca sums it up good I think: <blockquote>We thought it would be different for us compared to other gaijin who had come over and tried to change things and failed. But in the end, we were just like everybody else</blockquote> It proves things are hard to change in NPB. Though why do I have this feeling that Bobby Valentine will be back in NPB and Setoyama will go the way of Hirooka? Maybe, I'm the only one with this feeling, maybe I'm not, but its my gut feeling that Chiba Lotte will come crawling back to Valentine one way or the other. Or some other NPB team will come calling for him sooner or later. Also, from what I heard they went all out after Valentine’s support team, the people he brought in(Larry Rocca, etc), and everyone else to make his last year a living hell and to prevent him from actually being successful on the field, which would then corner Chiba Lotte into not being able to get rid of him.

From what I read of Whiting’s 4 piece set: is like Hirooka before, Setoyama came to resent Valentine for ignoring him. Chiba’s head honcho, Akio Shigemitsu, also seemed to grow tired of Valentine. New manager, Norifumi Nishimura, seemed to take a swipe at Valentine’s laid back approach with the players that made them so great.

This is such an epic fall for someone Chiba was ready to nominate “manager for life” after the 2005 season and had his face on every Chiba product. Larry Rocca sums it up good I think:

We thought it would be different for us compared to other gaijin who had come over and tried to change things and failed. But in the end, we were just like everybody else

It proves things are hard to change in NPB. Though why do I have this feeling that Bobby Valentine will be back in NPB and Setoyama will go the way of Hirooka? Maybe, I’m the only one with this feeling, maybe I’m not, but its my gut feeling that Chiba Lotte will come crawling back to Valentine one way or the other. Or some other NPB team will come calling for him sooner or later.

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