Valentine's Way - Book Review

A look at the autobiography of Bobby Valentine

TOKYO — Bobby Valentine, the former manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines, has published a memoir, with some interesting observations about Japan in it, among other things.

The memoir covers Valentine’s covers his entire career as player, manager and media personality that started in 1969 when Valentine was a star high school athlete who signed with the L.A. Dodgers out of high school.  He had great potential and in this memoir Valentine even compares himself to Ichiro, but  denied of greatness by an injury he sustained  one day in 1973 when he caught his spikes in a chain link fence while attempting to catch a home run ball, and never fully recovered, forced to retire as a player from baseball  in 1979 after playing with five different MLB teams.

After a stint as manager of Texas Rangers, Valentine was then hired by the Chiba Lotte Marines in 1995 and led the team to a surprise second-place finish. But he was summarily fired by team GM Tatsuro Hirooka despite having a two-year contract. Hirooka thought Valentine was too lax in training the players.