
In the absence of our international baseball tours and baseball in general during the COVID-19 pandemic, JapanBall began hosting a series of “Chatter Up!” video calls for its community of international baseball fans. The June 11, 2020 episode of “Chatter Up!” featured special guest Bobby Valentine, former Manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines, Texas Rangers, New York Mets, and Boston Red Sox.
The following is a complete transcript of Bobby V.’s interview with host (and JapanBall owner) Shane Barclay. The full video of the episode also available on JapanBall’s YouTube page.
Shane: So everyone, welcome again to “Chatter Up!” I’m Shane Barclay. Normally what we do is international baseball tours, but in absence of that [due to the Covid-19 pandemic] we’re doing these Zoom calls to give everyone a chance to talk baseball, a little diversion from all the madness in the world, so I appreciate you all coming on. I think this is definitely the biggest concentration of non-Japanese Japanese baseball fans, definitely on the internet, probably anywhere in person that you could ever get.
I think most of you all are pretty familiar with Bobby V, but I’ll give a quick rundown some of the highlights here: he’s from Stamford, Connecticut, where he’s one of the all-time best amateur athletes out of Stamford, and that led to him being a first-round pick of the [Los Angeles] Dodgers. Bobby quickly shot through the Dodgers organization and made his MLB debut at age 19. In over a 10 year career, he pretty much did it all. He played every position on the field except for pitcher, and I’m sure he would have taken the mound if they asked him to do that as well.
After hanging up the spikes, he quickly got a job with the [Texas] Rangers. He managed the Rangers for eight years, and then he went on to the Chiba Lotte Marines in ‘95. The team played well but he was let go after that first year, which I’m sure we’ll get into on this call. And then he went on to the Mets. He had probably one of the most successful runs with the Mets of any manager in their organization, including, of course, the “Subway Series” against the Yankees in 2000. And then in 2004, he went back to Japan [with] the Marines, definitely the most successful run in the Marines’ history, topped off by the Japan Series title in 2005, and Asia Series title which shouldn’t be forgotten as well.
He’s had more success than any foreign manager in Japanese baseball history. He became not only a baseball icon over there, but a pop culture icon for his success on the field and his participation off the field. He really worked tirelessly to turn the Marines into one of the most effective and innovative NPB franchises.
He finished off with the Red Sox for one year and then stayed in the game and in sports in general since then, and he’s currently the athletic director at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. So that is the quick rundown of his career. Did I miss anything there, Bobby?
Bobby: No, that’s that’s the whole thing. That’s the whole program. I don’t think there’s anything else.
Thank y’all for coming. I appreciate it and I had fun!
Shane: All right, goodbye, everyone. No, I think there’s a lot of all the details of that is really interesting stuff. So I took some questions from my guests, and kind of came up with my own so I can ask you what I want to hear first. We’ll start right off. I’m curious about when you were first hired to go to Japan; did that opportunity to catch you off-guard? And what was your decision-making process in deciding to take the job?
Bobby: Well, it wasn’t a sudden thing, you know. I did a lot of work prior to getting offered the job in Japan. It wasn’t really work, it was cultural exchanges. I was invited by the great Hirooka-san in- it might have been 89, I think, to speak to all the Japanese coaches in the country about pitch counts, which I was implementing in the Texas Rangers organization. Prior to that, you know, I was one of the first guys to ever wear Mizuno gloves in a major league game and I had a relationship with the Mizuno family.
So when I got fired by the Rangers and I went to AAA Norfolk to manage, a fella who’s now a very good friend, Koji Takahashi, he gave me a call and said “I’m going to be going around the states with Hirooka-san. He’s looking for the first non-Japanese [person] to manage in Japan. We’re going to come by and see you some time.” That was at the beginning of the season, and I saw them about five times during the season before the job was offered, and by the time that they offered it, I was praying that they would.
Shane: So it was an easy decision once they offered it. You mentioned the pitch counts, 20 or 30 years later, they’re actually starting to implement some of that at the youth levels in Japan.
Bobby: Yeah, look. Don’t feel bad about that. Remember, when I was a player in 1973, they established this thing in the major leagues as a three year “experiment”. It was called the “DH.” It was a three year experiment; this experiment is still going on. Now they’re thinking about implementing it in both leagues and get rid of the pitcher hitting if [the MLB] comes back to play this year. So sometimes things in baseball take a long time.
Shane: Yeah, I think that tends to be the case in baseball more than other sports. How did your time in the big leagues best and least prepare you for managing in Japan?
Bobby: Well you know, managing is managing, and in Japan and in Texas and in New York and in Boston, it’s all about trying to establish trust so that you could then get teamwork. The great symbolic gesture, that I have on my walls upstairs and [that] I talk about all the time that happens in Japan, is when the team wins, they take the manager and the team throws them in the air and they catch him, they throw them in the air and they catch them, they throw them in the air and they catch them. The reason they do that is to win that championship, the players must trust the manager, or the kantoku, so that there’s great teamwork. And then after you win a championship, the kantoku must trust the players to catch him on the way down. So, you know, that teamwork is paramount for success. So yeah, it prepared me and that I learned to establish trust. And in Texas, they were speaking a different language too. So, that wasn’t a problem once I got to Japan.
Shane: I didn’t know that about throwing the manager. That’s really cool. In those pictures of you, and all the Japanese managers when they win are amazing. In that vein, you mentioned how the players have to trust the manager. In Japan, the manager is like God. So did you take advantage of that and being able to implement your own system from the top down, maybe more than you would [have been] able to do in the States, or was it kind of a competitive advantage in a way to maybe manage in a more American style that allows for individuality, more so than maybe in Japan?
Bobby: I really tried to get a blend. I had no idea the manager had so much authority, but you know, because I was the protruding nail that many people wanted to bang down, I had to prove myself, all of my baseball had to be reworked. Whether or not I thought, to start at a certain time when you’re running, to grip a ball when you’re pitching, to swing a bat when you’re hitting, to field the ball when you’re fielding; all the things of baseball, as well as what works during the game, strategically, I had to reprove to myself. I th