A good baseball manager has to keep track of many things at once. While Bobby Valentine may no longer be in the dugout for the Mets, Rangers or Chiba Lotte Marines, his penchant for multi-tasking has not waned one bit. Valentine this season joins Dan Shulman and Orel Hershiser in the booth for ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball,” while keeping his gig as a studio analyst on the net’s “Baseball Tonight.” He also has his own baseball academy, recently helped start a film company called Makuhari Media and serves as Dir of Public Health & Safety for Stamford, Conn. Staff Writer Preston Bounds caught up with Valentine during a brief moment of down time.
Hometown: Stamford, Conn.
Childhood Sports Hero: Mickey Mantle
Dark Horse MLB Teams This Season: Brewers, Dodgers
Q: You have a lot on your plate with ESPN, your duties in Stamford and a startup film company. How do you juggle all of that?
Valentine: Well, it’s just the way I do things. That’s about half the things I have going right now. I like to stay busy. I like to surround myself with quality people who can pick up the slack when I’m not there personally. And I don’t like to sleep a lot.
Q: What’s the biggest adjustment for you moving from being a studio analyst to being in the booth this season?
Valentine: It’s hard to tell, because I’ve only been in the booth for a few games, and I’ll still be in the studio. So probably about halfway through the season I’ll be able to figure that whole logistical situation out. I think the travel has got to be considered something different. And of course you have live action that you’re dealing with.
Q: So is there different preparation involved?
Valentine: There is much more extensive preparation done for the booth for each game day. But the preparation for “Baseball Tonight” is much more intensive, because there is a lot being done in a short time.
Q: It looks like the “Baseball Tonight” crew has a pretty good time on air. Is that a fair assessment?
Valentine: Yeah, we really try to enjoy our work. When you’re prepared and you have good people to work with, it’s easy to make it seem enjoyable.
Q: Is there a particular on-air analyst you model your approach after?
Valentine: I don’t think so. I haven’t really studied it so much that I could tell you that I have a certain style, so it’s hard for me to think that I’m trying to do it like somebody else did. They just say, "Be yourself." So I try to do that the best I can, when the lights are on you, the camera is running, and they give you 30 seconds to do it.
Q: Your name seems to come up often when an MLB team has an opening at manager. How do you deal with that through the course of a season?
Valentine: It’s very flattering. If you’ve been mentioned once, the novelty wears off. So after the novelty wears off, you try to figure out if it’s going to be the best place, the best opportunity ever. And it’s going to be hard to beat the opportunity that I have right now.
Q: Makuhari Media will focus on sports documentaries. Why has there been such a boom lately in that genre, with ESPN’s “30 for 30” being a prime example?
Valentine: I think people enjoy the real-life presentation of documentaries. And the more they are educated about everything that’s happening out there in sports, they become even more infatuated. We just completed our first film. It’s a fabulous 16-month look into the Dominican baseball situation.
Q: Do you have a title?
Valentine: Well, right now it’s “Palatero,” which means “Ballplayer” in Spanish, but we’re coming up with a catchy little name. There are a couple of players from San Pedro, so it might be “The Boys From San Pedro.” When the name catches, it’ll stick.
Q: What is the biggest difference between managing baseball in Japan versus in the States?
Valentine: There’s not much difference to actually managing the team. I had a lot of different responsibilities when I was there, so it was a different experience for me. I was in the dugout managing and in the front office signing players and dealing with the marketing strategy. I think a lot of people understand that the language, of course, is a barrier. And the absolute dedication that the entire nation has for the game of baseball is hard to comprehend.
Q: What is a sports business story you are watching closely?
Valentine: The youth sport industry, which is exploding in leaps and bounds with select teams, and select tryouts, and kids playing one sport year-round. I think it’s one of the largest growth industries in the country. And the reason I’m watching it is that I’m knee-deep in that industry.
