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| Dysfunction Junction |
In an exclusive report by Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports, it has been revealed that Red Sox players met with ownership on July 26th in New York to blast their manager, Bobby Valentine. Key players on the team—notably Adrian Gonzalez and Dustin Pedroia—were ringleaders of the meeting. Gonzalez went so far as to "text message" his and other players' complaints directly to ownership. The proximate cause of the dispute was a perception on the part of the players that Valentine "embarrassed" Jon Lester by leaving him in a game to get pummelled for 11 runs. In addition, the players raised the Will Middlebrooks dugout incident. Some of the 17 or so players were said to have expressed the view that they no longer wanted to play for thier manager. Clearly, this is a serious rift between and among players and their manager. This can only end badly.