Bobby Valentine is on the loose, which means any manager who is not firmly entrenched in his job as the result of a rousing resume or a lucrative contract could suddenly find the ground beneath him quickly turning to quicksand.

News of Valentine’s desire to return to the major leagues was still fresh when rumors began circulating that he was talking to the Florida Marlins, whose manager, Fredi Gonzalez, did a terrific job managing the underpaid Marlins into contention for a playoff spot.

Early this year Gonzalez signed a contract extension for the 2010 and 2011 seasons. Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins’ owner, doesn’t like to pay anyone, especially for not working, so it seemed unlikely that he would fire Gonzalez. Then again, Loria and other club executives appeared to be disappointed that the team didn’t make the playoffs.

David Samson, the president, was quoted as saying “there is no question we felt we should have been a playoff team.”

Loria issued a statement after the final game, saying in part, “We are pleased with a winning season.  And we are disappointed we did not make the playoffs.  We always want to exceed expectations.  Our fans share these feelings, also.”

But did the Marlins acknowledge that they were even thinking of making a managerial change? I asked Samson about it on the telephone.

“Jeffrey made a statement after the season and that statement is what we’re standing by,” he said.

But you have announced that Gonzalez will be back next season, I said, referring to news reports I had seen. He said the Marlins had made no such announcement. “There’s nothing to announce,” Samson said. “He’s our manager.”

That made sense to me. Ever since George Steinbrenner began the silly practice with his announcement that Yogi Berra, who was already under contract, would manage the Yankees in 1985, more teams have made that type of unnecessary announcement.

Although the Marlins made no public announcement, Loria evidently felt that after the Valentine rumors he needed to assure Gonzalez that the job was still his. Gonzalez told Florida reporters that Loria called him to tell him just that. Loria, the manager said, told him the stories about his job and Valentine were “just rumors.”

Loria did not return my calls to discuss the situation.

ESPN.com first reported that Valentine, home from six years in Japan, had been in communication with the Marlins. I have no direct knowledge of Valentine’s supposed communication with the Marlins. I can see where his agent could have called them, and I can also see where the Marlins might have been disappointed enough to entertain, if only briefly, the possibility of a change.

But whenever Valentine is involved, I am suspicious. He has a healthy history of planting rumors about himself, and he has a coterie of baseball writers who gladly do his bidding because when he is managing he leaks stories to favored writers. He also has a history of creating divisions among writers, pitting them against each other (see his tenure in Texas).

One of Valentine’s best planted stories, I recall, was one where he was reported to be in line for the general manager’s job with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1998. When Kevin Malone got the job, I wrote that Valentine was never considered, in effect saying the report that said he was a candidate was phony. As a result of my report, I wound up with a broken computer, courtesy of the reporter who wrote the story.

In this latest Valentine sighting, I am not suggesting that the reporter, Buster Olney, a former colleague at The New York Times., wrote the story as a favor to Valentine. But I do think ESPN.com blundered in the way it treated the story.

On the same Web page, ESPN.com headlined two Olney pieces, one the news report (“Sources: Valentine, Marlins talk job”), the other a blog (“Cleveland, Washington should consider Valentine”).

Those two pieces by the same writer, one news, the other opinion, violated a basic journalistic principle. ESPN.com compounded the problem by posting the pieces practically as a combo. Asked if ESPN should have handled the pieces that way, Patrick Stiegman, ESPN executive editor, said, “It’s a fair question.”

“My recollection is that the blog appeared the day before,” he added. “The next day we had a news report that Buster filed that according to his source the Marlins had been in communication with Valentine. I do think we could have been more clear about the timing of the stories, saying that this was a piece Buster wrote yesterday.”

ESPN’s additional mistake is allowing Olney to serve as both a reporter and a columnist.

“I think Buster’s role for us is as an analyst and reporter,” Stiegman said. “He does both. We have people who are just analysts; some are just reporters.”

I know something about that role. When I was a baseball columnist for The New York Times, I was not permitted to write news stories. When I had news to report, I was told to put it in a column. Eventually I wasn’t allowed to do that either.

I think the combination of Olney-Valentine pieces offers a good reason why news outlets should maintain journalism’s version of separation of church and state.

As for Valentine himself, I noted in a column on this site six months ago that he and I aren’t the best of buddies. Once friendly, he has accused me of having a vendetta against him and of being a hit man and doing dirty work for another reporter with whom he had a nasty feud, and he told my nephew upon meeting him that I am “a despicable human being.”

In all honesty, I didn’t miss Valentine while he was managing the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder.  

 

TWINS’ MANAGER OF YEAR

Ron Gardenhire called his old boss last Tuesday night, but he had no reason to call Tom Kelly Friday night.

“I called him after we won,” Gardenhire said, referring to the Minnesota Twins’ scintillating 12-inning playoff victory over Detroit. “When something like that happens, I always give him a call and say thank you. He helped me get an opportunity to manage so I like to say thank you.”

Gardenhire, who coached under Kelly for 11 seasons, succeeded him as the Twins’ manager in 2002. In his eighth year in that role, Gardenhire has led the Twins to five American League Central championships but hasn’t moved beyond the division series since his first time there in 2002.

The Twins were poised to go home tied one game each with the Yankees in this division series, holding a 3-1 lead going into the last of the ninth inning Friday night. But the Yankees won, 4-3, in 11 innings, and if Gardenhire had called Kelly after that game, he might have said sarcastically, “Thanks a lot, T.K.”

“I play golf with him all the time,” Gardenhire said of his mentor, who retired as a manager when he was only 51. Gardenhire will turn 52 this month. “He still has that burning passion but just not to manage. He loves baseball. He doesn’t want to deal with anybody, players agents and all that. He couldn’t take it.”

Gardenhire learned well from Kelly, who directed the Twins to two World Series championships. The Twins had the seventh lowest payroll ($65 million) in baseball this year, but here they are, playing the $201 million Yankees in the playoffs. Did he think his team would ever overtake the Tigers?

“No,” he said, “we were just hoping to survive and stay in the race. We had to patch our pitching staff together so much that it was hard to get a streak going. All I wanted to see was a little consistency playing the game, catching the ball, executing fundamentals. We always played hard. I just wanted them to have a little fun playing the game. We kind of got there. It started becoming a little more natural. That’s when I said we can play a little bit. We can stay in this race.”

The Twins developed a style of play and an attitude under Kelly, and they have maintained it under Gardenhire. New players quickly learn the Twins’ way of doing things and quickly fit in. Gardenhire cited as an example left fielder Delmon Young, whom the Twins obtained from Tampa Bay two years ago.

“It’s unbelievable, from last year when he was a little guarded to this year,” the manager related. “He’s one of the best teammates out there. There were all those rumors. He was never a bad guy. He was a little guarded. He didn’t trust a lot of people, but this year everybody says what a difference in this guy. He’s like the best teammate out there.”

Gardenhire has been named the best manager out there. He has won the manager of the year award that the Rotary Club of Pittsburgh has established in honor of Chuck Tanner. A six-man committee, of which I am a member, voted for Gardenhire last week in a tight contest with Jim Tracy, Tony LaRussa and Jim Leyland, whose Tigers Gardenhire’s Twins beat to get to the playoffs.  

 

IT WASN’T UNANIMOUS

In congratulating Michael Weiner on being elected his successor as executive director of the Players Association, Donald Fehr noted the “extraordinary vote of confidence” the players gave their new labor leader. But the results – 1,055 votes for, 4 votes against – raised a different thought in my mind.

Who were the four players who voted against Weiner?

“I don’t want to talk about negative votes,” Weiner said. “I’m just excited to have that kind of support among the players.”

Another union official said two of the negative votes came from the Tigers and two from the Phillies, speculating that the naysayers were disciples of Kenny Rogers and J.C. Romero, who apparently were not fans of the union.

 

MICKEY AND MATT A POST-SEASON PAIR

Matt Holliday committed his error in a division series game so it probably won’t gain the notoriety of a miscue in similar circumstances in the World Series, but St. Louis Cardinals’ fans will not soon forget it.

With the Cardinals needing one out to tie their series with the Dodgers at one game each, James Loney hit a line drive to left field. Holliday, who was in position to catch it and end the game, lost the ball in the lights. It hit him in the stomach for an error, and the Dodgers proceeded to score two runs, win the game, 3-2, and take a commanding two games to none lead in the series.

The play prompted an e-mail from a Wisconsin reader, suggesting a comparison of Holliday’s error with one made by Mickey Owen in the 1941 World Series.

“Both goofs would have ended the game and tied a series up,” he wrote. “Granted, this was not the World Series, but I think it is comparable.”

St. Louis fans certainly think so even if they are too young to remember Owen’s infamous passed ball, or error, as it was called then.

The Brooklyn Dodgers were down two games to one to the Yankees but were one out from tying the World Series. Tommy Henrich struck out on a 3-2 pitch from Hugh Casey for what should have been the last out, but catcher Owen let the ball get past him, Henrich reached first safely and the Yankees went on to score four runs and win the game, 7-4. They won Game 5 and the series the next day.

In the instance of Holliday’s error, the Dodgers benefited. That’s a long time to wait to even the scorecard.

 

CAPITAL “I” FOR IMPROVEMENT

They don’t give out rings or trophies for the achievement, but the Seattle Mariners and the Colorado Rockies had the biggest improvement in their respective leagues this year. The Cleveland Indians and the New York Mets suffered the steepest decline.

The Yankees were second to the Mariners in the American League, and they are the only team with more victories than last year that is in the American League playoffs. All four National League playoff teams improved their won-loss records, albeit Philadelphia by one game.

San Francisco, Atlanta and San Diego had a greater increase in victories than three of the N.L. playoff teams, but they didn’t win enough games to get to the playoffs. 

In falling from their perch as A.L. pennant winner, the Tampa Bay Rays incurred an increase in losses that was second to the Indians. Stuart Sternberg, the Rays’ owner, declined a request for an interview to discuss his team’s disappointing season.

Here is how the teams fared this year compared with last:

AL Team	Change	2009	2008		NL Team	Change	2009	2008
Mariners	+24	85-77	61-101		Rockies	+18	92-70	74-88
Yankees	+14	103-69	89-73		Giants	+16	88-74	72-90
Tigers	+12	86-77	74-88		Braves	+14	86-66	72-90
Rangers	+8	87-75	79-83		Padres	+12	75-87	63-99
Red Sox	—	95-67	95-67		Dodgers	+11	95-67	84-78
Athletics	—	75-87	75-86		Cardinals	+5	91-71	86-76
Twins	-1	87-76	88-75		Reds	+4	78-84	74-88
Angels	-3	97-65	100-62		Marlins	+3	87-65	84-77
Orioles	-4	64-98	68-93		Phillies	+1	93-69	92-70
White Sox	-10	79-83	89-74		Nationals	—	59-103	59-102
Royals	-10	65-97	75-87		Pirates	-5	62-99	67-95
Blue Jays	-11	75-87	86-76		Brewers	-10	80-82	90-72
Rays	-13	84-78	97-65		Astros	-12	74-88	86-75
Indians	-16	65-97	81-81		Diamondbacks	-12	70-92	82-80
					Cubs	-14	83-78	97-64
					Mets	-19	70-92	89-73