Bobby Valentine has been named manager of the Boston Red Sox. The report, with just the right amount of snark, from the New York Post:

The Yankees-Red Sox rivalry took on an entirely new dimension last night when Boston reached a verbal agreement with Bobby Valentine — who never met a spotlight he didn’t try to outshine — to become the 45th manager in franchise history.

Valentine, according to a source, was flying last night from Japan, where the former Mets manager participated in a charity event and made personal appearances, to Boston to sign a contract. A news conference is expected to be held tomorrow.

Two important things you need to know:

- Keeping in mind that the only real quantitative success the Boston Red Sox have had in the last 100 years was through thinking outside the box with a roster of eccentric personalities, an eccentric personality who thinks outside the box like Bobby Valentine is a great fit at manager. Also, he’s not Terry Francona, who can be be singularly blamed for every Boston-related problem to happen over the last 2-5 years.

- Bobby Valentine doesn’t just give the thumbs up or thumbs down to sandwiches, he invents them. According to Bobby Valentine, Bobby Valentine invented the wrap sandwich when a customer at his Bobby Valentine’s Sports Gallery Cafe ordered a club and the toaster was broken. You can thank today’s Hot Clicks for that little chestnut. Bobby Valentine also invented the chestnut when a hungry squirrel wandered into his restaurant and they were out of tater skins.

Personally I think the best part of the story is that it was broken by Tommy LaSorda, as all good stories are.

If you’re a Boston Red Sox fan still shaken by the 2011 collapse and the loss of Terry Francona and Jonathan Papelbon, you should probably sit down, because it’s about to get a lot worse. By way of Sean McAdam at Red Sox Talk:

Play-by-play announcer Don Orsillo has signed a contract extension to remain with NESN, but the network’s Red Sox telecasts will be without in-game reporter Heidi Watney next year, industry sources indicate.

Watney, whose contract had also expired, is leaving to work for Time Warner Cable in southern California. Time Warner Cable lured the Los Angeles Lakers away from Fox Sports West and KCAL-TV last February with a landmark 20-year deal said be worth in excess of $2.5 billion.

To make matters feel even more like the last five minutes of Childish Gambino’s ‘That Power’, Boston Globe reporter Chad Finn explained via Twitter that Heidi is from California (in case you’d convinced yourself she was a New England native) and had been homesick for most of the four years she spent trying to do her job and not bend over in front of anybody at Fenway Park.

But, as the old saying goes, it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. I’ve put together a montage of photos and videos from Heidi’s time in Boston, and every time your heart sinks thinking about her standing center-court in an empty Staples Center, holding a microphone, interviewing nobody, you can flip back through and remember the good old days. Good luck in Los Angeles, Heidi. I hope a beautiful blonde can find fame there.

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The St. Louis Cardinals won Game 7 of the World Series on Friday to secure the franchise’s 11th title (11 in ’11 is not ironic, despite what Shane Victorino thinks) and they had a whopping 48 hours or so to enjoy it before the entire world crumbled around them. Yesterday morning, Tony LaRussa announced his retirement after 33 years of managing and three World Series wins (16 and 2 with the Cardinals, respectively). Instead of celebrating an incredibly improbable championship run, Cardinals players and fans now wonder, “Who will be the next manager and will it affect whether or not Albert Pujols stays?”

Only one man – St. Louis GM John Mozeliak – knows the answer to that first question, and only one man – Albert Pujols – knows the answer to the second question. Granted, his agent, wife and kids probably know, but he’s the only man who matters for right now. That doesn’t mean, though, that every sports writer, blogger and Internet commenter on Earth won’t make predictions, some of them accurate and most of them way off base. First up, former Cardinal and the grittiest shortstop ever, David Eckstein.

“Albert would stay if (Jose) Oquendo got the job.”

“My initial reaction (after learning of La Russa’s retirement) was, ‘It needs to be Jose Oquendo,’” Eckstein said. “When you played for Tony, you didn’t want to disappoint him. When I was playing infield for Jose, I didn’t want to disappoint him. I know how much he has put into this. When you can get a player to play outside of himself, for someone else, that’s when you get the best out of a player.”

(Via Fox Sports)

LaRussa has long lobbied for Oquendo to get his shot at managing a big league ballclub, and he certainly has a nice foundation and situation in St. Louis. He makes sense as a replacement, as the fans and players love him. But that really doesn’t mean much of anything.

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On Friday, the St. Louis Cardinals finished one of the most improbable World Series champion runs in Major League Baseball history as they defeated the Texas Rangers 6-2 in Game 7 in front of a record crowd at Busch Stadium. And less than 24 hours after the team’s victory parade, manager Tony LaRussa has announced that he will retire.

“Tony leaves behind a legacy of success that will always be rememered as one of the most successful eras in Cardinals history,” chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said at the announcement. “I knew this day would come. I just hoped that it wouldn’t.”

(Via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

A friend emailed me this morning to ask if I knew what the Cardinals’ press conference was going to be about, and I, like most, assumed it was to announce that the team had picked up Yadier Molina’s option, even though that would be silly to announce when it’s plain as day. This makes a lot more sense, despite the fact that I’m in total “Aw, schucks” mode right now.

LaRussa was the definition of polarizing – Cardinals fans loved him and opposing fans hated him. But Cardinals fans also loved to hate him, and I think he loved making everyone want to rip their hair out in frustration. He retires with the third most wins as a manager in MLB history, and if he had stayed another season he would have undoubtedly passed John McGraw for second. Instead, he’ll settle for his three World Series rings and knowing that he gets the last laugh.

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John Lackey has decided to follow up divorcing his wife for having a double mastectomy with an unexpected act of chairty; he’ll be improving Boston Red Sox rotation by having Tommy John surgery and sitting at home for the entirety of 2012.

From Joe McDonald at ESPN Boston:

Lackey recently received an MRI and was examined by Dr. Lewis Yocum in Los Angeles, and it was decided the pitcher would undergo the procedure. A date for the surgery has not been set.

“John Lackey pitched through circumstances this year that I don’t think any of us can fully understand, and he got beat up for it a little bit,” Cherington said. “This guy was dealing with stuff both on the field and off the field that were very difficult, and he showed tremendous toughness pitching through that.”

It’s true. Lackey worked through a year of his tough $82.5 million contract to post a scrappy 6.84 ERA with a gutsy 6-8 record. Fun fact: he’s the third Sox pitcher to have Tommy John surgery this year, following in the footsteps of former sort-of-ace Daisuke Matsuzaka and lefty reliever/upscale housing complex Rich Hill.

The news of Lackey’s departure comes as a blow to Yankees fans, but hopefully he’ll return strong in 2013 with his 35% fastball intact.

Reality TV’s knockout combo of talking heads and inanimate 38-year old women has made “The Real Housewives Of ______” an easy joke, but when it’s done right, it can be really, really right. Case in point:”The Real Houseweives Of South Boston”, by way of Buzzfeed.

Somehow it manages to be hilarious, exactly like a real Real Housewives episode (complete with inexplicable dinner party) and a perfect encapsulation of every character I’ve ever seen from a movie set in Boston. Seriously, if one of these women had a gun this could pass for five minutes of The Town. If they aired the show as is on ESPN in Primetime I wouldn’t even know it was a joke.

Moments to look out for: Paul Pierce Jr. (and the pitch-perfect dichotomy of prejudiced white folks who love black people), Boston fans only liking home runs (didn’t need a parody video to tell me that) and the phrase “I f**k athletes. These are my trophies”.

[backwards hat tip to Mr. Matt Ufford]