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.

The collapse of the 2011 Boston Red Sox has finally hit the bottom.

A Nation looking for somebody to blame for the team’s 7-20 finish and desperate to reclaim their “cursed underdogs” have found a scapegoat in manager Terry Francona, either by way of a resignation or by the Sox deciding not to pick up his 2012 option depending on how you want to spin it. Regardless, Francona has managed his last game in Boston and now carries in his chest cavity an enormous red bullet with Theo Epstein’s name on the side.

From CSNNE.com:

A major league source has confirmed that Terry Francona and the Boston Red Sox have agreed to part ways.

Francona’s multi-year deal, signed as part of a contract extension in 2008, is done with the Red Sox holding two option years on his contract for 2012 and 2013. The Red Sox will not pick those option years up and instead will pay him the $750,000 buyout rather than the $4.25 million due for 2012 and $4.5 million for 2013.

This comes after a Thursday press conference wherein both Epstein and Francona expressed regrets for the 2011 season. Not being prepared, being too prepared, doing everything they could to stop the slide but not being able to “reach the team”. On a Boston radio show this morning, fans were freaking out and so confused about what’s going on that they now believe that “Sox interested in LaRussa” is about them. This is the legacy Fracona is going to leave. A team that barely missed the playoffs playing in the toughest division in Major League Baseball is suddenly “in ruin”.

This is the legacy he should leave: 744 wins, second on the franchise’s all-time leaders list after eight seasons as manager. He managed the Red Sox to two World Series titles, one in 2004 and and one in 2007, something they hadn’t been able to do since 1918 … but he missed the playoffs this season and last season, and so it goes.

Today at With Leather and across the sports-o-sphere has been a celebration of the “greatest night in baseball history”. If you aren’t up to speed, you can check out some of the amazing statistics or take a look at the emotional faces of men who both played in and watched the games.

The Tampa Bay Rays are going to the playoffs, and that works out well for The Dugout — that be-goggled gentleman in the photo is Kyle Farnsworth, relief pitcher and folk hero of the Official Chatroom For Major League Baseball. He pitched nearly a full inning against New York’s Scott Proctor, and if you’re a Dugout historian (and I know you are) you’ll know important that is to our epic, long-term storytelling.

Regardless, please enjoy today’s Dugout, which is technically the first in our semi-annual, semi-daily recapping of the MLB playoffs. (And drop us a comment, would you?)

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