The Zen of Bobby Vee

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

On ESPN2 on May 13, according to this.

http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/new-film-shows-the-zen-of-bobby-v/#more-1189

[metirish]

I absolutely can't wait to see it.


I bet 3D is looking forward to seeing it , he loves Bobby.

[batmagadanleadoff]

metirish wrote: I absolutely can't wait to see it. I bet 3D is looking forward to seeing it , he loves Bobby.

Me too. Me too. Me too. Put me down as a member of the I love Bobby club.

[Guest themetfairy]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: ="metirish"]I absolutely can't wait to see it. Me too. Me too. Me too. Put me down as a member of the I love Bobby club.

Me three!

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

I always thought it wa a mistake to fire Valentine.

[Benjamin Grimm]

And nothing that's happened since then has caused me to change my mind about that.

They thought Art Howe would be a better manager than Bobby Valentine?

They thought that Willie Randolph would be a better manager than Art Howe? (Okay, he is, but he's still not nearly as good as Bobby Valentine was.)

[TransMonk]

From Bobby V's wikipedia page:

As a player, he was a home run hitter (he hit 894 home runs in his MLB career), but he had 4107 hits as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1972.

I wonder where Wikipedia ranks in the top research resources for America's youth. I would guess pretty high. Sheesh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Valentine

[Valadius]

I reverted the vandalism. The article should be fine now.

[soupcan]

May 13, 2008

TV Sports

�Zen of Bobby V� Follows a Familiar Face in a Foreign Land

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

The Bobby Valentine on view in the documentary �The Zen of Bobby V� is both familiar and alien to those who recall him managing the Mets and the Texas Rangers. As the manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines, he is still loquacious and maddening, a grand ham who cannot accept losing.

And he still gets cranky with reporters, who are much kinder in Japan.

Now he speaks Japanese pretty well. He rides his bike around Chiba. He is mobbed wherever he goes. A beer and a hamburger are named for him. He lectures to universities about leadership, which he says Japanese baseball needs to survive.

�Commitment and passion transcend language,� he said in the documentary, describing his style while playing down his skills with the Japanese language. �A commander can take a group into battle without saying a word.� (Still, he is shown uttering many words.)

He remains an intriguing, polarizing and amusing character, who is seen ballroom dancing on the field on one of many promotional nights at the Marines� stadium. But as connected as he is to his job � his second stint with the Marines � it is impossible to watch him without sensing a bit of the expatriate�s loneliness, like Bill Murray�s character, an American film star in Tokyo, in �Lost in Translation.�


Manager Bobby Valentine at a shrine in his honor near Tokyo.

�

The Valentine documentary (shown Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern, on ESPN2) owes its existence to three New York University film students. The students � Andrew Jenks, Jonah Quickmire Pettigrew and Andrew Muscato � spent seven months with Valentine and the Marines, living in a hotel in Chiba and traveling with the team. The 90 minutes culled from 500 hours of footage show Valentine as an unlikely idol in a country that is not his own at a time when some of the best Japanese players are signing to play in the country of his birth.

The interest in Valentine began a few years ago when Jenks, then an 18-year-old freshman, read an article about him and was immediately smitten. �The idea of Bobby V as a superstar halfway across the world sounded cool,� he said by telephone. He e-mailed Valentine, who Jenks said responded by saying that �as long as I accurately portrayed what was going on and didn�t make something outdated like �Mr. Baseball,� he�d be all for it.�

But without a natural avenue to pitch the Valentine idea, he and Pettigrew moved on to make �Andrew Jenks, Room 335.� Jenks, then 19, moved into a nursing home in Florida and mingled with its elderly residents. The film was acquired by HBO and was first shown in January on its Cinemax network, where it will be repeated on May 24.

With one documentary done, the group pitched ESPN on a rugby film, which the network rejected. But ESPN liked the one on Valentine. �They said, �Bring Bobby and bring a budget,� � said Muscato, who on Monday was studying for a test the next day on the history of the Roman empire. On Wednesday, he and Pettigrew are to graduate.

Jenks kept Valentine updated on his idea but first met him when he, Muscato and Pettigrew, now 21, got together at Valentine�s sports bar in Stamford, Conn., in December 2006.

�He told us it would be difficult to make the film in Japan,� said Jenks, who has a year left at N.Y.U. �He said access is very restricted, that you can�t just interview players whenever you want. He detailed how difficult it would be. He even used the word impossible. But he�s a big fan of the underdog and liked the fact that we were kids.�

Muscato, 22, recalled that Valentine suggested using old photos and footage. �We said we could only do it if we followed you in the country all season,� he said. �He kept saying it couldn�t be done, and we said we wanted to do it. I think that appealed to him.�

Jenks declined to say how much financing ESPN provided. But John Skipper, ESPN�s executive vice president for content, said Monday that �The Zen of Bobby V� suited the empire�s strategy shift from producing dramatic films for a few million dollars each, like �Ruffian� or �Hustle,� to making documentaries for a few hundred thousand.

�I can make a lot of documentaries for the price of one �3,� � he said, referring to the network�s film about Dale Earnhardt.

�

The N.Y.U. group picked a fortunate time to follow Valentine and the Marines with its two cameras (sometimes on one bicycle while Valentine pedaled his). The Marines went to the Pacific League playoffs, but struggled enough so that Valentine could look miserable, toss inanimate objects and contemplate whether he loves baseball as much as he loves his wife, Mary, who visits every other month.

But viewers may be as intrigued by the culture of Japanese baseball: fans who seem to chant and sing nonstop, rigorous hours-long practices, players who wonder how they will adapt to the United States if they sign with a M.L.B. team, and the pep rally where Valentine, who turns 58 on Tuesday, sings, �We love, love, love, love the Marines.�

E-mail: sportsbiz@nytimes.com

[Guest 86-Dreamer]

few things about the Mets upset me more than the fact that they allowed Steve Phillips to fire Bobby V, replaced him with Art Howe, and then glady stood by while Glavine & Stanton spit on Bobby's grave.

Lets bring him back now!

[Guest msilva177]

Hours before the debut of the film "The Zen of Bobby V" on ESPN II hear me sit down for a roundtable with the producers Andrew Jenks, Jonah Quickmire Pettigrew, and Andrew Muscato.

For listening details click on the link below

http://gothamsportsradio.com/Gotham-Baseball-Live/The-Zen-of-Bobby-V.html

[Guest Grote15]

Love Valentine...he smoked Showalter against Arizona in 1999 playoffs....

[batmagadanleadoff]

86-Dreamer wrote: few things about the Mets upset me more than the fact that they allowed Steve Phillips to fire Bobby V, replaced him with Art Howe, and then glady stood by while Glavine & Stanton spit on Bobby's grave.

Amen to that.

[Guest Kong76]

Forgot about this, it's on now and I'm pissed I didn't record it from the
beginning but ESPN2 stuff is on more than once I hope.

I sponsor BV's baseball reference page:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/managers/valenbo02.shtml

[Frayed Knot]

KC wrote: Forgot about this, it's on now and I'm pissed I didn't record it from the beginning but ESPN2 stuff is on more than once I hope.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say yes ... like 10 or 12 times.

[Guest Kong76]

Call me Capt. Obvious, FK ...

I watched like nine minutes of it so far and four of them were commercials
so it's definitely something that needs to be recorded and watched.

[stevejrogers]

Ahhh, never mind.

[Guest Kong76]

A simple dot or two will do, Steve.

[Frayed Knot]

Self-editing, it's a beautiful thing.

[Elster88]

86-Dreamer wrote: Glavine & Stanton spit on Bobby's grave.

What?

[Frayed Knot]

Both said during their initial post-signing press conf that they wouldn't have come to the Mets had BV still been the manager.
Glavine, IIRC, recanted somewhat afterward.

Not quite sure that's "spitting on his grave" but whatever.

[Guest AG/DC]

Any criticism of Valentine by Stanton ranks, as a sin, below (1) the signing of Stanton, and (2) the calling of a press conference for Stanton.

[stevejrogers]

IIRC so did Cliff Floyd, though he did have history with Valentine.

[Guest Kong76]

Yeah, he and Clifford had some all-star thing or something?

[Frayed Knot]

Yeah, that was the '01 ASG when Bobby was manager and Cliff read his A-S snub as something personal from Vee.
He eventually made the team as a sub and the two sort of kissed and made up.

I think sometimes peeps decide to hate BV in advance based on rep more than actual fact.

[Guest 86-Dreamer]

ESPN2 will replay May 19 at 3pm

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

knew I missed something tonight

[Guest 86-Dreamer]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: knew I missed something tonight

can still catch the last ten minutes.

[Guest Kong76]

I've been watching most of it on and off, great eye-poppin' stuff.

[metirish]

I really enjoyed this , Bobby has such enthusiasm for life and especially for the game . The fans over there are incredible , to see how they reacted after losing the deciding game five to the "Fighters" was pure class.

I thought it was quite funny to see one of the umps grab a microphone and explain a ruling on a play to the crowd, he ruled that the player running to first base obstructed the opposing player from making his throw.