Analyst's awkward words after MVP is hurt

  

 Bobby Valentine's evaluation of Josh Hamilton's controversial injury raises eyebrows.

Bobby V. talks himself into a weird corner after Hamilton injury

By 'Duk

Talking and always making sense in front of a camera or on a radio show is tough. I've appeared on enough of both to know that once your brain goes down one wrong path, it's difficult for your mouth to recover and stagger back before saying something stupid. You just kind of hope the host saves you because he's a trained professional at these sorts of things.
Only it's usually always too late. Rock solid proof of this comes in what ESPN's Bobby Valentine had to say on Tuesday night about Josh Hamilton(notes) breaking his arm and landing on the DL for 6-8 weeks after trying to tag on a foul pop-up in Detroit.
Fisk this as you will.

Karl Ravech: What was stupid about the play?
Bobby Valentine: Well, it was the first inning and it was taking a chance with your best player and he did dive headfirst and it was a way of avoiding the slide and he knew that he shouldn't go and he did go, you know? And you know, there's indiscretion in this guy's life, he was stupid earlier and because of that, he can't take drugs now to help cure this injury and heal this injury. And that might have been dumb on everyone's part because, my gosh, it's the first inning, he's the MVP. They're scoring runs better than anybody in the league, you have to tag up on a fly ball in front of the dugout?

As a sports blogger, I am now contractually bound to link this clip from Billy Madison.
There's no question that Dave Anderson, the third base coach of the Texas Rangers, made a dumb decision to send Hamilton. The reigning AL MVP admitted as much when he said "I was thinking [that] 'I don't want to do this ... something is going to happen.' I listened to my coach."

So no problems here with the first part of Valentine's statement. It's just the following insinuation that poor choices in his personal life make him more susceptible to bad baseball decisions that marks the beginning of Valentine's swan dive into an empty pool of words. Really, about the only thing that could have saved him there was pulling out some of Tom Tango's math to show that sending a reborn Christian with a history of drug use is a remarkably dumber play than sending a player who was a teetotaler from the start.
Deadspin has the video of Valentine's remarks if you think hearing or seeing it will help matters at all. Spoiler alert: It probably won't.

 

News Source: Yahoo