Well, no one ever said it wouldn't be a fun ride with Bobby V.
He's only a month into the job and, apparently, Bobby Valentine is being dissed by one of his key players. By all accounts, Carl Crawford -- who, it appears, hasn't forgotten some harsh criticisms leveled by Valentine during Bobby's days as an ESPN analyst -- has ignored all of Valentine's attempts to contact him this offseason . . . and Valentine himself doesn't seem sure Crawford would talk to him even if he showed up on the left fielder's doorstep.
"I'm going to down to Crawford's home in Houston and watch a workout, anyway," Valentine told Comcast SportsNet's Jessica Moran on Thursday. "If a conversation follows the watching of the workout, that'd be cool.
"But we're not here to talk, necessarily. We're here to play."
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Say what?
Crawford's not looking very good in all this; he appears petty and small, overreacting to the sort of thing a professional athlete is supposed to be able to handle. Valentine, after all, was just doing his job at the time.
But now he has a new one, and this isn't getting it off to a very good start.
Eventually, they're going to have to hash this out; you can't have one of your regulars refusing to speak to the boss. Still, the new manager was supposed to come in and smooth the waters that were roiled by last season's collapse. Instead, his very presence seems to have roiled them a bit more.
And did we expect anything less?