Bobby V, Please Report to Obama's Change Machine

I traded e-mails with my buddy Nails yesterday around the topic of Bobby Valentine. Nails was saying that if the Mets have no intention of bringing Valentine back, they need to squash the Bobby V reunion rumor in the bud. Remember, he said, disappointment is the difference between expectations and reality, and it goes without saying that this our fanbase is disappointed enough as it is.

I disagreed. My thought was that this is a fanbase that is tired of the status quo, a fanbase that expects ownership to leave all options on the table as it evaluates how to court the way forward. If the Mets ruled out Valentine before the process really began, fans might question the team's committment to changing.

It occured to me this morning that in the hopes and dreams of Mets fans, Valentine occupies a similar space to our current president. Barack Obama swept through the Democratic primary and on to the White House riding a campaign based on two premises: hope and change.

In a sense, that's what Bobby Valentine is about, hope and change. Because of his rambunctious temperament and past success, we expect him to come in here and return the Mets to their winning ways almost overnight.

But would the reality match the dream? As Obama knows, you can ride a motto for hope and change all day long as an outsider, but once you're in the office you're dealing with all the same old shit as the last guy. Bobby V wouldn't give the Mets depth in the rotation, a deeper bench, or a more promising farm system.

He could improve things at the margins (and there's a lot to be said for that), but New York fans, like the American public, hail from a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately type of crowd. Ultimately, Bobby Valentine alone probably wouldn't make the Mets that much better in 2010; the responsibility for that falls with the General Manager (of course, there was that story yesterday that Valentine would only return in a hybrid manager/front office role, so who knows).

I don't know what I want to happen. I like Jerry Manuel, but the truth is that the team's play this year has been troubling to say the least. He probably (and that's a big probably) can't be faulted for the injuries, but if the fundamental errors that have plagued the team all year aren't his responsibility, then whose are they?

More than anything, I guess my worry that we're applying too much of a Barack Obama Change Machine-style hooplah to Bobby Valentine. Bringing Bobby V back would signal the start of a new era, but it wouldn't solve our problems in one fell swoop. We've got a much longer way to go than that, I'm afraid.

Either way, could someone good with photoshop make us a draft of the Obama Hope poster with Valentine's face behind it? That'd be butter.

- A.F.O.M.G.

Incidentally, apologies if this post drastically oversimplifies Obama's successful campaign and recent woes in the polls. The post is ultimately about Bobby V, so please limit any discussion to that topic.