Bobby Valentine The Great Motivator

By Jay Horwitz

Nobody could motivate like Bobby Valentine.

To fire up the clubhouse, he would sometimes tell a joke, raise his voice five octaves or even hold impromptu player meetings in the outfield. But Bobby reached way down into his bag of tricks 22 years ago today at Shea Stadium when after being thrown out of the 12th inning in a game against Toronto, he returned to the dugout in full disguise with a mustache, glasses and hat.

Bobby didn’t fool the umpires and was tossed again. He would later get fined and suspended but the ploy worked as the Mets rallied for a 4–3, 14-inning win.

“Bobby would do anything to get us going.” Robin Ventura recently told me. “He had a knack for pushing the right button. When he came back to the dugout in disguise we all start laughing like crazy. If Bobby was willing to go to that extreme we had to get him a win.”