Valentine essentially repeated a story he told Wednesday during a radio interview on WEEI after he heard another negative audio clip about his clubhouse.

As Valentine tells it, his attempt at dugout sarcasm with young third baseman Will Middlebrooks came back to bite him — before he could tell the rest of the story.

“He came into the dugout, he made a couple of errors, and I said, ‘Nice inning, kid,’?” Valentine said. “I had thought I had established a relationship with him, where I could say something like that and he would kind of smile or relax a little. Maybe he grimaced, but somebody overheard it and decided that it was a very dreadful thing for a manager to say to a young player and decided to repeat it a few times, this dreadful thing. And that person didn’t go to the locker room with me when I went with Will after the game to explain to him when I made three errors in a game and I was 21 years old and the fans went and booed me off the field and how I got through it and how other people get through it. It’s a great learning experience.

“I don’t think that Will has been mortally wounded by that two and a half month ago comment.”

[Valentine] said that repeating the Middlebrooks episode in the first place was “the most stupid thing that I ever said on a radio program but it was also ridiculous for someone to repeat it, I think, and that was the point I was trying to make.”

Six months later, it was manager Bobby Valentine who revealed himself as the one being ratted out yesterday for an offense so ridiculously contrived that it only highlights how ridiculously unsolved this team’s off-the-field problems are. It points out how there is still at least one player around who is so unwilling to accept Valentine’s ways that he was willing to go behind his manager’s back to discredit him.

On the same WEEI program

The club source also said that the snitch was a current player. So that means it was not Kevin Youkilis [stats], Middlebrooks’ predecessor who was traded to the Chicago White Sox in June.

So the "club source" knows who the snitch is, and is willing to give out clues about who he is, but won't identify him?

By the way, are we in agreement that Valentine's gone the day after the season ends? (Unless the Red Sox rally and make the playoffs)

By the way, are we in agreement that Valentine's gone the day after the season ends? (Unless the Red Sox rally and make the playoffs)

You know, Cipher, the turncoat in the Matrix, whose name was.... Cipher.... and nobody saw it coming.

Six months later, it was manager Bobby Valentine who revealed himself as the one being ratted out yesterday for an offense so ridiculously contrived that it only highlights how ridiculously unsolved this team’s off-the-field problems are.

What does this sentence mean?

I always thought Youkilis looked like Cipher. You know, Cipher, the turncoat in the Matrix, whose name was.... Cipher.... and nobody saw it coming.

It's not like his code name was "Snake" or "Judas."

kind of makes me disappointed to see the lack of movement towards a modern distopia.

If you're looking for a rat in that comic, my money is on the Nemesis Kid. It's right there in his name.

By the way, are we in agreement that Valentine's gone the day after the season ends? (Unless the Red Sox rally and make the playoffs)

I dunno. Ferro Lad is hiding his face. Mu money's on him.

Well, yeah, cipher means something/someone that's hard to figure. It's not like his code name was "Snake" or "Judas."

If you fire Valentine, who do you replace him with?