Valentine’s Special: Cousins Become Conn. Sports Icons

Rob Morgan

Sports Editor

The journey began in Stamford, Conn. – a city best known for its blue-collar citizens and not so much for its athletes and celebrities.

But with hard work, a positive attitude, and the use of their God-given abilities, two cousins have made their family name synonymous with success.

Gary Valentine is currently in his eighth year as an adjunct professor at Sacred Heart University where he teaches clinical exercise physiology and strength training in the University’s exercise science program.

“It’s a great opportunity,” said Valentine of his professorship at Sacred Heart. “I have a chance to relate to the students and any time you teach something it helps you stay sharp, so it’s also been beneficial to me.”

In addition to his teaching duties at Sacred Heart, Valentine has been a competitive Olympic-style weightlifter for over 30 years.

“The sport fit me perfect,” said Valentine who was also a standout baseball player at the University of Connecticut where he earned his master’s degree in exercise science in 1983. “To study exercise physiology and to learn and experience weightlifting resistance training…it all worked out.”

On the first Sunday of every August, Valentine coaches and competes for Team Connecticut in the Connecticut Open Olympic Weightlifting Championship held at Bluestreak Sports Training in Stamford.

According to Valentine, each year the event draws approximately 50 competitors from Maine to Maryland who flock to Stamford to showcase their skills in one of the premier weightlifting events in the Northeast.

“It’s been fantastic,” he said. “Bluestreak is a great place to run a meet and the event has become extremely popular with all the lifters.”

The Wilton native has racked up 17 state titles and several regional titles over the course of his career, including the 2006 Heavyweight Connecticut and New England Championship and the 2006 Pan American Masters Weightlifting Championship.

Altogether, Valentine has won six Pan American Masters Weightlifting Championships during his career and in 2002 he set a then world record in the clean and jerk with 153 kg en route to his fifth Pan-Am title.

The following year, at age 46, Valentine captured the 2003 World Masters Weightlifting Championship with a winning clean and jerk lift of 152.5 kg.

“In a way it is about how much you lift, but then when it comes down to it, who really cares?” said Valentine. “Someone is going to beat your record someday anyway. It’s about taking the chance to exhibit the qualities of a champion. If you lift like a champion, you’ll live like a champion.”

While holding a world record is a feat that only a select few can say they have accomplished in their lifetime, Valentine is even more proud of the fact that he did so without the assistance of steroids or performance enhancing drugs.

“I’ve never touched [steroids] in my life,” he said. “I started competing in 1980 and there was a coach who offered them to me thinking that was the thing to do. He said: ‘If you don’t take the drugs, you’ll never lift the big weights.’ Thirty years later, I’m still lifting weights and he’s since passed away due to health reasons.”

Despite his many individual accomplishments, Valentine is quick to credit his older cousin, Bobby, with leading him in the right direction when they were young.

“None of what I’ve accomplished would have been possible without Bobby’s example and inspiration as we were growing up,” said Valentine. “He represented the fact that if you work hard, success is doable. He had that determination and drive that carried over to myself and the rest of the family.”

‘The Zen of Bobby V’

Six-thousand miles east of his native Connecticut, Bobby Valentine has called Chiba, Japan his home for the last seven years.

Fresh off his second stint as manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Pacific League, Valentine has once again returned to his old stomping grounds where he is currently in his second tour of duty with ESPN as an analyst for Baseball Tonight.

“ESPN is quite an operation,” said Valentine. “When you’re a player and a manager, you do a lot of work in front of the television camera, and I always tried to speak my mind. [Being an analyst] is just an extension of what I did as a player and a manager.”

Before the 2009 season, it was announced that Valentine’s contract with the Marines would not be renewed because management felt that his $3.9 million salary was too expensive for their budget.

Fans were outraged upon hearing the news, with many signing petitions and even staging protests in a last-ditch effort to convince ownership that Valentine was worth keeping, but to no avail.

Finally, on July 26, sensing that his contact situation was becoming a distraction to the team, Valentine announced that 2009 would, in fact, be his last season as manager of the Marines.

“It was in the middle of the season so it was difficult timing,” said Valentine. “I tried to embrace the fans and still manage the team.”

While the skipper was already a fan-favorite in Japan (a shrine of him stands outside the Marines’ stadium and there is a street named after him called Valentine Way), he became the equivalent of a cultural icon during his farewell tour.

“It was flattering,” said Valentine of the way in which he was treated during his last few months in Japan. “The fans were the greatest. It’ll be hard to ever beat that experience as far as a manager-fan relationship.”

Perhaps the greatest of Valentine’s accomplishments in Japan came in 2005 when he led the Marines to their first Nippon Series championship in 31 years.

Amid all of the hoopla and celebration after the final out was recorded, he was tossed in the air several times by his players – an act which, according to Valentine, symbolizes the essence of a championship team: teamwork and trust.

Calling the 2005 Marines the “best team” he ever managed, Valentine cherishes the memories from the championship run and takes pride in the fact that he helped bring a championship to the Chiba fans.

“They appreciate hard work in Japan,” he said. “We had a lot of success and I gave my best effort, and they appreciated that.”

Despite all of the praise and adulation Valentine received in Japan, nowhere is he more adored than in Connecticut.

A three-sport star at Rippowam High School in Stamford, Valentine excelled in baseball, football, and track while growing up.

He scored a record 53 touchdowns for Rippowam High which caught the attention of college coaches across the country and led many to believe that football was his true calling.

But as a speedy outfielder, Valentine was recruited by several colleges, including the University of Nebraska, Duke University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Southern California. He wound up picking USC where he excelled both on the field and in the classroom.

“It was a bit of a culture shock for a young kid like me,” said Valentine of his college experience. “USC was a very competitive athletic and academic environment. I got to experience the University as well as the racial divide that the country was going through at the time.”

Valentine was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1968, but he suffered a serious leg injury in 1973 after getting his spikes stuck in an outfield wall while chasing down a fly ball. Even though he returned to the majors the next season, the injury robbed him of his speed and forced him to retire in 1979 at the age of 29.

“I had the desire to play,” said Valentine who was voted the No. 8 best athlete of the 20th Century from Connecticut by Sports Illustrated. “I broke my leg when I was 23 and I took the next six years to figure out if I was going to continue playing or if I was going to do something else.”

After a ten-year playing career with five different clubs, Valentine moved on to the coaching ranks – first as a minor league infield instructor with the San Diego Padres in 1980 before ultimately being hired as manager of the Texas Rangers in 1985.

“As a 35 year-old guy managing in the major leagues and managing guys I was teammates with in the past, I learned a lot,” he said.

After his stint with Texas, the opportunity presented itself for Valentine to manage the Chiba Lotte Marines in 1995.

“It was a great experience,” said Valentine of his first stint with the Marines. “I had mixed emotions about leaving [Japan]. I thought I was going to leave and immediately become a major league manager and as it turned out, I left and had to go to the minor leagues for a year and then got the job with the Mets.”

Valentine engineered a remarkable turnaround as Mets skipper, culminating in a World Series appearance against the Yankees in 2000.

But as successful as Valentine was as a player and manager, he has made an even bigger impact on the local community through his involvement in various charities and organizations.

In 2002, Valentine was the keynote speaker at the fourth annual Sacred Heart University Athletics Celebrity Breakfast where he was presented with the Humanitarian Award by athletic director Don Cook and vice president for enrollment planning and student affairs Jim Barquinero for his work in helping New Yorkers cope with the terrorist attacks of 9-11.

Later that year, he was awarded the Branch Rickey award by Major League Baseball for his humanitarian efforts.

“I did anything that was needed whether it was raising money, adopting a family, or spending time with those who needed it,” he said.

And while many athletes and celebrities tend to forget where they came from once they become famous, one need look no further than Valentine’s successful business ventures in Stamford to see that he hasn’t forgotten his roots.

In 1980, the Valentine family built what would become the Bobby Valentine Sports Gallery Café on Main Street in Stamford.

The restaurant’s impressive display of sports memorabilia, which Valentine and his father-in-law, former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca, collected throughout the course of their careers, has always attracted large crowds on game days.

“We survived a lot of the trials and tribulations of Stamford and we’re still hanging in there and having fun with it,” he said.

During the offseason, Valentine is a permanent fixture at the restaurant, doing everything from bussing tables and pouring drinks to mingling with customers and signing autographs.

“Anything I have my name on, I try to make sure that it has my fingerprints on also,” said Valentine.

Besides his restaurant, Valentine also opened an indoor athletic training facility in Stamford, the Bobby Valentine Sports Academy, which provides young athletes with baseball and softball instruction from some of the most esteemed coaches and instructors in the Northeast.

“All the guys who work there take personal pride in their efforts to teach the skills to the kids,” he said.

And while Valentine’s name always seems to surface whenever there is a managerial opening in the major leagues, he said that he is enjoying his time at ESPN, but left open the possibility of a return to managing.

“I’ll keep an open mind to it,” he said. “I have the desire to do the best I can with the job I’m doing, whatever I’m doing.”

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